20.06.2021 - THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

 

25.04.2021 - THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

 

The show must go on..

The pandemic has given us something which we all had longed for – time to think, and do nothing. With our evenings no longer full of shopping, dining, entertaining and travelling, the mind gets enough opportunity to think, recall and ponder. It was on such an evening, when one day just blended into another with stark mundaneness, that I suddenly realized that my pre-puberty adolescent kids were yet to see a circus! I asked them if they knew what a circus was. The elder one parroted the precise Google definition of circus sincerely to the t, while the younger one listened on with total nonchalance and disinterest.

I was a tad disappointed. My own childhood memories include fun-filled evenings in the circus theatre, complete with images of trapeze, rope-walking, maut ka kuwan stunts and lions and elephants entertaining with wonderful tricks. But that was long before television invaded our lives. Just as SARS-Cov-2 virus has changed human life drastically, so did the idiot box around 35 odd years ago.  After the foray of television, the circus and a few other older art forms have been unable to sustain themselves.

But, as impossible as it may sound to my kids and their friends now, there was a time when circus shows were looked forward to with unparalleled enthusiasm by the likes of me who sport salt and pepper looks now. Long before PlayStations, mobile phones, OTT platforms, amusement parks and massive multi-player online role playing games existed, there was a time when circus was an important form of popular entertainment. Circuses were like throwing together movies, video games, web series and concerts all together. In those ancient days of our childhood, circus tents were pitched in the main grounds of large cities, villages and small towns.  With their conical-top tents, pulled up by elephants and hauled around the country, circuses could set up and intrigue people in far-flung places that weren't a part of the vaudeville circuit. Political figures famous personalities and matinee idols (to be read as ‘filmstars’ by the current generation) graced the evening shows of circuses. If you lived in one of these places where the circus tent was set up, the day you were supposed to be a part of the audience was a very very big deal. Imagine getting access to the Internet, movies, online gaming and radio for just one weekend a year, and having to do without these digital entertainment means the rest of the times.  During my graduation days in Guwahati, way past the normal age to sit with eyes glued to performing artists and animals in the circus tents, I continued watching circus shows. I remember one such show in the Sonaram School playground in Bharalu, and another one in the Bhangagarh where there used to be a big empty open space where the Big Bazar building stands now.

I try to recall the acts I enjoyed as a kid in the circus shows. There were the clowns, brightly painted, who used to juggle too. And then there were tigers, and I recall the ‘tigery’ odour whenever they came on to the stage. The flying trapeze artists with flexible bodies. The ‘ring dancers’, and the cyclists who performed stunts with exceptional expertise.

In India, the first circus company to tour was the Royal Italian Circus in the late 1800s. India’s first circus was started by Vishnu Pant Chhatre, a horse trainer and riding master who was in charge of the stables of the Rajah of Kurduwadi. Chhatre’s Great Indian Circus, as per circus lore, was born after he watched the Royal Italian Circus of Giuseppe Chiarini, which was touring Bombay in 1874. Chhatre’s Great Indian Circus opened in 1880, and after a successful overseas tour, Chhatre’s circus came to Thalassery in Kerala, then an important British outpost called Tellicherry. During my decade-long stay in New Delhi, I had heard old rickshaw – pullers and aged taxi drivers talk about the glory and magical aura of the travelling circuses which came to the national capital to perform in the bygone years. The circus business has seen many glory years when the arrival of the caravan of jugglers, motorcycle performers, tight-rope walkers, trapeze artists, clowns and wagons of exotic animals would trigger festivities in towns and villages.  However, in the past three decades, things have changed drastically, with several circus companies closing down due to lack of funds and no government support, as well as dwindling audiences and patrons.

One of the key features of the contemporary style of circus is that it doesn't use animals and works with acts done by highly skilled performers. Earlier, there used to be different animals in the circus acts, including elephants, cheetahs, leopards and even bears. But with the government banning the use of all of these over the years, starting with the environment ministry banning the training and performance of wild animals such as bears, monkeys, tigers, lions and panthers three decades ago, on 2 March 1991, the appeal of the circus reduced. Another factor which added to the diminishing glory of the circus is the Supreme Court ban on the employment and performance of children below 14 years of age in Indian circuses on 18 April 2011. With acrobatics being a dominant activity in Indian circuses, children have always had a significant role in the ring. Items such as high wire, boneless, seesaw acrobat, bamboo pole, China plate are almost exclusively for child performers. This is because circus acrobatics demand absolute balancing of the body, and a child’s body can master the skill better and with greater ease. This is not to argue that all must have been well with the children employed in the circuses – there  were cases of sexual abuse and crude training, and there are missing children and fatal accidents. Nevertheless, with the disappearance of the little performers, the fascination for circus started to slowly vanish.

My kids are spoilt for choices today. The absence of school (as ‘school’ used to be) and the ongoing online classes has given them unlimited and unsupervised access to the internet. The modern-day kids have plenty to choose from, when it comes to witnessing daredevilry. Television networks have conceptualized reality shows around this idea, and the advent of mobile phones has placed similar content in the hands of children. For most people now, including my kids, circus is a thing of the past. The daredevilry, the grand parades of colour, pomp, clowns and performing animals , the nerve wracking stunts on motorcycles and jeeps and the other majestic feats of human ingenuity and discipline, seem less magical to generations of children whose superheroes are in three dimensions and high definition. I admit reluctantly that the circus hasn't been relevant to any broad audience in at least a generation now.  Once the youngest fans who remembered the days when the circus was entertainment grows old and passes on, I guess it is high time to say goodbye to circus for good. It is time to accept that the end of the circus as a nostalgia act is here, now. Though no longer relevant as modern entertainment, the history of the grandeur of the circus industry as our generation knew it, ought to recalled and analyzed. And to the entire entertainment industry today, the end of the circus should be taken as the beginning of knowing the audience and delivering what they want. The audience of my days loved circus, and now the show must go on with what this generation wants – nothing related to the wonderful circus shows of my childhood….

 

Ice cream, Cow and Eid….

 

I remember this particular episode because it was the first time when I first saw a ‘ice-cream cone’…It was in the mid 1980s, in a sleepy town in lower Assam, and it was a time when attending Eid lunches at a Muslim  friend’s home did not amount to ‘sedition’ in my democratic country.

Iftikar Uncle had a unique flair, and he looked like Jackie Shroff in ‘Hero’..I remember his sharp features, the baritone voice, the healthy moustache…He was my father’s friend. My seven year old mind was not mature enough to understand the hush-hush talks about Iftikar Uncle and Kakoty Aunty. Kakoty Aunty must have been a good two decades younger than her Chief Engineer husband. With bob-cut hair, and donning sleeveless blouses with intricate pipin, Aunty was what now we call ‘sexy’. I remember that Aunty baked, and she baked wonderfully. It was at her place that I first saw and tasted ‘marble cake’ , something which I learnt to bake too later in my life.

Let’s call the sleepy town in lower Assam ‘Rupalipur’, for Iftikar Uncle may still be there, smoking his Navicut. Aunty must have grown old in her husband’s mansion in the riverside of the state’s capital, and she might still bake. (In other words, I am trying to maintain the confidentiality of my characters). So it was Eid time, and we were invited for lunch at Iftikar Uncle’s place. I remember the elaborate layout on the dining table. Uncle’s wife and mother had prepared the most lavish spread which I had ever seen in my life. The taste of the pulao still lingers on my mouth, and I remember the silky chicken which just melted in the mouth.

It was getting late, and my father and his friends, and my mother and her friends (Deuta’s friends’ wives), were chatting and having a great time. I and my younger brother were being ignored big time. No one had time for us. I do not remember any other kids in the household. It was then when Kakoty Aunty, resplendent in her yellow saree and black sleeveless blouse, came floating towards us and asked if we wanted to have ice-cream. I timidly replied in affirmative. She called out to Iftikar Uncle and they both volunteered to take me and my brother out for an ice cream treat. The memory of that evening drive in Iftikar Uncle’s Jeep, with Kakoty Aunty in the passenger seat at the front and me and my brother at the back, remains fresh as morning dew in my mind. We had got down at a shop, which sold stationary items along with ice cream. There, that day, on Eid, flanked by Iftikar Uncle and Kakoty Aunty, I saw the first ice-cream cone of my life, and the chocolate flavoured ice-cream that day set the ball rolling for a lifetime of my romance with anything chocolaty. Aunty turned her kohl-lined eyes to me and said that I can eat the cone too!

I do not remember much of the aftermath. Time must have passed (months? A couple of years?) and one fine evening the truck carrying all the possessions of the Kakoty household leaving the picturesque colony where we lived (Kakoty Uncle and Aunty were our neighbours. They had a daughter who was of my age). Aunty had come to say goodbye to my mother; I remember her tears when she hugged my mother good-bye.

There was this huge jackfruit tress in the campus near the playground. As the Ambassador carrying Aunty and her family drove away, I remember a Jeep coming out of the shadows of the jackfruit tree.

I was too young to understand the incidents and the intricacies of the Rupalipur years. But they do seem to have been full of rich memories and deep impact. Today, being Eid, there’s not even a single invite from any of my Muslim friends for lunch. I wish someone had invited me for Eid; I know many of these ‘Indians’, my Muslim friends – proud of their land and its tradition of diversity – and I know there is disquiet at best and anger at worst at their Indian-ness being questioned. Maybe they did not foresee a time when a teenager named Junaid would be lynched and left to die on a railway station with no help forthcoming from onlookers because he was Muslim. May be they did not foresee that offering namaz would amount to being antinational. Maybe they never dreamt that the entire community will be blamed for bringing ‘corona’ during the pandemic outbreak to India. I woke up with jeers of the ‘cow-protection group’ and flag bearers of ‘secularism’ shouting out of the idiot box today. But beyond the theatrics, the reality is that intolerance has now become a serious issue with important ramifications. The  increasingly violent reaction to Indians who consume beef, the  spate of murders of Indian writers, the feeling that India belongs to Hindus and people following any other faith (read ‘Islam’) are leftovers of invaders who looted our great motherland, etc are common today. Harbouring any feeling of inclusion and tolerance amounts to sedition. To be very frank, I fear recalling Iftikar Uncle’s lunch parties. It’s just that today being Eid, I remembered that day in the sleepy town of Rupalipur, when religious diversity was a part of life.

There is a new reality now for being a Muslim in our democratic country. I know that my opinion does not matter, because I am neither empowered nor do I have the means to change the state of affairs.  One may not accept the reality, but in a rational democracy committed to a justice system and the rule of law, that such a feeling exists should be reason enough to spark soul-searching among Hindus and galvanize a government that claims to speak for all Indians to take corrective action. And I cannot help but wonder, would Iftikar Uncle have stationed his Jeep in the shadows of the jackfruit tree in 2021 to have the last glimpse of Kakoty Aunty ? (Yes, I know that I must have added some flavour to my childhood memories..But then, how does it matter???)..

Why did I WRITE THIS TODAY? May be I yearn for a chocolate ice cream in a cone. Or may be I am driven by the sentiment that I had something to say that needed to be said and which I had not said before, and knowing that no one but only one person who somehow understand me and respects y emotions would read my rubbish.