A Winter in India

“Kathakali” literally means “storyplay”. The story is told by “abhinaya” (expressions). Some of this is expressed by the costumes (“Vesham”) that represent the basic personality and good or evil nature of the character. Green faces are for good characters and for royalty. Interesting. Most is expressed through hand gestures and facial expressions. There are 24 hand shapes (mudras) that are moved in different ways to convey different animals or actions or emotions. We saw a demonstration of “elephant” for example, that used one hand in the “musti” shape as the end of the trunk. This was moved around to very convincingly show the elephant eating, spitting on the audience, etc. The actors’ other hand, in the “hamsapaksham” shape was the elephant’s ears that waved around in different ways to show the elephant’s emotions (happy, angry, etc).

Along with the facial expressions, the mudras express 9 emotions (“rasas”), which are: serenity, wonder, kindness, love, valor, fear, contempt, loathing and anger. We saw a demonstration of all 9, and the meanings were very clear. The audience would know the 24 mudras and the veshams of all the characters and so could decipher the meaning as the storyplay proceeded. A drummer using two curved wood drumsticks with flat ends set the timing and mood of the story.