Dancer Preethi Bharadwaj sifts through emotional and physical garbage to portray a woman’s life

Preethi Bharadwaj makes a strong statement with her performance
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

‘Kathakathayaam kaaranaam… kaaranathil thoranaam’ (stories, reasons… garland of reasons) recited Preethi Bharadwaj, as she navigated through stories about trash, women and love in ‘Me and My Trash’. Most likely with a reason for every narrative; some we got, some we did not. But it came together in the end when her head was in the trash can and the garbage all over her, and she was talking about how society commoditises women, ‘You are not the trash, we are! Atleast I am.’ Ouch.

That was a punch in the gut. To get there, Preethi mimed funny stories, poignant ones, stories of love and god, in a riveting 75-minute dramatisation. The song, dance, stories, one after the other non-stop with 10-second blackouts in between, were in Tamil, English, and Hindi. 

Many theatre artistes today embrace the vernacular, tending towards spoken Tamil, and using dialects occasionally, for variety, moving between languages and the cultures they represent seamlessly. This adds an informal intimacy, the closer-to-home kind.

Powerful presence and voice

Preethi has a presence and a powerful voice. The costume was nondescript intentionally — a loose black tunic and pants, with her hair fastened on the sides, accessorised by heavy silver anklets and earrings and a big bindi.

First, it was the physical trash — an oppaari-inspired original gramiya paadal, ‘Kuppai kuppai kuppai, idha enga poyi veppen’. She emptied a trash can and marked the performance area with the contents. Existential questions along with a moral followed, ‘Naan yaar…. Naatil… give more than you get.’ 

She jumps to her childhood being dressed up as a Japanese girl. In traditional literature and in Bharatanatyam, we use the complimentary descriptive term ‘fish-eyed’. Now it is a ‘Fish Alarippu’, an opening piece in Bharatanatyam with the addition of the fish symbol. Someone eats a sweet and carelessly tosses the wrapper in the water, which finds its way into the fish; a fisherman reels in the struggling fish.

‘Me and My Trash’ is a blend of movement and spoken word
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

A humourous ‘Muruga’s Day Out’ when Shiva and Parvathi forget about the sleeping Muruga and leave for a photo shoot. The parents posing with their vahanas hovering, Muruga’s adventures on his peacock and an old lady’s (Avvaiyaar) directions for a yonder lake were well caricatured. The parents find Muruga and realise that Ganesha is now missing. Funny, but what’s the point here?

Muthuswami Dikshitar’s ‘Kanchadalayadakshi’ kriti brought out an irony in society when we worship a goddess, while sexually harassing women publicly. 

Shades of love

The topic shifted to love and to spiritually cleansing oneself to offer a pure self to god. Radha wants to merge into Krishna in ‘Shyam tori’, exchanging outer personas for the time.

Back to the topic of trash with a spoof on the famed matchmaker Seema Taparia. This substitute character, Reema Taparia, looks for matches in trash cans. ‘The real soul of a boy can be gauged by the cash he generates and the trash he generates.’ A boy asks to be matched with a girl just like his mother; this segued into a narrative of the life of a mother. Can a mother disappear when the child is ready? From birth she takes care of the child, little snippets of the growing years captured poignantly. Once the child is grown, he wants to spread his wings; the mother, a forlorn figure, watches the plane take off.

Again trash — what cannot be separated? Wet and dry waste. She uses the garbage as clothing, cap, mask, and puts her head into a bag, breaking into a navarasa vis a vis the abused woman — ‘scared of the abuse, laughter is society’s reaction at the neighbour’s suffering, disgust is what her family feels, surprise that everyone forgets very quickly… Will we learn? You are not the trash, we are.’

The script was by Vedarun Rajkumar and Preethi. The show was a part of O2’s monthly performance series presented by Alchemy Arts.