Shatakshi Gawade

Vinaya Kurtkoti

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

large_01-The_itinerant_tamasha-travelling_a_different_road.jpg

medium_01-The_itinerant_tamasha-travelling_a_different_road.jpg

small_01-The_itinerant_tamasha-travelling_a_different_road.jpg

thumbnail_01-The_itinerant_tamasha-travelling_a_different_road.jpg

01-The_itinerant_tamasha-travelling_a_different_road.jpg

“The
taste of the public has changed, we haven’t,” sighs Mangala Bansode. The
audience now demands popular Hindi songs, she says. “There may come a time when
we have to use a [Bollywood] hit song even for Shivaji
Maharaj’s entry!” she laughs. 

Not
only has Mangalatai observed the changing preferences of viewers, over more
than half-a-century she has also seen the tamasha itself transform from
small ensembles travelling on bullock carts with around 10 men and women, into the elaborate
productions that her troupe now handles.

Mangala Bansode,
66, has been in the business since she was seven. She is the oldest daughter of
tamasha legend Vithabai Narayangaonkar,
who was based in Narayangaon in Pune district, considered the hallowed ground
of tamasha. Since 1983, Mangalatai, who now
lives in
Karavadi village in
Satara district,
has run her own phad (troupe) of about
170 people. The ‘Mangala Bansode and Nitin Kumar Tamasha Mandal’ (Nitin Kumar is
her younger son, singer-actor-dancer and the star of the troupe) performs in
the villages of Maharashtra from September to May every year. (See ‘<a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/tamasha-is-like-a-jail-that-i-want-to-stay-in">Tamasha is like a jail that I want to stay in</a>’.)

The troupe performs on a stage set up by the labourers in Mangalatai’s crew in every village they visit. Such shows are usually held under a tent when they are ticketed, and in the open when a show is commissioned by village jatra (fair) committees. Between 1,000 to 2,000 people come to watch, and for the non-ticketed commissioned or &#39;supari&#39; shows, the audience numbers can go up to 10,000-15,000. From a Re. 1 entry ticket in 1970, the price is now Rs.
60, but,
troupe owners say, profit margins are falling. Salaries have gone up manifold,
and production costs have increased exponentially, with trucks, buses, arc
lights and other equipment added on to the travelling troupe.






















Meanwhile, the
number of viewers, Mangalatai says, has decreased. One reason is the changes in
technology. Many now watch films on television or mobile phones. In
Narayangaon, the performances during the jatra in April every year are broadcast on a local television channel.
“Who then wants to leave their homes and come out to watch a tamasha
for three hours?” asks
Mangalatai.

The performance
space for tamasha has also shrunk to mostly rural areas. In the past, en route to various villages, the Bansode
troupe would also stop by for shows in all the major towns of Maharashtra,
including Dhule, Jalgaon, Nashik, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Solapur, Parbhani,
Nanded, Osmanabad and Beed. They even had shows in Pune city. All these are now
few and far between, or entirely absent. “Earlier we had shows in the zilla [district
headquarter] towns; now we
just run around different talukas,” says Anil
Bansode, Mangalatai’s older son and the phad’s manager. 

In its
glory days, till around the 1990s, tamasha was also performed in Mumbai; troupes would travel
to the outskirts of the city and arrange several shows during
the September to May season.
Raghuvir Khedkar, a renowned tamasha artist and troupe
owner, says his group’s last programme
in Mumbai was around two decades ago. The shutdown of the textile mills, he
says, was a contributing factor, when the Marathi-speaking audience – the
former mill workers – thinned or moved out of the city.
Khedkar, 56, from  Chinchghar village of Khed taluka in Ratnagiri district, began working on the stage in 1970,
when he was nine. His troupe, ‘Raghuvir
Khedkar sah Kantabai Satarkar Loknatya Tamasha Mandal’ was started by his
mother Kantabai in 1969.

Government
regulations have also curbed the tamasha, troupe owners say.  “Our shows used to [start at  around 11 p.m. and] go on till 6 a.m., and
people would watch attentively throughout,” says Anil Bansode. The noise-related
rules (starting with the Noise
Pollution Regulation and Control Rules, 2000), he says, have confined the tamasha to rural areas. The rules now disallow the troupes
from performing after 10 p.m. even on the outskirts of cities. This has altered
the structure of the tamasha, since troupe
owners reduce the number of items to shorten the duration of the show. 

&quot;There is little space for the performances anymore,”
Khedkar says. “But also the noise the tamasha now
creates with the big sound systems is disgusting. It’s not wholesome anymore.
There is too much yelling, huge speakers. This has been going on for the past
20 years. Before this, there were a few trumpets for an audience of 3,000. The
public wasn’t rowdy and noisy like it is now, they used to sit quietly.&quot;

But perhaps the biggest change in the tamasha is in its very content and performance. The typical components of a traditional tamasha are gan (an opening prayer to Lord Ganesha), gavlan (a dance based on the interaction between Krishna and the Gopis) bataavni (a comedy sequence), rangbaazi (a dance medley) and vag natya (folk drama, usually on social issues or depicting mythological tales). Though these components and sequence still usually remain, as do several rituals of the traditional performance and music (for example, tradtional instruments like the taal, tuntuna, dholki, and halgi still accompany the gan), the execution has altered over time. The tamasha  has turned into a ‘variety entertainment’ type package, a dance-drama extravaganza. Sandesh Bhandare, a Pune-based photojournalist who has
written a book about the tamasha
community, says the troupes have been eliminating the vag natya skits about social
issues such as say alcoholism or dowry demands, while retaining, by public
demand, rangbaazi based
on Hindi and Marathi songs. Bhandare photographed the tamasha in various districts of Konkan, Marathwada,
and Vidarbha around 10 years ago, and went back this year to observe the
changes.

“Now when we perform in rural areas, we have to include cinema songs. We have to drop the vag natya then,” Khedkar too says. “The audience who enjoyed the vag has stopped coming for our shows. We have lost approximately 25-50 per cent of the audience.” He reminisces of a time when the public truly appreciated and respected tamasha as an art form. “When I started my phad, the quality of our art was superior, and we had the scope to display a range of talents,” Khedkar says. “Some parts of the tamasha used to be extempore, some parts used to be prepared beforehand. We could improvise on the go. That was fun.” Khedkar used to include classical music and dance in the tamasha, and the thumri, ghazal and qawwali. These too are not performed anymore.  To counter the technology that’s been keeping away audiences, Khedkar ‘modernised’ his production. “We used to perform plays from fictional accounts, or stories [with themes related to] religion or royalty. Then we switched to ‘real’ stories, like the ones in newspapers,” he explains – dramatic accounts of dacoits and Robin-hood-like figures or about gender issues like dowry and violence against women.

Khedkar’s troupe also brought in electronic instruments (such as a drum set, rhythm machine and digital organ), lighting, fancy costumes, and different ways of doing make-up. He realised that the youth had gone away from tamasha, which still had women in traditional nav-vari (nine-yard) saris. “We started performing songs that young boys would like,” he says. (The audience is mostly male; some women do sometimes attend in small numbers, usually sitting at the back). “Tamasha is a form of entertainment that changes with the times. Just as cinema changes, so does tamasha,” Khedkar adds. Other troupes started copying the changes he was making, but these eventually proved to be destructive. Although Khedkar thinks the changes were inevitable, he says, “Where the audience used to appreciate fully clothed women, the women are now dressed in skimpy titillating clothes. This must stop. Now the public is not in my control, my time has passed. The new generation that has come has to rectify this. The tamasha is in danger.” And so, when Mangalatai takes the stage even now, bringing to it her immersion and belief in the art, and when the arc lights, her shimmering costume, make-up and expressive enactment cover the fact that her ageing knees keep her from cavorting around the stage. It is then easy to forget that she is 66, and may be one of the last legends of the tamasha.

Tamasha: transformed but still travelling

തമാശ: പരിണമിച്ചെങ്കിലും യാത്ര തുടരുന്നു

தமாஷா: மாற்றங்களுக்குப் பிறகும் பயணித்துக் கொண்டிருக்கிறது

ଅସ୍ଥିତ୍ୱ ପାଇଁ ସଂଘର୍ଷ : ପରିବର୍ତ୍ତିତ ଦୃଶ୍ୟପଟ୍ଟରେ ତମାସା

तमाशाः बदलाव के असर के बीच जारी है सफ़र

তামাশা: সময়ের সঙ্গে তাল মিলিয়ে চলা এক শিল্প

तमाशाः नव्या ढंगात पण अजूनही रंगात

تماشہ کا سفر تبدیلی کے ساتھ جاری ہے

Karavadi

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


Let’s get you acquainted

Welcome to PARI

All our content is, and will forever be free to consume. If you enjoy our work, you can support us by becoming a volunteer or by donating to help fund our work.

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

Tamasha: transformed but still travelling

Changes in technology, in audience tastes, shrinking performance spaces – have all impacted the tamasha. Troupe owners have mixed feelings – is the tamasha in danger or will Mangala Bansode's art form survive?

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit