In the 60-watt yellowness of the greenroom, Sadanam Krishnankutty’s face gains a magical sheen when he carefully applies the colours on the stylised sketch that is suggestive of the character in his art of Kathakali. It takes another three hours for the actor-dancer to completely deck up and enter the stage for his power-packed performance from the mythological chapter.
For the audience, it would be tough to believe that the artiste is a septuagenarian. For, it’s not just the transformational brightness of the visage; Krishnankutty has his body movements and hand gestures sparkling in a way that belies his age: 76.
It was exactly 60 years ago that a slim and dark-complexioned little boy made entry into one of the world’s most advanced classical ballets. From 1957 till date, Krishnankutty has been one of the most vibrant figures in south India’s Kathakali, having been a busy artiste performing a whole range of roles like almost no other contemporary all his life.
The nearly unparalleled all-round excellence this exponent has displayed over half-a-century now has apparently much to do with his life experiences as a whole, in hindsight. Krishnankutty, who is celebrating tomorrow (October 29, Sunday) his six decades of on-stage career, wouldn’t string them together, yet they tacitly tell the story of how the artiste capitalised upon one’s own personal episodes to embellish his artistic career.
Krishnankutty recalls his teens as a Kathakali student in Sadanam Kathakali Akademi in his native district of Palakkad. There, at the river-side village of Peroor that is less than 30 km from his equally rugged hometown of Cherpulassery, the boy was brought up in Gandhian ideals. For the 1953-founded institution was headed by freedom-fighter activist K. Kumaran, a local leader (1920-2005) of the Sarvodaya movement conceptualised on the ideals of the Mahatma.
