Chennai: This show of Pa Ranjith will not run 100 days, yet could capture a million hearts. The huge gathering at the St.Ebbas girls school on RK Salai in Mylapore on Saturday for the inaugural of the three-day 'Vaanam' festival of song, dance, drama and art, bears testimony to the big impact that this very unique initiative by the jubilee filmmaker is most likely to have.
The crowds during the weekend, particularly for the 'Parai&Oppari' performance and the 'album launch&performance' by The Casteless Collective-which Ranjith admits are his big favourites, along with the 'Parai performance' by countless robust players on the opening day-and the flood of followers on the Social Media are sure to add up to a handsome number of fans for this entirely different genre of entertainment from the Rajini-Kala maker.
“This three-day festival was planned, sketched, rehearsed and fine-tuned over a long period of time”, said Ranjith of his dream project aimed at creating a discussion and debate in the society regarding the host of critical issues weighing upon the people, particularly the voiceless. “Everyone here has a definite job to do and when the festival is over in three days, we must ensure that the collective work of all of us here will trigger this much-needed debate out there in the society”.
Apart from the huge variety of high-adrenaline song-dance performances, the Silambam demonstration, the Therukural street-drama and the Roots performance, there's also the literature workshop, the story-telling workshop, bommalattam (puppet show), the Madurai Veeran koothu and the excellent play Munnavar in which celebrated dramatist Pralayan drives home the bitter truth that it's impossible to obliterate class divisions without getting rid of caste differences and discrimination. “We cannot carry on the class war while remaining so badly divided over castes. Pralayan's play has brought this out very well. There are other events and performances focusing on issues that we face every day out there in the society”, said Ranjith underscoring the relevance of 'Vaanam' to the Tamil society at large and the Dalits in particular.
Explaining the reason behind naming the festival as 'Vaanam', Ranjith said everyone is equal under Vaanam, the sky. “And when we go back after this three-day festival, we must preserve that strong feeling of equality, that element of pride, so as to carry forward the discussion on this important philosophy of universal equality”, he told the large audience of men and women of all ages and socio-cultural backgrounds.
Making a spirited speech at the 'Vaanam' festival, well-known social campaigner Jignesh Mewani from Gujarat, said the youth now are agitating against the fascist administration and were promptly being branded as 'anti-national' by the rulers. “But what is anti-national?” asked Mewani and then went on to quote Dr Ambedkar who had stated, “Caste is anti-national”. With so many castes dividing its people, India remained only an “emerging nation” and for uniting the nation as one, it was necessary to carry forward the war against caste. Art forms, particularly cinema of the Pa Ranjith genre, are important medium for this social engineering, he said.
