Behind the big top

Holding the big top together

The dog-and-pony routine I had seen three decades ago. Forget animated ballyhoo, even the mandatory act introductions were sporadic and lacked verve. The funambulists were missing. They were missed too: watching the performer gingerly treading on the highwire used to give me enough time to conjure up my own vertiginous shudders. Charivari, the much-needed comic interlude to the adrenaline-packed aerialist act, was not even attempted; the clowns were instead reduced to juggler assistants and ball pickers. The iron jaw was a speciality of the Mongolians who were yet to hit town. The splendour of vaudeville gave way to slapstick squalor. The applause understandably was in most parts condescending.

Prowess in action

More than what the circus has come to, this is about where we have reached. Our expectations from entertainment are defined and dictated by sensory offensives like 3G phones and curved TV, high-end gaming consoles and Matrix movies. Legendary American circus owner and showman Barnum just had to bill his Jumbo the ‘largest elephant on earth’ and people milled for a glimpse. Today we wouldn’t budge unless it’s a pterodactyl at least a mastodon. The stringent animal protection laws has seen to it that their tricks also remain antiquated – the elephant still hits the ball with a bat and the camel shakes a leg as gracefully as anything else about the ungulate ugh. “I am afraid to teach my parakeet new tricks, what if something happens to it?” asks Tarak, an animal trainer with a circus company. “As it is we find it hugely difficult to get animals because of the laws.” As the menagerie was outlawed the onus of pulling in the crowds was left to acrobats, clowns, jugglers and gymnasts and trapeze artists and the daredevils who performed equestrian, motorcycle and bicycle stunts. Tough luck, as our enhanced SFX and soap thresholds had by now rendered us virtually insatiable. We try hard to be nice; these folks are trying harder to please. A visit to the living quarters behind the ‘big top’ (a circus term for the main performance tent) introduced me to some of the hardest working and talented folks I ever met.

Eric Keno

Eric

Eric can walk, crawl or run up the Chinese pole. He can even tackle the glossy pillar with just his hands. And while holding on to the pole he can perform the perfect split. Then he does it again upside down. Because of his astounding strength and rock hard frame, he is also the ‘foundation’ of many gymnastic formations; he catches his breath by cutting a typical bushman rug.

“So is there anything else you do on the pole?” I chided.

“Well, that’s about it with the pole,” he said with typical African ingénu. “But I can do kickboxing, karate, dance and sing.”

Back home in Kenya, Eric does a lot of street boxing as cherry pie – he needs the money as he supports his single mother and two siblings. He used to work in a hotel as a waiter and moonlight in another as a performer. But when it’s not the tourism season, Eric struggles to make ends meet. “I wait endlessly for the phone to ring.” Six months ago the phone rang and it was a circus agent asking whether he wanted to come to India. But even as his life these days revolves around a ring of different sort he has his heart set on boxing.

“You know I can do everything Van Damme does, maybe even better. And when I retire from circus I want to be a boxing and gymnast teacher.”

Somebody he met in India told him he should give the movies a shot – a stuntman or the bad guy’s flunkey or a backup dancer.

“I can do anything I am told to do,” he says. But he couldn’t find the time to go to Mumbai and do the rounds of production houses and directors. “Where is the time after my practice and performance and trips to the dukaan for the doodh?”

Eric was soon returning to Kenya as his visa was expiring.

“India was fun, I loved travelling to Gujarat and Rajasthan and Delhi where we had our shows,” he said. “I would love to come back to India to act in movies or circus or cut an album, why not! You can email me at blacknazareti@gmail.com if you need me.”

P. Vinodraj

Vinodraj

Half a century in the circus, Vinodraj can list out the highlights, the stalwarts and their contributions dishing them out peppered with his own personal anecdotes.

“Unity in diversity is at its best in circus, where else can you see Africans and Mongolians and Russians and Indians under the same roof watching each other’s backs?” He quips from the charpoy where he lies stretched out like a giant X.

Vinodraj hails from the circus heartland of Kerala, Tellicherry, which is also home to Keeleri Kunhikkannan, regarded as the father of Kerala circus.

“Keeleri was a gymnast just like me; we both became gymnastics teachers in our old age.” He says and laughs.

Then teaching gymnastics comes with a catch: child labour laws prohibit children in circus before they are 18 years old.

“They have to start training when they are not more than 14 years old,” he says. “I started at 11 and is there anything wrong with me?”

He got off the charpoy, re-draped the towel that had slipped away from his waist and struck one from the Pumping Iron.

Tarak Saha and Nazma

Tarak, Nazma and macaws

“Out there under the arc lights, she is my face.” Tarak introduced Nazma to me. “But then the animals have a problem recognising her as I am more handsome than her.”

Both Tarak and Nazma are from West Bengal, have known each other for long and let no opportunity pass by where they can take the mickey out of the other.

The two macaws that had been pecking each other around the cage suddenly stopped to let out wild screeches followed by bouts of garrulous warbling; it was kind of difficult to know whose side they were on.

“See how vehemently they are refuting you?” Nazma pounced.

Tarak had been an animal trainer for 30 years now and picked up his first lessons by observing the master trainers of a visiting Chinese circus.

“They were furious when they caught me peeping over the wall of their enclosure, I nearly fell off from the chair on which I was standing.”

Tarak with the prototype

When I told him that I had seen most of his wards’ tricks when I was in school, he opened a rusted trunk box holding his possessions and took out a miniature, handcrafted bicycle. Because it was for the macaw, he had gas-welded the pedal in place of the seat. Thoroughly impressed I enquired when I could see the bird Lancing down the ramp. He said he was worried about getting another bird should anything go wrong and the harassment by animal bodies.

“With all the deforestation going on circuses should be encouraged to adopt more animals,” he said. “Nobody takes care of animals the way we do.”

Nazma vehemently nodded in agreement.