Root Value

Narippatta Raju’s theatre stays as connected to its rural vision today as it had when he started out

- Vikram Phukan

Completing more than four decades in an unforgiving profession is an achievement. For sexagenarian Narippatta Raju, stalwart of Kerala theatre, it has been a journey that has placed great demands on his creative and personal resources, with equally gratifying pay-offs.

Known for his work in the countryside—quite literally the grassroots—Raju’s directorial output remains as prolific as ever. This year will see the release of a volume of writings on his career, as well as the inauguration of a theatre school for younger actors in his name. Both these endeavours will take place under the aegis of Natyasasthra, the theatre group in the hamlet of Katampazhipuram, which has been his stamping ground for some 20 years now.

Less than an hour’s ride away, Raju’s ancestral home is in the remote village of Karalmanna in Kerala’s Palakkad district. Despite its seclusion, it is an important landmark on the state’s cultural map, as a cradle for Kathakali that has produced several exponents of the form, including the well-regarded Narippatta Narayanan Namboodiri, who is Raju’s brother.

Raju’s was a culturally rooted family that was also typically middle class. “Although my parents would never negate my interest in the arts, they would have preferred it if I had chosen a conventional line of work, like engineering,” remembers Raju. His joining the University of Calicut’s School of Drama in Thrissur was an act of rebellion.

The institute opened in 1977 in the suburb of Aranattukara, and Raju was a student of acting in what was only its third batch. He had received some early training in Kathakali and Bharatanatyam, but what he considered “the limiting baggage of traditional forms” also allowed him to enter modern theatre much more fluidly. “The grounding opened up new possibilities even in the contemporary idiom,” says Raju.