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….