Vithabai’s daughters keep tamasha alive New

Anosh Malekar

The name Vithabai Bhau Mang Narayangaonkar works magic in Maharashtra even today. A gifted tamasha artiste, she entranced Marathi audiences for several decades with her rustic voice, robust repartee and earthy charm.  Vithabai died on January 15, 2002. I had met her in Narayangaon, near Pune, a few years before the end came. She was 70 and battling a heart ailment, but still cheerful.

The walls of Vithabai’s two-room dwelling were a memorial to the past, with photographs of her performing on stage during her youth and accepting national and state honours from important public figures.

The Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee had announced a donation of Rs 25,000 to help meet her medical expenses, and there were others who had put in their generous bit. That the cheque from the Congress state unit bounced is a different story. Like all tamasha artistes, Vithabai knew by instinct that the generosity of the high and mighty does not last long. Still she preferred to be grateful for life’s small mercies.

It was I who felt guilty seeing her in such a poor state, almost bedridden. Vithabai herself was matter of fact, and had carefully preserved the cheque: “Just in case an MPCC member happens to visit again, I will show him the returned cheque,” she quipped.

The choicest abuses were reserved for the man she had called her husband since her early teens. He would drink, beat her up and take all the money she earned through her performances, which were held even when she was pregnant.

On one occasion, her husband had booked her to perform when she was nine months pregnant. Vithabai talked about this particular performance to all and sundry, and when she told it to me I wondered whether as a Maharashtrian I should be more ashamed than proud of our patronage of the tamasha because of what this incident revealed. 

The nine-month pregnant Vithabai took the stage as usual. She was performing together with her two teenage daughters so when she felt the labour pains coming, she conveyed to them that they should prolong their part of the performance, and quickly went to the makeshift green room where she delivered a baby boy. The delivery was quick, she said, and so she just wrapped the newborn in an old sari after cutting the umbilical cord with a sharp stone, had a bath with cold water, wrapped her traditional nine yard saree tightly around her waist and within an hour was back on stage to entertain the audience, whose lusty whistles compelled her to continue the performance.

“Believe me, it was the artiste in me that has kept me alive till today. Who knows how I survived this life with all its ups and downs,” she said. Despite the accolades accorded to tamasha, Vithabai was certain that “one life as a tamasha artiste is enough. No singing and dancing in the next birth for me”.

For the woman hailed as the ‘Queen of Tamasha’ for six decades, honoured with the President’s gold medal, the Sangeet Natak Academy award and the Maharashtra Gaurav title for contribution to her chosen art form, it was not much of a life.  

A third generation tamasha artiste, Vithabai was born in the temple town of Pandharpur as the youngest of 13 children. Hence the name Vitha after Maharashtra’s popular deity Vithoba. She made her debut at the age of 11, having spent the earlier five years or so seeking alms in the name of her nomadic, tamasha performing family.

She rose to fame through popular songs and stage shows across the state. Her troupe was the first group of artistes to visit NEFA during the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict to entertain jawans of the Maratha Light Infantry. She brought elegance to the tamasha form and used it as a tool for public education and social reform. She also had a small stint with Marathi films.

But success and happiness eluded the dancer and singer in her personal life. Her marriage to Maruti Sawant was a failure, and she spent her last years in Narayangaon in acute poverty.

These episodes and anecdotes from Vithabai’s life are well known; she has narrated them often to the journalists and academics who came to meet her and are part of the popular folklore surrounding the legend that is Vithabai Bhau Mang Narayangaonkar. But her life also portrays the sad story of tamasha down the ages. I never saw Vithabai perform traditional Lavani and only know her popular renditions like Mumbaichi Kelewali. But I was a great fan of the traditional Vagnatya, especially Viccha Mazhi Puri Kara and Gadhvach Langna.
In the early 20th century tamasha was closely linked to people’s movements in Maharashtra. Annabhau Sathe and Amar Sheikh came together to form the Lal Bawta Kalapathak, which used the traditional lavanis, vagnatya and povadas for social causes between 1920 and 1966. During the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, Annabhau’s tamasha Majhi Mumbai became so popular that Morarjee Desai, then Bombay’s Chief Minister, banned the play. Annabhau also wrote Stalingrad cha Powada, Berlincha Powada, Bangalchi Haak and Telanganacha Sangram besides Maharashtrachi Parampara.

It is ironic that tamasha artistes who lent their voice to highlight the problems of society, have themselves remained voiceless.

The literary world woke up to this fact after Kishor Shantabai Kale’s autobiography Kolhatyache Por was published in the 1990s. It was translated into English and appeared under the title ‘Against all Odds’ and was also translated into several other Indian languages.

Kishore wrote about his life as the son of a tamasha artiste of the Kolhati tribe in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, fathered by a local politician. It detailed his determined struggle to educate himself and become a doctor, the first in his community.

The book was much more than a narration of personal facts. Through his own story, Kishor outlined the fall of the tamasha from grace. His mother and aunts were reduced to being powerful men’s keeps and prostitutes, pimped by their fathers, brothers and husbands. The most touching paragraphs were those that described how as a small child, Kishor watched his mother walk out on him looking for a patron.

It was the first factual account of the life of the Kolhati women written by one of their own. And Kishor did not stop here. After becoming a doctor, he dedicated himself to educating the women of his community and helping them to give up prostitution and live a life of dignity. As a practising doctor, he worked to improve their health condition.

Unfortunately, a road accident claimed Kishor at the age of 37, exactly a year ago. I had returned to Maharashtra after having spent seven years working in Gujarat and was looking forward to meeting him. Instead I had the misfortune of writing his obituary for the newspaper I worked for Kishor died an orphan. He was disowned by his mother after his tell-all autobiography was published and separated from his wife. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of tamasha: it traps those who struggle to reform it and keep it alive.

Tamasha is among the oldest folk arts of Maharashtra. It incorporates theatre, song and dance, even political satire and social commentary. The art form came to prominence during the Mughal era and has undergone several changes since then, moving from the royal courts to humble tents. Today it is performed in small stationary theatres and even under trees in remote villages and urban auditoriums across Maharashtra.

Having withstood the invasion of cinema, lavani and tamasha are now pitted against digital entertainment. The singers and dancers now sing mostly bollywood songs to make a pittance. But that is what the audience demands, say the artistes.

Today there are 50 troupes, based mostly in Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli, Pune and Ahmednagar, and a few in Marathwada and Vidarbha.  The owners of the troupes or phads are mostly men and some women from the lower castes, who manage the show with loans from private moneylenders. The troupe owners in turn provide smaller loans to the dancers and musicians for their survival. Thus the entire business of tamasha is open to exploitation. The women and their children are the worst sufferers.

It is women artistes of the Kolhati caste, besides other Dalit groups like the Dombari, Mahar and Matang, who have been the mainstay of tamasha. A majority of them are unmarried and associated with a malak (owner or patron) who is often an upper caste man and a politician to boot.

The practice of a Malak is very old and ties the woman artiste to a man, without tying the knot, in the hope that he will bear all her expenses till the relationship lasts. But there is a strict condition – she will not reveal his name till death. The men abandon the women as they grow old or health problems render them unfit for tamasha performances.

Kishor Shantabai Kale carried his mother’s name as his middle name. It was a stigma he carried all his life, posing untold problems in his quest to educate himself. He was often ridiculed for being a tamasha dancer’s son, but took all this in his stride knowing the politician from Ahmednagar who fathered him.

Alka Jadhav of the Jai Ambe Kala Kendra in remote Jamkhed tehsil of Ahmednagar, the district from where Kishor hailed, said: “The men whose children we beget want their identity to be kept secret. They have their own families and want to protect their standing in society at any cost.” 

Rajashree Nagarkar Kale, who runs a tamasha training centre in Ahmednagar, said this often poses serious problems in admitting the children of tamasha artistes to schools, where authorities insist on the father’s name. The government now allows them to use the mother’s name but it becomes a source of daily humiliation and the children ultimately drop out.

“If we were to reveal the names of the fathers, many reputations will be destroyed. Believe me the names are some of the most respected and prominent in Maharashtra,” she said fuming, because the question continues to be thrown at women performing tamasha making them feel cheap.

Rajashree, who trains aspiring artistes in the rendering of Lavani, feels the women artistes continue to live in this vicious cycle due to poverty and illiteracy. Hence, the solution lies in children’s education and women’s health.

“It is perhaps too late to educate the women, but their children certainly can benefit from schooling. For the women, the health aspect remains the most neglected part of their lives because if you do not perform on demand, you have no food to eat. It is a hand-to-mouth existence”.

Performing tamasha is a physically demanding exercise. Unhealthy food habits and poor access to health care facilities lead to several chronic illnesses including anaemia, knee and back problems. There are some women suffering from tuberculosis and malaria as well as sexually transmitted diseases, while some have even contracted AIDS.

Artistes like Rajashree, who has had the opportunity to travel to foreign countries with her troupe, though remain hopeful amidst such a dismal scenario. “There is a ray of hope on the horizon now with global NGO, Pathfinder International, having stepped in,” she said.

Pathfinder International’s Mukta Tamasha Initiative, launched a year ago, covers some 2,000 women tamasha artists from 37 theatres across seven districts of Maharashtra.  “We are working to restore the health of these artistes. We are teaching them the benefits of hygiene, food, nutrition and above all safe sex practices,” said project director Michele Andina.

One thousand women tamasha performers have a new role to play apart from their daily performances. They have been trained as health volunteers, who, between shows, create awareness among their peers about proper eating habits, the importance of sanitation and hygiene, and even understanding the female anatomy and the reproductive system. The health training modules are participatory and include information on tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and STDs.

As Michele said during a recent gathering of tamasha artistes, “We want you to be healthy to practice this great traditional art form”.

Global interventions apart, the women tamasha artistes continue to be ignored in their land of birth. At the Ahmednagar gathering, where over 500 tamasha artistes from Ahmednagar, Nashik and Kolhapur district had gathered to discuss their problems and work out solutions, the local authorities were conspicuous by their absence. Only a handful government officials were present to inform about various schemes for the benefit of tamasha artistes.

Such gatherings, held in Pune and Ahmednagar so far, are seen as a ‘first step’ towards building a broader constituency of “tamasha supporters” among artistes, politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academicians, in Maharashtra.

“Why aren’t they here? If the politicians and bureaucrats really care about supporting indigenous music and dance traditions, they should have been here,” said bollywood actor Sadashiv Amrapurkar, who was the chief guest and minced no words in condemning societal apathy towards the plight of the tamasha artistes.

Referring to Vithabai’s trials and tribulations during her lifetime, the actor, known for his social conscience, said: “Keeping this art form alive cannot be the sole responsibility of tamasha artistes. To hell with tamasha, human dignity of the artists should be our first concern”.

Amrapurkar is not alone. Nilu Phule, a veteran actor of Marathi films and theatre, has on several occasions rued the fact that ‘tamasha, performed by the poor for entertaining the poor, has remained poor’. “Tamasha has not been given its due as an art form in Maharashtra. I often wonder how the artistes continue to stick to the art form despite their poverty and miseries. I can only salute their spirit,” he said.

Of course the old social order is showing signs of breaking down in a new globalised era with college girls drawn to performing tamasha and lavani in modern forms, and even non resident Maharashtrians forming a tamasha troupe in the United States. But these are isolated cases in New York, Dubai, or nearby Pune and Mumbai.

Travel back to rural Maharashtra, and the cheap make-up and fake jewelry worn by the dancers reveals a different story. In the far interiors, there is no makeup. Performers manage to earn as little as Rs 3,000 a month if they are lucky enough to be invited to perform seven days a week.

As Sushila Salvi, a performer in Sangamner, put it across to my photographer friend, Sandesh Bhandare, who has spent four years documenting the life of tamasha artists: “Accolades and applauses offered to us artists can never erase the fact we are not treated as fellow human beings. When we ask for water to drink, it is passed to us from a height”.

Antamber Shirdhonkar, a senior artiste from Kavathe Mahankal in Sangli district, said: “The plight of the tamasha artistes has become such that their last rites can be performed only with the alms collected from the villagers”.

The fact remains that the glitter of Maharashtra’s tamasha is restricted to the state’s tourism brochures. It pales when the tamasha artistes continue to be treated like untouchables in real life.

Still, Vithabai’s daughters continue to keep tamasha alive!