Aadum Koothu

"Annai! Annai! Aadum Koothai

Naada cheidhaai ennai!"

These were the lines by Mahakavi Bharathi in his poem titled 'Oozhi koothu' (the
doomsday dance).

Yesterday, I saw a Tamil movie 'Aadum Koothu' directed by the notable Malayalam film
director, script writer and actor, T.V. Chandran. The film had won Silver Lotus Award
(Indian National Film Award) for best Tamil feature film in 2006. Cheran and Navya
Nair had played the lead roles.

The film describes how a simple, flowing life of a village girl gets disturbed by sudden
hallucinations leading to her finding the truth behind a social discrimination to a low
caste girl decades ago. She unearths even an unfinished film attempting to portray the
injustice, completes it and settles after feeling peace in the fact that she had brought to
light what had been pending for so many years.

Except for Navya's absolute performance and few flashy scenes for Cheran, the movie is
not of a very special theme.
But what had struck me was the theme and title, 'Aadum Koothu'. These two words
resonated through my mind and through the movie, I kept pronouncing them almost
mesmerized. The Tamil phrase literally means, 'the dances we perform'. But when I
translate ‘Aadum Koothu’, my heart sinks to find that it does not convey even a
reasonable measure of how profound it sounds in Tamil!

Koothu – this Tamil word equates to dance, a play, performance, stage act, music and
most subtly or most explicitly, a playful, captivating musical performance. Bharathi in his
Oozhi Koothu, (remember he is a Saaktha, meaning a Kaali worshipper), praises the deity
Kaali, Her playful dance and describes at great detail how She performs the koothu. In
Hindu scriptures, especially Saivism, the world is said to have been created and
annihilated both by the dance or ‘Koothu’ by the Supreme being, Shiva.

Bharathi punctuates his poem, of 5 verses of 6 lines each, by ending every verse with
these two lines:

“Annai! Annai! Aadum koothai

Naada Cheidhaai Ennai”
- meaning, ‘Oh, Mother! You made me desire this playful performance!’

When read with the remaining first four lines, these two lines make remarkable intones of
how Bharathi would have felt then - as a great genius and poet ever struggling in penury
but torn between his own worldly incompetences and his fight against colonial rule.

In the second verse of the poem he refers to the Koothidum Kaali (dancing Kaali),

“There,
Countless demons prance and unite to be one – they
All blend and submerge into Thy nature as one!
Where Thee dance endless at the speed of light
Captivating minds, showering fire as Thy dance!
Oh, Mother! You made me desire
This playful performance!”

And in the fifth and final verse, Kaali’s Koothu annihilates the universe, everything
destroyed (Oozhi), nothing more survives – only Shiva’s presence remains. His silent
penance brings Kaali to Her being.

“Time and Universe cease to exist – Only

Light from His penance persists – You
Leave Your fury in His presence – And
Touch Him gleefully and dance, a playful one!
Oh, Mother! You made me desire
This playful performance!”

The profundity of the last two lines increases folds when you read them in conjunction
with the other four lines of these verses.

Bharathi desires Kaali’s all-destroying dance to be natural desire for him in his worldly
life, as he positions himself through his many manifestations, as a fighter against evil,
slavery and denigration.

The same poet, as romanticized as he is, who had sought wealth, health, fame and
knowledge as his prayers, accepts Kaali’s loving stance in the end – Oozhi Koothu
culminating in a romantic, gleeful dance, also to be his desire!
Both these stances, he is humble in accepting, has to be given unto him by Kaali, as he
says, 'Naada Cheidhaai', meaning - 'Thee made me desire so'!

I feel my inadequacy at grasping what Bharathi would have meant by desiring “Aadum
Koothu” at different contexts of his poem…

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