This is the picture of the actors in the sanskrit play
'Asvatthama' staged in Trichy way back during 1950s !!
You can see my father, the indomitable VENU, in the
role of Asvatthama--standing, Ist row, right extreme.
The sacred thread is conspicuous. It has a bearing on
the character-on-stage. My father used to say that he
was able to bring full force into the acting by taking the
proverbial oath of Asvatthama stretching the thread
taut by the left hand while gesturing the oath by the right.(Asvatthama is the son of Drona, the brahmin
teacher of military arts to Pandavas and Kauravas in the story of Mahabharatha. When Drona was becoming
invincible in the war-field he was downed by a trickery
of words. By the by, the great epic is available in English translations. In Tamil, the entire epic inclusive was
brought out after 20 odd years of effort in 1930s and 1940s by the great M V Ramanujachariar swamy thru
his Mahabharatham press in Kumbakonam. After 1955 it was long out of print for nearly 50 years.
Luckily, now,it is being brought out in 9 tomes, already 4tomes are out, by one Venkataraman, my friend)
You should have seen my father acting out various characters even while reading out. A genius and a
genuine thespian was lost by Tamilnad unawares. Srirangam Mohanarangan
***
