H.A. Anil Kumar reminisces about old days when Bengaluru celebrated Shivaraathri in its true spirit and essence.
As we came out of the second show film from the touring talkies ‘Gajanana’ theatre at Yeshwanthpur (Bengaluru), it was almost impossible to completely exit out of the building. Those who wanted to watch the third show at 1am, midnight, literally pushed us in, like a huge wave pushing a ship in the direction which it did not intend to go. As a result, we – all the friends in their teens – were pushed back into the theatre, inside the theatre to watch the same film for the second time, that too for free of cost! We saw our favourite star Rajkumar’s film, though not very willingly because one could not sit through the film, literally. Everyone was standing throughout, perhaps to keep themselves awake, or because more people could be accommodated by standing than seated. Even the audience silhouettes became inevitable part of the screen all through. When we came out of the theatre at 3.30am, we still had few more hours for sunrise and for Shivaraathri festival to conclude and pave way for our eyelids to get united.
Shivarathri is a festival that captured our imagination in our childhood days in Bengaluru, like no other festival, in the 1970s. Throughout the day, we would wait for the night to arrive, because it was Lord Shiva’s raathri or night; and also waited for the dinner in the form of sacred offering, because we had to fast throughout the sunlit day. So it was a festival of waiting, of the future.
My grand mom or aunt or mum or all of them together, would for the nth time repeat the story of a hunter who was the reason for the formulation of Shivaraathri as a festival. It was a ritual to tell this story as well as listen to, every year, like the ritual of watching Attenborough’s film about ‘Gandhi’ on 2nd October, every year on television. Kannappa, the hunter, would climb a tree and wait throughout the night for a hunt, endlessly plucking off leaves from the Shivalingam tree so as to not fall asleep and fall off the tree. He was hungry and sleepless; hence all who adored Shivarathri (or the school holiday and the pleasure it brought in) should oblige to fast and go sleepless on that festive day. Born into a generation after the hippy generation, we still had this reasoning: why should we go hungry since for Kannappa it was inevitable? Reason and logic don’t go hand in hand; and would play a spoilsport in celebrating the festival.
Shiva’s temple at Yeshwanthpur would be jam-packed throughout the day and the night on Shivarathri. On the festive day(time) we would just take a glimpse of the temple from outside, to which we were bound to come back in the night out of compulsion. This was the third element of waiting inherent in the festival, apart from fasting and being awake.
The dim lit temple interiors would be brighter by the evening and the wild flora and fauna of Bengaluru all around it would trigger off our imagination, to personally imagine the Kannappa’s story in our own style. The ignorant and innocent Kannappa (man who gifted his eyes to Shiva) sees that the Lingam has eyes and is crying. God crying in front of the innocent! He plucks off his own eyes and pastes it as crudely as possibly onto the lingam. Incidentally Rajkumar’s first ever film was “Bedara Kannappa” (1954) and he is Kannappa in it! Most of the films I saw during Shivaraathri, annually, was only this film and when it was remade after four decades, his son played the role of Kannappa while Rajkumar himself played the role of Shiva. He was better suited as a devotee than the lord, because his screen presence was longer in the former role. This populistic imagination might be one of the reason as to why we rejoiced Shivaraathri better than any other festivities. Also, there was only one hero who acted in all Kannada films, no matter how many different actors acted as heroes, when my generation was in the making – that was only Rajkumar for us!
(i) Innocence, (ii) stress on visuality, (iii) not closing one’s eyes for twenty four hours (iv) fasting and (v) populistic imagery – were the elements which fascinated us.
I still wonder as to why that day was a holiday for the school, which should have been the next day, by all logistics. Most of us who managed to reach the school next day due to the lure of parental threat did so with red eyes.
Shivaraathri is always a night of cold and chill, no matter how hot the days on its either side were. We did all that had to be done, to be awake on that night, often even sleep in the afternoon! We also did almost everything possible to fast, by eating only loads of fruits and drinking milk, almost to the extent of suffering from indigestion when it came to eating cooked food, the next day morning!
Even after watching the midnight-third-show film, we would roam around the dimly lit and zero traffic roads of Yeshwanthpur. Often we would burn cycle tyres, wooden plaques from the shafts that constituted the petty shops, to keep awake and away from cold that would inflict sleep. Only if Kannappa could have imagined the kind of characters who would express their empathy with his sleepless-hungry night!
Hence Shivaraathri surpassed being mere festivities. It was Bangalore’s response to the elaborate, nine-day-long Desersa of the Mysore Maharajas. The nature of the then Bengaluru, less populated, more homogenous in nature and the absence of yet-to-arrive idiot box (television) were the reasons for such a public participation. Shivaraathri was more of a community, cultural and populistic festival rather than a religious one.
In the beginning decade of the current century, I went to pick up a foreigner friend and welcome him to Bengaluru at HAL airport. On our way back, near to the airport, I stopped to show him the huge Shiva image, recently installed. We had to pass through a den-set-like dark passage. As soon as we emerged out the image, a monstrous-sized Shiva in plaster-like fibre-glass moulded physique pounced on our sight, though seated. It was no Shiva, but a pop-kitsch-pastiched version of the diety, with mutiliated sense of iconography, like those thousands of Buddhas showcased in glass-cases, at every corner of Srilankan roads, or the Christ on every district in Kerala. God save Shiva from those who attempt to recreate him in a contemporary avatar. Evoking the experience of being ancient and nostalgic are the true identities of Gods in general and Shiva in particular. Due to such and other reasons, Shivaraathri has been an experience, lost and camouflaged in Bengaluru, now.
