Ashtanayika of classical dance: On the virahotkanthita, a woman reminiscing over her separated lover

A nayika delights, saddens, bewitches, angers. In many ways, she provides catharsis, because her unabashed narration of her story – her woes, apprehensions and joys – evokes those emotions of love and desire within ourselves, whose existence we perhaps knew not of.

In his Natyashastra_, written circa 200 BC, Bharat Muni expounded his theories on the practice and performance of theatre and dance in 36 chapters. It was within these verses that he crafted the ashtanayika, or the eight heroines based on eight different episodes from a woman’s life. The ashtanayika give voice to the thoughts of a woman caught in myriad situations concerning her lover, and are considered to be among the most beautiful and enduring forms of abhinaya in the study of Indian classical dance._

For centuries, each one of these instances has signified much more than the depiction of a woman’s conundrums and perils: they have come to denote her liberty to express herself, and her love — physical and spiritual — for her beloved. This is perhaps one of the reasons the concept of the nayikas has been nurtured through time, evolving with the world around it, while staying rooted to its essence. For a nayika is one woman, she is every woman, at some point, in some place.

In this Firstpost series, we explore the ashtanayika, their representation in Indian classical dance and the place they find in contemporary times and practice.

Read more from the series here .

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Viraha (separation | विरह), the piercing and painful rasa that evokes the sorrow of parting is agonising, preceded as it is by moments of great love and togetherness. It is an ache made so much the harsher for beneath the sorrow lie the memories of a time that was beautifully spent in the company of the lover, before the inevitable farewell.

A virahotkanthita | विरहोत्कंठिता is a nayika steeped in similar anguish induced by viraha, or a parting from her lover, and experiences a grief of a kind that envelopes her in feelings of longing and melancholy.

She is a heroine who reminisces, who revels in the moments she spent with her lover and is saddened at the thought of not being able to see or hear from him for a long time.

In an interpretative performance, Bharatnatyam exponent Revanta Sarabhai has experimented with the traditional representation of the virahotkanthita to locate the nayika in the contemporary urban space. He notes that for a virahotkanthita, her experiences of grief and melancholy are always accompanied by a deep sense of love for her partner. So, even her sadness has a “bitter-sweet” tinge to it because it is filled with the flavour of union which is “very much alive in her memory.” And despite her grief, she finds herself overcome with those fleeting moments of happiness and rejoices in the love she has known.

It would be presumptuous then, to suppose that a traditional representation of a virahotkanthita is a tragic and maudlin litany of a nayika drowning in tears. Instead, much like her mind that oscillates between memory and reality, fantasy and reason, the nayika herself flits between moments of excessive joy and wretched melancholia.

In a Bharatnatyam recital for instance, Sarabhai notes that the composition would often begin with a conversation between the heroine and her sakhi – a close friend, in which the nayika would begin, “O sakhi, let me tell you about the time when I was with my lover…” and she would describe their shared moments of togetherness, shyly talk about how they made love and proudly speak of those gestures made by her lover that prove his affection towards her.

Sometimes, through abhinaya, a dancer would portray the nayika as having fallen into a trance while thinking of her beloved, a dreamlike state which is broken by something as ordinary as a fly sitting on her face sharply bringing her back to her reality, her loneliness.

“And then there may be in certain scenarios a give and take between the sakhi and our main heroine where the friend is either teasing her or is annoyed and says ‘Oh shut up, all you want to do is talk about your lover.’”

Yet, the most heartbreaking expression of a virahotkanthita’s sorrow – which continues to be a recurring appearance in art – is the nayika’s dialogue with inanimate objects like the clouds, stars and the moon. This conversation is the nayika’s belief in those faculties of the supernatural which alone understand the incompleteness of her soul in her lover’s absence. With all her might, she wills them to communicate to him the agony she is in as she endures this cruel separation.

Centuries ago, the Sanskrit scholar and poet Kalidas bound his Meghaduta in an identical viraha rasa, born out of the separation of a yaksha from his wife. In his story, it is the husband who implores a megha (cloud) to become his duta (messenger). Banished for a year, he asks his cloud messenger to travel to faraway Alakapuri, his home nestled in the Himalayas and convey his message filled with love and longing to his wife.

Time and technology have barely quelled this yearning of a virahotkanthita. Contrarily, in urban spaces, the over indulgence in communication channels has fed into dormant insecurities inducing moments of doubt: ‘Why did he forget to call me? What if he doesn’t find me attractive when he returns? What if he has found someone else?’

Just as historically lovers navigated the tortuous emotions that unravelled as a result of parting, so too couples in the contemporary technological age explore similar complexities disguised as ‘long-distance relationships.’ Travel has become cheaper and faster, the prospects of education and a better lifestyle pull grown-ups and millennials alike in varied directions, leaving behind a love that patiently awaits their return.

The exploration of this modern separation lies at the core of Sarabhai’s interpretative recital and much like Kalidasa’s yaksha, tells the story of a young man pining for his girlfriend who has crossed the oceans in pursuit of her career. Despite being a contemporary take on the virahotkanthita, the performance is rooted in the classical repertoire. Sarabhai opines that the strength of Bharatnatyam as a dance language lies in its versatility that enables it to completely evolve with the times without having to physically change the technique or nature of storytelling.

This dynamic vocabulary has allowed the artiste to reinvent the nayika and her predicaments in the modern context. Sarabhai remarks that women no longer sit around at home “waiting for their male lovers to return and put them out of their lonesome misery.” Many cherish their own ambitions and have stepped out into the world.

He taps into this phenomenon to capture the young man’s woes, who understands that his girlfriend has to travel for her career but prays that they reunite soon. His words are pulled into a graver focus in the virulent period of the coronavirus pandemic in which the separation of a few quick days has rapidly extended into a parting for weeks, months and even a year.

Moreover, romantic love to date is inextricably tied to physical touch so “the very basic nature of wanting to be together is still largely physical,” Sarabhai explains. So, no matter the number of video calls, emails and messages that travel thousands of miles to and from the lover, the desire for physical proximity, of holding each other or doing things together in the same space persists.

These ways and means are in fact, almost a tease, he remarks wryly. “While technology has been an enabler in terms of communication, what it doesn’t necessarily do in its entirety is actually bridge that feeling of closeness.”

“It creates an even further missing, an even further longing, it shows you this dangling carrot which you actually cannot reach out and grab.”

So, for his padam, he recreates the same moments that a virahotkanthita would historically long for except that instead of a riverbank or a forest, he recounts a picnic in a park and the joy of “opening a box of sandwiches and a bottle of wine,” while listening to music on shared earphones. When he breaks out of that reverie, he reaches for his phone and calls his girlfriend, only to get voicemail. In the padam, he laments,

Tolai pesi kooppitten tolai doorammentray

Kanimoola anaitthitten kanakkilla kathalal

(I call, I Skype, I send her countless emails)

Idayilla thodarpentr tholaipesi sonnathu

(And I get a disembodied voice saying she is at work; she cannot take my call)

So all the “technological enablers” instead end up adding to a frustration that did not exist a few centuries back in the absence of these means of “instantaneous gratification.”

What is left to him then is to pray to Lord Krishna to reunite them soon and hope for an indication that his lover, too, desires his presence.

Aval mathil kathalai anudivavum moondid

Make her love and long for me too, he says.

For a virahotkanthita, her predicament renders her almost helpless because there is no way she can alter or change her situation. But her voice lies in her memories, her unswaying love and most importantly, a determined acceptance of the parting in the hopes of a passionate reunion. It is this unspoken trust behind her tears and recollections that continues to act like a talisman that would tide her through the darkness.