Abhisarika Book
Rosalie Checca
In another age, on a similar night, a young woman covers her face and head with a thick scarf, sneaks out of her apartment and walks down to the parking area, instead of taking the noisy elevator. With a helmet in one hand, keys in the other, she dodges the sleeping watchman, drags her scooter to the end of the lane before hopping on and pressing the ignition. The vehicle makes a terrifying racket in the quiet, but before anyone can raise their heads, off she goes, and without looking back, disappears into the night.
In every age and every century, the abhisarika अभसरक manifests in varied forms, but each time, she retains that sense of adventure and dare that is central to her being. She is an enduring presence as much in art as in the real world, representing a heroine who embarks on an intrepid adventure, and overcoming all the obstacles in her path, finally reaches her beloved.
Within the traditional repertoire of Indian classical dance, a performer portrays the abhisarika through a secret journey that takes this heroine from her home to the bower in the forest, or a secluded spot on the riverbank. And therein lies the appeal of this nayika, who makes clandestine moves and risky, close calls to avoid suspicion and prevent herself from getting caught. For a performer, choreographer and storyteller, she is perhaps the most thrilling of all ashtanayika.
The only differences that arise are those of the obstacles in her path. Historically, while a young girl would dodge the curious glances of her friends or the elderly in the house, for an older, mature woman, this journey towards her beloved would signify an escape from the trappings of domestic humdrum.
So, in the hands of a shrewd performer and choreographer, an abhisarika becomes a powerful presence on the stage, who lights up a recital with her spirit, and the audience watches on with rapt attention, to see who or what she may encounter next, en route.
Swapnokalpa Dasgupta, Head of Dance at the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, and an Odissi and Manipuri exponent, explains that an abhisarika can be further divided into eight distinct variations of which the ratra abhisarika (one who steps out to meet her lover at night) and the diva abhisarika (one who sneaks out in broad daylight) appear prominently in traditional compositions.
Oftentimes, this heroine is depicted as being covered in dark clothes, walking stealthily towards the dense forest or the river, encountering hurdles that nature would place before her. Tiptoeing barefoot in the woods, she might let out a sharp cry when a thorn pierces her foot, or panicky and afraid for her life, pray fervently when she comes face to face with a poisonous snake that blocks her path.
But Dasgupta draws attention to two lesser-known abhisarika, found in the traditional repertoire of Vaishanava Padavali that celebrate the relationship between Radha and Krishna. Manipuri, she explains, borrows extensively from this repository of Bengali verses and it is in one such lyric that the kuaasha abhisarika (or a heroine who ventures into the forest in dense fog) comes to life.
The abhinaya of Manipuri is angik, Dasgupta explains, so a performer uses the physical being or the body heavily to evoke emotions of longing and desire. Such a movement vocabulary that explores bodily gestures becomes a potent medium to describe a heroine whose pursuits demand physical alertness and great reflexes. Inevitably, a kuaasha abhisarika blinded by the fog is depicted in Manipuri as a heroine who traverses through the thick forest towards her beloved using only her sense of touch.
As she stumbles along, a strong gush of wind perhaps clears the haze just for a moment, and she catches a glimpse of her lover standing next to her, but before she can express her delight, she is engulfed once again by the mist. She could be dancing with him without realising it, Dasgupta says, or sense his touch on her arm only to feel alone once again when the cold breeze that grazes her skin chills her to the bone.
The varsha abhisarika has her own distinct obstacles to overcome: braving the clapping of thunder, the flash of lightening and the heavy downpour, all to meet her lover. Dasgupta recites a rare verse composed by Bhanusimha (a nom de plume of Rabindranath Tagore), in which the nayika laments:
What is striking about the abhisarika is her unflinching faith that this journey, for which she innocently subverts all preconceived social constructs, will be worthwhile the moment she sets eyes on her beloved. And she exerts this quiet agency, perhaps by tricking a guard on night duty or by rushing past an acquaintance with an unassuming air, in an almost humorous, but more significantly, a courageous and determined manner. For her, this is the ultimate test of love.
[1] Rama Coomaraswamy was the son of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, an important figure in the field of Indian and Sri Lankan art history. Coomaraswamy was largely responsible for providing the conceptual structures through which South Asian art became studied and valued in India and in the west. Because A.K. Coomaraswamy spent the second half of his life in the U.S., it is highly unlikely that any art from his personal collection would have a contested provenance.
Court paintings from North India reveal a range of personal, poetic and religious attitudes towards love. The paintings provided their courtly viewers - who were both men and women -- with models for thinking about and acting on feelings of affection and passion. Indian poets explored and classified every stage of romantic relationships, from passionate desire to remorse after quarrels.
The enormously influential Rasikapriya (1591) transformed the Sanskrit poetic tradition of categorizing romantic types. Keshav Das' text was not only written in the vernacular of literary Hindi (or Braj) it also personalized the classical tradition by identifying the lovers as the Hindu deity Krishna and Radha, a girl from a cow-herder village. In this painting, Radha is depicted as an abhisarika, a woman who fearlessly braves the dangers of the night to meet her lover (Rasikpriya ch. 7, v. 31):
Serpents were coiling round her legs and their heads were being crushed beneath her feet; and evil spirits ranging abroad could be seen in all directions She didn't notice the torriential rain, nor the terrifying thunder of dark clouds, nor the screaming of cicadas amidst the roaring of the story. She didn't know when her ornaments fell off one by one. Defying the ditches and brambles that tried to stand in her way, she went on. The goblin-wives themselves wondered and are asking her, 'Wherefor have you learnt this yoga-like behavior? O abhisarika, how marvelous this trysting!" [translation M.S. Randhawa, 1962].
The poet of the Rasikpriya, Keshavdas, transformed the Sanskritic tradition not only by identifying the lovers as Radha and Krishna, but also by writing in the vernacular (Hindi) instead of Sanskrit. Keshavdas was he most eminent of the poets whose vernacular works in the Riti style transformed literary culture. The Rasikpriya, which he wrote for the ruler of the small court of Orchha, seems to have been immedialtely popular, a shift that be tracked because of the swiftness with which it was copied and illustrated across north India.
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