Bharatnatyam adaptation of IFS officer Jeysundhar's 'Maalyada: Andal's Secret Garland' to open in Delhi on April 26

Detail from a 14th century sculpture of Andal, and the cover of Maalyada by Jeysundhar. (Image of Andal sculpture via Wikimedia Commons)

Indian Foreign Services (IFS) 2012 batch officer Jeysundhar Deviprasadh remembers listening to 8th century Bhakti poet Andal's songs while preparing for half-yearly school exams. "Even now, my recollection of Andal’s deceptively simple verses is... enmeshed with the laws of physics and equations of chemistry," he says.

Andal is credited with composing at least two major works in Tamil: Tiruppavai and Nachiyar Tirumol. The songs of Tiruppavai are still played during the Tamil month of Marghazhi—from mid-December to mid-January. And there's a song for each day of the month, as Andal speaks to her Lord Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu. Jeysundhar recalls hearing these songs on the family's "red National Panasonic Mono tape recorder... in the voice of Pithukuli Murugadas, my grandfather".

In the months following COVID lockdowns, years after his famous grandfather's death, Jeysundhar began Twitter threads around Andal's verses, translating both the language and the philosophy for non-Tamil speakers and those who hadn't been immersed in the culture like he had been. In November 2023, he published a book of Andal's Thiruppavai.

Titled 'Maalyada: Andal's Secret Garland', Jeysudhar's translation was a departure from the original in at least two key ways. One, it was in English. And two, it had Andal in dialogue with her friends as they chatted animatedly about their devotion to Krishna.

A Bharatnatyam adaptation of the book—which choreography by Rama Vaidyanathan, and scoring by Carnatic musician Sudha Raghuraman—is premiering this Saturday in Delhi, at the Kamani Auditorium.

Nikhil Soni, group manager marketing, Shiv Nadar Foundation and HCL Concerts, told Moneycontrol that more shows of 'Maalyada' could be in the offing, to take the performance to Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

In interviews to Moneycontrol, Jeysundhar and Rama Vaidyanathan spoke about the show, what visitors can expect as well as their own experiences around and engagements with Andal's poetry. Edited excerpts:

Jeysundhar D

During the ‘Maalyada’ book launch last year, you’d spoken briefly about how great it would be to have a performance based on it. Did you have this in mind while writing the book as well?

Yes, I wrote Maalyada in the form of a conversation between Andal and her friends who are performing the Nonbu with her. So, the concepts of the Tiruppavai, beginning with the importance of Margazhi and the value of the Narayana Naama are all brought out through the conversation. I felt that this conversation format was readily suitable for adaptation into a dance production.

Bharatanatyam performances have long presented Pasurams of the Tiruppavai on stage. What’s unique about “Maalyada: Andal’s Sacred Garland” is that it brings out the elements of Navadha Bhakti, the nine forms of Bhakti mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana, and encoded within the pithy verses of the Tiruppavai.

⁠How did this performance come together—did HCL or Rama ji reach out to you? Or did you have a set of collaborators in mind, to adapt this for the stage?

After the launch, and the immediate success of the book, I began to pursue my earlier idea of adapting the book to stage, in the form of a dance performance.

I was in touch with a few friends, including Sh. Aditya Balasundaram of Sound Creed Productions, who connected me with Rama ji. I had watched her performances earlier and with the blessings of Andal, everything fell in place for this to be a production commissioned by HCL Concerts.

⁠Did you have a particular reader/viewer in mind for the book and for this performance?

The idea behind writing “Maalyada” was to showcase why the Tiruppavai, composed in the small village of Srivilliputhur in Tamil Nadu, was praised as the essence of the Vedas. Maalyada places the Tiruppavai in the larger context of pan-Indian Bhakti movement.

The book demonstrates how Andal has taken the profound philosophy of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and the elaborate episodes from Ramayana-Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana, and encapsulated them into 30 songs of eight verses each, to make them accessible to anyone who sings these songs during Margazhi.

So, everyone who is interested in Bhakti literature, both for its philosophy and its musicality, will enjoy reading the book and watching the performance.

⁠You mentioned during the book launch that Andal’s songs reveal something new to you every time you try to interpret them—in Twitter threads and across the book. Did the new dance performance precipitate or bring about any new understandings of the text and the philosophy?

Andal’s Tiruppavai is mostly a monologue of Andal talking to her friends, Krishna’s family, to Krishna’s consort Nappinnai (Sri – Lakshmi) and finally to Krishna himself. But, in “Maalyada”, I had presented this as a two-way conversation, providing me with a vehicle for a back-and-forth discussion on the philosophy of Bhakti in the Tiruppavai.

The dance production brings these conversations to life, opening a window into the times of Andal in the small village of Srivilliputhur, where her friends must have flooded her with questions, for her to explain the essence of Bhakti to them. While watching the rehearsals, I was able to witness how Andal’s Tiruppavai is itself similar to the Bhagavad Gita, with Andal being the Acharya who teaches the value of Bhakti, not just to the girls in her village, but also to us, who read her a millennium later.

⁠The book is in English but the performance will be in Tamil—your thoughts on how the text translates across these languages, as well as medium in this case?

The songs of the Tiruppavai are themselves in Tamil. Composing them centuries ago, Andal had taken concepts from older Sanskrit works such as the Bhagavad Gita, and placed them in beautiful Tamil verses.

Let me demonstrate this with an example. The most venerated Mantras in Sri Vaishnavam are the Traya Rahasyams, the three secrets. These are the Ashtakshara Mantra of Narayana, the Dvaya Mantra that emphasizes the role of Lakshmi and the Charama Sloka or the last verse of the Bhagavad Gita, which explains the importance of Saranagati or surrender.

Andal takes the first and third of the Traya Rahasyams from Sanskrit and encapsulates them within just one Tamil verse of the 1st Pasuram of the Tiruppavai, by saying that Narayana alone can give us the gift of Paramapada, the eternal refuge, that every Jeevatma seeks.

I chose English as the language in order to combine these two and present it to a pan-Indian audience.

The dance performance renders the songs of the Tiruppavai, in Tamil as they are, but in the context of Navadha Bhakti, which is mentioned in the book.

How involved were you with the making of this show?

We had multiple conversations to discuss the shape and contours of the production, and what final form it would take.

⁠During the book launch in 2023, you also spoke about the influence of your grandfather and growing up listening to Andal’s songs. Tell us your most vivid memory around this.

Margazhi usually began with waking up early in the mornings, during the first week to revise for the Half-yearly exams and subsequently to be woken up by the temple bells and songs flowing out of the tape recorder.

My eyes are shut. It is dark inside and outside. Sunrise is still two hours away. I am floating in some universe that my dream has conjured, and all of a sudden, a tap on the shoulder drags me out of it. My mother wakes me up according to the time we agreed last night.  As my eyes open, so do the ears.

From the red National Panasonic Mono tape recorder wafts in the voice of Pithukuli Murugadas, my grandfather, singing Margazhi Thingal, and then pausing for the Harmonium to match his baritone and join in. He continues to sing about the glory of the first day of Margazhi, and I join in with a smattering of lyrics, picking up the book and settling down to revise for the exam of the day.

Even now, my recollection of Andal’s deceptively simple verses is in my grandfather’s voice, and enmeshed with the laws of physics and equations of chemistry.

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A post shared by Rama Vaidyanathan (@ramavaidyanathan)

Rama Vaidyanathan

You would have done a lot of presentations based on Andal's songs. Do you have a favourite Andal story?

There are cute stories like she used to weave garlands for the lord and then before sending it to the temple, she used to wear the garland—just because she felt close to Krishna wearing it. And then she would take it out and then she would give it. Initially, the priest got very angry. But then he got a vision saying that I (Krishna) want that same garland that she wore. So even today in Andal's temple, they put the garland for her in Tamil Nadu, and from there it goes to Tirupati for Venkateshwara.

These stories are sweet, and the conversations that she has with her friends! Like, she wakes them up early in the morning and she says, 'Come on, come on, we have to go. And these are 30 days, and we have to take this vow of 30 days of praying to Krishna. But the girls are sleeping and they say: 'We are tired, we don't want to wake up so early'. So, these are very, very universal, and these are things that we all do. It's nice to see how she's urging everybody to get into a life of discipline, to get into a life of contemplating on the Lord.

What I'm trying to say is that understanding each and every word of the poetry is really not necessary. I think that the language of dance will say—because, see, the book is in English, but I am not speaking anything when I'm dancing. So my language is my dance. I'm using that as my medium of communication.

Is there any particular song out of the 30 in Tiruppai that was really fun for you to translate into dance?

OK, there is one song where she speaks about the rain cycle. She says, 'Oh Krishna, you are like the dark clouds. Why don't you go down to the water, take the water, go to the clouds, and then drop down as rain... In a very, very poetic manner, she talks about the rain cycle, she talks about lightning, she talks about thunder, and she says all of this is a manifestation of the lord. Giving visual imagery to that was very exciting, very beautiful for me.

What was the process of putting this performance together like? You're the choreographer on this, but you also have some others dancing with you on stage?

Four of my disciples are going to be dancing along with me. And the most important aspect for this is the music. Sudha Raghuraman, she's an extremely eminent and accomplished Carnatic vocalist, and she's been working with me for many years. She immediately understood my vision and she has created original score. The whole program has original music, not taking any other music from anywhere else. And the ragas that she chose—to go with the meaning. She's taken the path Andal has taken the path of Navadha Bhakti, nine ways of reaching towards Krishna. And that's the same thread that we have used in dance production.

How did she pick the ragas, since you worked with her closely on this, could you perhaps give an example?

She has used many ragas. There's one song where Andal talks about Krishna sleeping and he's not waking up and Andal is trying to wake him up. She (Raghuraman) has used Raga Neelambari, which is a sleeping raga (for this song). If you listen to Neelambari, you'll go off to sleep. It's like a lullaby raga. Sudha said she's going to use that raga because it gives the effect of Krishna sleeping. And we actually show Krishna sleeping also at that moment.

And in the sequence of the rain—I told you about the rain cycle—she's used ragas that connects to the rain.

We've used a lot of chants of the Vaishnava culture, because Andal was a Vaishnavite.

What can viewers expect to see in this 75-minute performance?

Usually in a Bharatnatyam performance, you will see that the musicians sitting on your left and the dancer dancing in the center. But in this case, I have made it a more inclusive atmosphere; I have brought in the musicians to be sitting everywhere on the stage. And the path that's created between the musicians, from one musician to another musician, I'm using that pathway to bring the perspective of space. Because Andal walks a lot—towards Krishna's house, she takes her friends, she takes them to the river. Because it is just one stage, (this seating is crucial to give an indication of) where is she turning, what is she going around, what is happening? The minute there are some things happening all over, with people sitting (in different formations around the stage), there's a perspective of Andal's path being charted firstly.

Secondly, the musicians become part of the storytelling as everybody is urgently telling the story of the book. I think that will be an interesting visual experience for the audience.

I will be in the role of the sutradhar; Andal was 12 years old, so I am not playing that part.

Maalyada: The Sacred Garland opens at Kamani Auditorium, Delhi, on April 26 at 6.30 pm. Entry is free, but requires pre-registration on +91 98100 97056.