“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 ‘Tamasha is like a jail that I want to stay in’.)









