[None of this would be surprising if Bhansode wasn’t a 60-year-old grandmother. Or if her audience of 3,000 wasn’t comprised entirely of men. Or if most of the men weren’t Marathi-speaking farmers in a conservative Maharashtrian village far removed from the world of urban India.]
By Sonia Faleiro |
| The troupe dances to Sheila ki Jawani. |
None of this would be surprising if Bhansode wasn’t a 60-year-old grandmother. Or if her audience of 3,000 wasn’t comprised entirely of men. Or if most of the men weren’t Marathi-speaking farmers in a conservative Maharashtrian village far removed from the world of urban India.
Sonia FaleiroMangala Bhansode sings about being forsaken by her lover and drowning her tears in whiskey.
At its peak tamasha or folk theater served as entertainment for Marathi royalty. Today it is performed almost exclusively in rural areas for male audiences. Tamasha is of two kinds. Sangeet Bari is performed near urban centers in theaters. The more humble Dholki-padh refers to a traveling party — tamasha language for ‘troupe’ — like that of Bhansode. Some parties, too poor to afford a stage, perform on the same bullock cart in which they travel. Since they perform in the shade, this is also known as “Tamasha under the Tree.” Parties perform in one village at night, spend the following day traveling to a different village, and if they make it in time, whip out a performance that same evening. Each performance includes music, dance, and comedic skits, and often lasts from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
It’s a grueling job, and not just on stage. Bhansode has to bribe the police and deal with local politicians who threaten her team with knives. Several years ago a miscreant set a tent on fire. It’s hardly a conventional role for an Indian woman. But nothing about Bhansode, the only woman in Maharashtra to own her own tamasha party, is conventional.
Sonia FaleiroMangala Bhansode takes at least an hour to apply her stage make up.
“I was delivered in a tent exactly like this,” Bhansode tells me in a throaty voice. We are sitting in a large tent in which the artistes sleep and change into costume. “And when I was pregnant with my first child I was onstage until my water broke. Like my mother, I gave birth in a tent. The umbilical cord was cut with a stone.”
Bhansode is a third-generation tamasha artist. (Tamasha performers refer to themselves as “artistes”). Her grandfather Bhau Narayan Khude co-owned a tamasha party, and her late mother was the legendaryVithabai
Despite the acclaim she enjoyed, Vithabai couldn’t sustain her own party. Bhansode does just that. She’s so popular she works the entire tamasha calendar, seven months a year, traveling to 210 villages. (There are no performances in the monsoon season). She has 150 employees, owns five buses that transport artists and equipment, and drives around in a bright red SUV with her Alsatians, Diana and Pintoo. On a good night, she earns a lakh (100,000) Indian rupees (about $2,040).
Sonia FaleiroThe dancers, some as young as 13, prepare to take the stage.
It’s easy to understand why the audience loves her. Her raspy voice has melody and power. And although she must weight over a 100 kilograms (220 pounds), her movements are strikingly light-footed. The sensuality of her gestures are so compelling that even when she’s dancing among teenagers in skimpy “lehenga cholis,” it’s Bhansode the audience clamors for, yelling “Once more,” even before she’s done singing.
Bhansode’s success has also meant success for her party. One of her female artists is as young as 13, but most are approaching 18. All of them are lower caste, have no education, and without this job might not make ends meet.
Puja is 15 and lives in Vasai, a Mumbai suburb. “If it wasn’t for this,” she says, “I’d have to sell bead necklaces at the railway station, like my parents did. Here I earn 5,000 rupees a month ($101), enough for my whole family.” Puja has worked with Bhansode for two years. “It was difficult in the beginning,” she admits. “I felt embarrassed being on stage. But now I don’t feel anything.” The rigorous performance schedule leaves Puja little time to think of or interact with the outside world. She doesn’t watch television or even know the prime minister’s name. And the only time she leaves the tented area is when the female artists are taken down to the closest river to bathe. “Tamasha feeds me,” she says. “And so I live only for tamasha.”
Bhansode is of the same mind. “Our life is like garbage in the wind. It’s a terrible life, moving from here to there, often receiving no respect only trouble for our hard work. But this is how we survive. And that which lets you survive, you must respect. You must love.”
@ The New York Times
MYANMAR SUSPENDS CONSTRUCTION OF CONTROVERSIAL DAM@ The New York Times
[The dam’s suspension was a blow to China, long considered a benefactor to the government in Myanmar. China Power Investment, a state-run Chinese company, was leading the construction of the project, which would have delivered electricity to southern China. It is unclear how the suspension will affect six other Chinese-led hydroelectric projects in northern Myanmar.]
By Thomas Fuller
 |
Khin Maung Win/Associated Press
The Myitsone dam project would have been the first to span
the
northern
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The Myitsone dam project would have been the first to span the Irrawaddy River, the largest waterway in Myanmar, and was a showcase project for the previous military government. The halt in construction was a victory for dissidents in a country with a long history of stifling opposition.
A number of prominent people inside Myanmar, including writers, scientists and the Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, had opposed the project.
The government’s announcement underscores the nascent stirrings of democracy in Myanmar, also known as Burma, after a nominally civilian government took control from a military junta in March.
The dam’s suspension was a blow to China, long considered a benefactor to the government in Myanmar. China Power Investment, a state-run Chinese company, was leading the construction of the project, which would have delivered electricity to southern China. It is unclear how the suspension will affect six other Chinese-led hydroelectric projects in northern Myanmar.
The announcement on Friday was made during a session of Parliament in the capital, Naypyidaw. The statement acknowledged the role that public pressure had played in the decision.
“Being the government elected by the people, it upholds the aspiration and wishes of the people,” said a statement by President U Thein Sein, according to the Weekly Eleven, a newspaper in Myanmar. “It is also responsible to solve the problems that worry the public. Therefore, the government will suspend the Myitsone dam project during its tenure.”
Although top officials in Myanmar, including Mr. Thein Sein, are former military officers, the government has sought to distance itself from decades of army rule. The new government has loosened restrictions on the media, is drafting laws on economic liberalization and is holding regular meetings with Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released from years of house arrest last November. An estimated 2,000 political prisoners remain in detention.
Despite describing its decision on Friday as a suspension of the dam’s construction, Mr. Thein Sein’s statement seemed to suggest that the project would not continue, at least not in its current form.
“To fulfill the electricity need of the country, the government will continue to implement other hydropower projects that are not harmful to the nation after conducting systematic surveys,” it said.
The statement added that the government would negotiate terms with China “without affecting the friendly bilateral relations between the two countries.”
Chinese businesses have rapidly spread throughout Myanmar in recent years, causing friction in some areas. Chinese companies are sometimes blamed for deforestation and are resented for their voracious appetite for the country’s natural resources. A pipeline that would carry natural gas and oil from the Bay of Bengal to southern China is currently under construction.
The Myitsone dam project, which was largely being carried out by Chinese workers, aggravated anti-Chinese sentiment. As the cradle of Burmese civilization, the Irrawaddy River carries great symbolic significance in Myanmar. Critics of the dam said the trade-off between the electricity that would be produced by the project and the potential environmental impact was not worth it.
A report commissioned and financed by China Power Investment actually highlighted these questions. The report was never released publicly by the company, but a copy leaked out and was shared among environmentalists and opponents of the dam.
The report said a number of migratory fish species were likely to be wiped out, and it warned that more studies needed to be carried out to understand the possible impact of the dam, which would have flooded 26,238 hectares, or 64,835 acres.
Two smaller dams on tributaries of the Irrawaddy could produce the same amount of electricity, the report said.
