K.S. Karuna Prasaad received his training as an actor at Koothu-p-pattarai, Chennai. Aravaan is a contemporary one-man play based on an episode from the Mahabharata as it is known and performed in the local Tamil tradition. The play was produced by Moondraam Arangu, a Chennai-based contemporary theatre group.
Aravaan is the illicit son of Arjuna and a tribal girl, Chitrankadhai. Aravaan's existence is not acknowledged by the Pandavas. On the eve of the Great War Krishna advises the Pandavas that only a human sacrifice will assure them success on the battlefield. The sacrificial victim should be of noble descent and possess all virtues. Nobody knows a proper candidate, until Krishna remembers Arjuna's son. Arjuna goes back to the forest to bring Aravaan 'home'. Krishna then convinces Aravaan of the importance of the sacrifice. Eager to please his new found father Aravaan enthusiastically volunteers. His family asks him what favour he would like in return and Aravaan says he would like to be married. Not being able to find a bride for a bridegroom who is about to be killed, Krishna turns himself into a woman and becomes Aravaan's wife for a night. At dawn, the next day Aravaan is sacrificed.
1 hour
On his last night alive Aravaan reminisces. Though Arjuna's son, he has been inconsequential in the scheme of things until the Pandavas required a propitious person to offer as a human sacrifice prior to the war. To that very purpose he is being ennobled now to enable them to quench the thirsty earth with his blood.
Aravaan reflects on how the blind King Dhrtarashtra has found an easy way out by escaping into introspection instead of looking at the injustices around him. Aravaan wants to test this escapist device and blindfolds himself. Blind to the world, he is able to face himself more clearly. His needs appeal to him with urgency. He decides to satisfy all his sensorial and carnal cravings to the fullest before he dies. Once intoxicated, he becomes aware of the presence of a sensuous woman. He claims her ravenously. Suddenly, he feels confused. Is this a man or a woman? Phantom or real? The smell of milk and butter........... Krishna? The sun rises and he faces death, the end of existence forced on him at a young age. He is led away and sacrificed.
The beheaded Aravaan returns. His severed head looks at the audience. It watches the spectacle of the army advancing joyously, off to behead other youth like him. It hears lamentations. Not of his mother' who weeps silently, but of another one who wails loudly. Who is it? Krishna? The one who turned into a bewitching woman to receive the brunt of his lust? For what? To give him the kiss of death? He was not born to be sacrificed... He wants to live again, somewhere, even as a blade of grass on a hill. Will someone not put his head and body together? How long would they sacrifice hapless people like him, in order to exploit their lands and forests? How long can our corpses appease their hunger for land?
Written by - S. Ramakrishnan
Moondraam Arangu
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