GATOTKATJA AND KARNA: THE RIGHT STUFF

Indonesian shadow play performances take place after nightfall, because without dark the lamp will not cast images on the stretched fabric screen. But honoured guests sit on the same side as the puppet master, and are scarce aware of the silhouettes; they see the totemic figures move in full manipulation, brought to light and life by the voice that recites the tale and speaks for all the characters. For several hours, enormous deeds are done, fools make pratfalls, and gallant knights converse with supernatural beings. Armies assemble, landscapes are traversed, and courts intrigue.
Early there is great humour; children need to be entertained.
Later important matters are ellucidated for adults.
And long after that, some lessons.

[Many narratives are derived from the Mahabharata, which is the epic detailing several generations descended from Kuru (the Kaurava), and rivalry among two branches of that clan which caused a great war.
It is a multi-faceted and many layered tale, re-spun in numerous Indic and Indonesian languages. In Java it is brought to life with flat puppets cut from thick hide mounted on sticks, manipulated by a raconteur.]

By then, most of the audience may have drifted off, except for a few who have at last fallen asleep. Sometimes they wake, briefly, at key moments. An educated voice with clear diction dwells upon a passage. They recognize the scene, and comforted, sleep again.
At a different time it allcomes back.

Without the darkness, there can be no light.
If dreams are lacking, reality has no depth.

When I woke this morning I was still dreaming.


UPON A MUDDY FIELD

As darkness fell, the effect of Gatotkatja's ferocious assault on the Kurawa army grew more telling. With each airborne charge, swathes opened up in the ranks, none of the fighters on the ground could withstand the force that this club-wieding half-daemon unleashed upon them. Finally commanded by Duryodana, the honourable Karna employed the Indrasakti to slay Gatotkatja, Hidimbi and Bima's gallant son, and Krisna was happy. If such a weapon can be used only once, then Ardjuna was safe, and the war would be won by the Pandawa.

The sadness over the death of a beloved kinsman would be ameliorated by the victory of the side for which he fought. In his death throes the shining champion of Pringgandane took out a full brigade of the enemy army; thousands upon thousands of chariots and war elephants, and tens of thousands of footsoldiers and archers. Duryodana's misjudgement kept his entire army from being erased that night, but it was a success that would only last till dawn.

Tomorrow brought more destruction.

The key to Gatotkatja's personality is that he is god-descended on his father's side (Bima), and is half-ogre by maternal parentage (Hidimbi). Consequently that which is good in him has daemonic force, and that which is not good is tempered by his better instincts. Not a conflicted person, but a person of conflict, who is good to have on one's side.

Green-blue of face, with a big nose and a ferocious handlebar moustache. His profile is noble, strong-featured, not brutish.


Karna is, in many ways, his equal. Always loyal and protective of his friends, truthful, ethical, charitable of spirit, and in all ways admirable.
How did he end up on the side of the Kurawa?

During their youth, the Pandawa slighted him out of pride.
Duryodana offered him honest friendship.
No strings attached.

When he perished later on the field of Kuru, it was because his chariot wheel was stuck in the mud. He was, after all, of non-royal status..... and sabotaged by a Brahmin. Only after Ardjuna decapitated him was it revealed that he was actually Ardjuna's older halfbrother.

Indeed, when it's all over, Kunti still has five sons.
But in death his kinship has become known.
There is sadness at the loss.
One brother is gone.

There were five brothers. There were six.
But there are only five of them.


The great war is the strife of kinsmen, and because of their disparate natures conflict is inevitable. There is great goodness and chivalry on each side, as well as pettiness and a meanness of spirit.
What they cannot help doing will make their war inevitable.
And, in truth, one should not hold that against them.
They hold true to how they were made.


It is the gods that fail.

In the corpus of wayang literature there are trunk tales -- the lives and travails of the Pandawa siblings and their cousins on the Kurawa side, as relayed by epics seen through several layers of Insular translation and retelling -- and there are branch narratives, which delay the inevitable great battle between the two sides by showing us what the characters and their friends also did, or entertain us with great adventures that only connect to the tale by sharing the cast.

Most often, the entertaining branches are displayed. They are less weighty, but also less portentous. Wielding a trunk tale takes great control, and demands an important occasion. The people whose lives and deaths are detailed live again in the telling, in light and shadow, between dream and reality.

We do not want them to die. But that was centuries before our time, we can do nothing about it. A talented puppet master brings their shadows back, and they themselves are present in the periphery.


Were Gatotkatja and Karna friends? They were so much alike!

It seems almost inevitable that they must have been.

A good puppet master makes it so.




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KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

There are several Indonesian shadow-puppets in the television room. Late at night they sometimes speak. Heroic Ardjuna, his wise brother Yudistira, the dwarf Semar, and others.
Ardjuna, the paragon of chivalry, sometimes looks at me in a way that seems to suggest that I could do better.
His older brother maintains that things are as they are, deal with it.
And Semar takes it all in stride, averring that we're all insane.

Semar must be Canadian. That would explain his dry sense of humour.

The one three dimensional character is a wayang golek doll I brought back from Amsterdam. Painted wood, noble features, thoughtful yet controlled expression.
Though the tale cycle he represents is far younger than the Mahabharatic world of the five Pandawa brothers, he is the oldest of the dolls. Even Semar, battered and world-weary, was born from the artisan's labours more recently. The flat dolls probably date no later than the fifties, but the refined minister of an Islamic kingdom originated many years before the war. There is a gentleness to his carved face that suggests that he has seen much, lamented the collapse of society in the great upheavals of the twentieth century, and survived tumult and discord.
Java in the twenties and thirties, the Japanese invasion, the long ocean voyage to the Netherlands when the Dutch left the Indies forever......
And, more recently, emigration to the United States.
Of all of them, he is the least displaced.
Wherever he is, he belongs.

The two krisses on the high shelf have been much calmer since he arrived over a decade ago.
Peaceful. No longer tumultuous.

Despite the dreamed conversations that take place, it is often quiet.
When the shadow puppets speak, they do so seemingly by silence.
And krisses, of course, have no words. Only emotions.
One could not expect otherwise from wavy steel.

All of these entities assuredly like the snow-pear incense I burn.
Partly to chase away the occasional mosquito.
Partly to hide my smoking at night.
They do not mind the reason.
The world is aromatic.



Sandjaya spoke to king Dritarastra, saying: "long ago, when we all lived in Ngastinapura, before those five and Draupadi departed......"

The story is lengthy, and involves whole histories that must be detailed, so that the final battle on the field of Kuru, though forever in the background, need not be mentioned.
Not yet.

There were five brothers, who went and lived in the forest.
In each era they live again.  They still live.


At some point, probably this year, I will carve Gatotkatja with the pale green-blue visage and ferocious facial hair, the gallant son of Bima and Hidimbi. To my mind he is the most complex of the characters in the Indonesian telling of the tale. For reasons which the Sanskritist will understand, he has to be more three dimensional than other puppets.
Most especially his head.

It's all in the head.



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WAYANG PURWA - WHAT THE CHARIOTEER KNEW

Late at night, north coast of Java. The air is still warm, but much cooler than it was during the day. The velvet darkness of night fades towards the far end of the courtyard, where the light of a lamp behind a taut white sheet glows friendly, attracting the eyes.
There are shadows.

The people in the courtyard are dressed neatly, some rather formally. A few are wearing dark green and brown patterned batik, but most of the women are somewhat more brightly clothed. The darker and plainer hues are old-fashioned, traditionally upper-class.
The children among the crowd are casually garbed, and seem perhaps more alive (or lively) because of it. A voice from beyond the screen gives a high pitched chant to a background of metallic instruments and subdued interlocking rhythms.

Imperceptibly the tempo speeds up, then with a sudden clangor the two people whom everyone has been waiting for make their appearance.
Those being a grossly fat short fellow with a pug nose and a humongous rump, and his gangly flabby son with a long proboscis.



KYAI LURO SEMAR, KYAI PETRUK


The dhalang introduces them.

“Here is Semar, the lowly servant, also known as Kyai Luro - the venerable elder. And indeed he is venerable, for he is the master of deep knowledge, and represents all things to all people, yet he is also entirely the opposite of those things. Does he seem old? Then he is young and full of life! Fat and misshapen? No, he is elegant, the most loveable of men! Coarse and rather dull? Far from it, he is the oldest of divine beings, older even than the heroes, the very first creation that sprung from the dream of the deity! Consigned to earth to serve his distant kin in disguise, he comes with his son Petruk, possessor of the impressively twitching nose."

To many Javanese, Semar and Petruk are much more important than any of the actual heroes of the play, for they speak the common language, and comment with sharpness and humour about events, throwing everything into focus. The obese dwarf Semar is in fact the preserver of their Island, whose presence predates Hinduism, far predates Islam. And though he and his family serve royal masters, who are the knights and gallants of the tales, Semar and his sons are the true owners of the narrative - without them there would be little excitement, scant humour, no clarity.
They are ugly and unrefined, but their misshapen forms hide their true natures.

Semar, Petruk, sad-hearted Nalagareng of the twisted leg, and, in Tjirebon, the third of Semar's sons, Sekar Pandan - whose neck is obscenely long because he got caught in a tree during his precipitous descent from Suryalaya - are the companions of royalty, true to themselves, forthright, and wise without pretense.


THE CATTLE PEN OF KURU

Wayang kulit (shadow theatre) for the most part retells the chapters of the Mahabharata, that being the conflict between the five Pandawa brothers (Yudistira, Bima, Ardjuna, Nakula, Sahadewa) representing the side of good, and their cousins the hundred Kurawa, who are NOT on the side of good. There is still a measure of virtue and righteousness on the other side, and there are flaws among the Pandawa and their host - nothing is black and white, and the tale is more complex than the mere premise. The only thing simple about it is that through trickery the Pandawa were cheated out of their inheritance, and spent several years wandering in exile.

Although Ardjuna and Yudistira are the ideal men in the stories, comparable to the knights of European tales, there are two other characters who are often much more admirable, because they are less than perfect - Bima the giant, second of the Pandawa brothers, and his half-demonic son Gatot-Katja, begotten of Hidimbi the ogress.


BIMA, GATOTKATJA

This being late at night, Gatotkatja is now at his most powerful. Unlike his father, he is somewhat less encumbered by rigid righteousness, but he is much more humble and likely to sympathize with others.
At the culmination of the epic, in combat on the field of Kuru, he is the fighter most feared by the Kurawa, and it is his death which Duryodana their king most fervently desires. Gatotkatja's distant kinsman Karna slays him at Duryodana's command by wielding the divine weapon which can only be used once - and thus loses the war for his own side, as there is now nothing that the Kurawa have to counter Prince Ardjuna.

Bima



Gatotkatja



Note: Both Bima and his son have an elongated claw-like middle finger, symbolic of momentous deeds.

The great war took place centuries ago, and all who were there have died, and been reborn, and died again. The warriors who perished on the battlefield, the survivors and their companions, the five Pandawa who after their victory finally travelled to the north seeking answers, King Yudistira and the faithful dog he would not enter Indralaya without. They are all gone.
Yet at times the heroes of that age live once more and their spirits come among their descendants. The shadow-play invites them back, and shows the audience how one is supposed to face life and conduct oneself; the story-teller wielding the puppets channels their vibrant intelligences and guides the forces unleashed by the performance.
This is séance, and totemic enactment. By reawakening the ancient champions, the present is changed and controlled.
Gallant Gatotkatja never really died - all you have to do is think of him, and there he is.


Later the audience will drift off, leaving only a few people still in the courtyard, drowsing while the dhalang chants the confrontation that is the focus of this particular tale. The side of good will win, significantly while most people are asleep and unaware. Only the players of the bronze instruments will hear the details and the significance of events.

At last, in the hour before dawn, the knights and their entourage triumphantly march back to Indraprasta. The music quickens: the master of the tale, voicing Semar, sings exultantly, and the slumbering few before the screen awaken and stretch.
The performance lasted all night; it ends when the dhalang chants the closing invocations, putting the spirits to rest and returning the sacred enclosure created by the play back to the world of men.

The incense that burned all night flares briefly at the final tip of the coil, then even that spark fades to white.

Wayang is entertainment, philosophy, exorcism, and a reforming of the world.
Plus wit, eloquence, and the representation of ideals.



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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly
:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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