Sanehalli's theatre experiment

Not many in Bangalore have heard of Sanehalli, although the name might ring a bell among this city’s theatre lovers. This remote village in central Karnataka houses a theatre institute, and its repertory company takes out shows to towns and cities across Karnataka every year. Sanehalli is known for a Lingayat religious institution headed by Panditaradhya Swamiji. The pontiff is a playwright of some merit, and produces what theatre students would describe as morality plays, but he is better known as an enlightened supporter of theatre education.

“For religious institutions, theatre is almost taboo, but Panditaradhya Swamiji takes a liberal view,” says Chidambara Rao Jambe, director of the institute. The pontiff runs a theatre school for 20 students, selected from districts across Karnataka, and gives them free food and education for a full year. That effort costs him Rs 15 lakh a year. The students come mostly from poor families, and are children of farmers or pliers of small trades.

The Sanehalli experiment is based on the now famous Ninasam model. In a village called Heggodu near Sagar, K V Subbanna built an institution called Neelakanteswara Natya Sangha (abbreviated to Ninasam), now acknowledged as a realisation of the Gandhian decentralisation dream. What Subbanna did for over 50 years inspired the Swamiji to set up this school.

The Sanehalli experiment is informed by the egalitarian and non-violent philosophies of Gandhi and Basava, but it seems to have left the police uneasy. They recently told a reporter they were keeping an eye on the mutt for Naxal activities, and accused the swamiji of encouraging Maoist-leaning intellectuals.

Jambe studied at the National School of Drama, Delhi, and then served as a director of the Rangayana theatre repertory in Mysore. He makes a monthly trip to his hometown in Shimoga district, but otherwise spends all his time overseeing work at Sanehalli. He is supported by Nataraj Honnavalli, a Ninasam alumnus who has made a name as a director.

Nataraj is now rehearsing a Kannada translation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with his students. For weary city types, Sanehalli looks like a magical little cocoon. The Mumbai highway is about 40 km away, but the village isn’t overwhelmed by the Internet, mobiles, or the movies. Landlines work, but when it comes to mobiles, Airtel and Reliance hardly catch any signals.

The village retains the picturesqueness of an earlier era. All houses, except one that stood out conspicuously with its new-age city architecture, are tiled. At a little eatery in a corner, we ordered snacks (khara mandakki) and tea for two, and the bill didn’t cross Rs 12. Hung prominently here was a picture of C G Krishnaswamy, the famous theatre director who helped give shape to the swamiji’s vision for a theatre village.

The late CGK brought to Sanehalli several theatre experts, and helped the swamiji build an amphitheatre that can seat up to 3,000. That’s where they have their annual theatre festival, and people from villages in the vicinity come to catch Shakespeare, Chekov and Kalidasa, besides the best of Kannada playwrights.

Earlier this month, folklorist Ramanna had come down from Mysore to teach kamsaale, the vigorous folk dance form popular in the Male Maheshwara region, and was putting students through the paces at the amphitheatre. After the kamsale class, students flocked around singer Gajanana Hegde, who was teaching them music.

The Sanehalli and Heggodu experiments are perhaps unique in India, and point to ways in which our theatre traditions, both classical and contemporary, can be practised and propagated.

HOW TO GET THERE: Sanehalli is about five hours by road from Bangalore. It can be reached via the Mumbai highway, but a bridge had collapsed, and we were advised to drive through another route that took almost eight hours.

An occasional bus plies to Sanehalli. But people mostly hop into cargo autos at Hosadurga, 20 km away, and arrive at this village with a population of about 650. Hosadurga is well-connected from Bangalore's Kempe Gowda Bus Station. Shivasanchara, the institute's theatre repertory, goes touring in a van donated by an industrialist.

Allen's newsroom novel

Anyone who knew Allen Mendonca also knew he enjoyed his journalism. Which is why they won’t be surprised at the earnestness and energy in The Sentinel House, his novel about the newspaper business.

MiD DAY got an advance copy of the book, which Arundhati Nag is releasing at Ranga Shankara on Wednesday. Allen goes about challenging readers, fellow journalists particularly, to identify real-life media people hiding behind his fictional characters. He is a satirist this moment, and a practitioner of pulp fiction the next, but there isn’t a moment he isn’t having a go at the media world. For that reason, it is likely that journalists will grasp the novel's nuances better than those with no access to newsroom gossip.

The Sentinel House narrates the saga of Harivanshrai aka Harry, a media baron driven as much by his hormones as by the opportunities afforded by the new Indian economy. In a hurry to expand his empire, he transforms his newspaper from institution to product, obscures the once-inviolable line between editorial and marketing, and elevates advertiser over reader.

Many will read The Sentinel House as a dramatised chronicle of what Allen saw in the newsrooms of the past two decades. The book also seethes with media-boardroom news and gossip that never made it to print. If journalists sit around at bars and coffee shops with a copy of The Sentinel House, smirking, taunting, hooting, or even getting into brawls, you know why.

And unexpectedly, running through all the masala and the action is Allen’s faith in Hindu karma and Christian compassion. When Harry’s crippled son Sid finally finds love and fulfilment, and wealth and power, Allen suggests it is all because of the character’s essential goodness. The Sentinel House describes crimes provoked by lust and greed, but it is also an optimistic tribute to innocence.

But for all that, Allen’s book is vulnerable, and can be ripped apart easily by any critical book lover. Its sex scenes are inspired by Harold Robbins. Its characters are predictable in what they do when faced with a crisis. (The media czar sleeps around, his wife parties and hits the bottle, and their son seeks meaning in art). The Sentinel House is clearly inclined towards populist fiction and Page 3 reportage. With this novel, Allen joins the ranks of Bangalorean journalists-turned-novelists Narendra Pani and C K Meena, but they take stylistic routes different from his.

If anyone was qualified to write this novel, it was Allen. In the decades he spent in journalism, he changed from intrepid reporter to Page 3 heartthrob to independent entrepreneur. He knew this story from the inside. He did many diverse things, including playing the guitar. Allen died of a heart attack late in September, and it is sad that his first novel will also be his last.

One doesn’t know if Allen would have liked to revise it before sending it out to the press, but The Sentinel House, even in its present form, can deliver a satisfyingly nasty punch.