The Hindu Business Line : Adding colour to life with song & dance

When one is young life is fun. Growing in Calcutta, Holi was always a colourful day for the dhobis, municipal sweepers, rickshawallas and vegetable vendors, with their roots in tact in faraway U.P. or Bihar. One knew quite a few of them and would always be invited for the bhang sessions in the afternoon. After a few glasses of the kicking drink, they would sing and dance some scenes from the Ramayana with males, wearing saris and lipstick, doubling as Sita or Mandodari, Ravana's wife.

To the beats of the dholak, they would dance till Holi turned another ordinary, struggling day. Sometimes, Lady Sita used to be taller and stronger than Lord Rama, while Hanumanji was distinctly puny with a bobbing, cotton-cloth tail. Most of the verses would end with a "sa- ra- ra" and the all-male dancers would go round and round on the open road. But one has never gone to a nautanki. "If Uttar Pradesh doesn't have nautanki, what will it have?," asks an observer Siddheshwar Awasthi.

Apparently, the nautanki was an all-male genre with women dominating from the 1930s. Over the next few decades, women took over the female roles in Kanpur nautankis and were paid more than men. That got the male artists to whine and the common view was nautanki declined after women joined the dancing troupes. "If they hadn't joined, we could have maintained high standards. With women, filth came in," was the refrain.

Women contested and the sonorous Begum Akhtar hit back saying, " If a man is good at singing, he is called an Ustad or a Guru. But if a woman is good at singing, she is called a Bai." The tale of the nautanki and Gulab Bai is told wonderfully well by Deepti Priya Mehrotra in her book Gulab Bai — The Queen of Nautanki Theatre.

Adopting an easy style, Deepti takes the reader to Gulab Bai; after reading the 318-page book, the reader is reluctant to leave Gulab Bai. In 1990, Gulab Bai said: "All my life, I breathed Nautanki. If I saw a dream, it was a dream of Nautanki. I lived for Nautanki, and died for Nautanki." Her eminent biographer adds: "Gulab Bai was larger than life. She surged out of the set moulds. She didn't fit the set frames - yet those frames remained. She couldn't quite break them."

Gulab Bai belonged to the Bedia caste and Deepti dwells long on the norms of the nautanki society. "Nautanki artists belonged to a wide range of castes and creeds. The women hailed almost exclusively from traditional entertainer-singer backgrounds - either the Bedia caste or deredar Muslims. But male artistes were Muslims, Dalits and middle or upper castes including Brahmans, Kayasths and Khatris. Syncretic traditions flourished within this community of artistes.

It was commonly accepted that `kalakar ki jati nahin hoti' - meaning artistes qua artistes are above sectarian affiliations," writes Deepti. They lived and ate together, sharing their daily lives. Men and women came together. Gulab Bai had a strong relationship with Raja, a Muslim who had a wife and children. But none frowned.

"The nautanki world accepted Gulab and Raja as a couple. They were often assigned roles opposite one another. A lead pair who worked well together was a tremendous relief for any company manager. Both Raja and Gulab were immensely popular. She was undoubtedly the star of any show, but this never seemed to trouble Raja. He was secure just being himself," Deepti remarks and adds, "This was one reason why the elite looked down upon nautanki. In any case, the occupation of singing and dancing was not considered respectable."

Even today, a modern Indian, sniggers and looks askance at females acting on the big screen. The world of nautanki (it is a dying, if not a dead genre) was surely liberal. Only a sprinkling of Muslim artistes went over to Pakistan after the Partition in 1947. Gulab Bai or Gulabiya was born in Balpurva around 1920. Her mother Jehangira was Kurmi; her father Lal Bahadur was Bedia. "The union of the two made a khichdi," says Dube. Joining Tirmohan Lal's troupe was a decisive step for Gulab, changing it forever.

"At the same time, it was a historical step for the nautanki form. A girl performed on the nautanki stage for the first time. What great novelty could anybody offer? And what better way to draw the crowds?", menstions Deepti.

Perhaps, the Nautanki poetry forms the best part of the book. The most popular dadra of Gulab Bai, sung since the 1930s till her death in 1996 ran: "Nadi naare na jao shyam paiyan padoon ... /Nadi naare gaye to jaibae karo/ Beech dhara na jao shyam paiyan padoon/ Nadi naare ... Sang sovatiya jo laae to laibe karo/Sang sejariya na soyo shyam paiyan padoon/ Nadi naare ... (Do not wander Shyam, to the river's edge/ I beg of you, do not./ If you are at the water's edge, so be it/ Do not step into the current my dear, I beg of you ... You have brought her back, here she is, so be it/ Do not sleep on the same bed with her Shyam, I beg of you/ Do not wander Shyam, to the river's edge."

Gulab's family was poor and her father was not above the idea of making his daughter an earning member. When she was 12, Gulab went to the Makanpur mela in 1932 and the song and dance of nautanki claimed her. Her father spoke to Tirmohan Lal and Gulab started on her career. She left her family to live with the troupe of Tirmohan ... ... and in 1990 Mrs Gulab Bai, as New Delhi described her, became a Padmashree. Gulab Bai died on July 13, 1996. One would like to go with the writer Deepti on a tour of the villages of U.P. to talk to the few remaining nautanki artists. And probably meet another Gulab Bai.

P. Devarajan

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