On the road with roaming Tamasha performers in rural India

One evening in 2016, while pho­tog­ra­ph­er Abhishek Khedekar was liv­ing in Pune in the Indi­an state of Maha­rash­tra, he trav­elled to Narayan­gaon – a small town set just over 40 miles (70km) from the city. He’d caught a rumour that a trav­el­ling troupe of Tamasha per­form­ers were in the area and want­ed to see the show for him­self. Hav­ing grown up as a child in rur­al Maha­rash­tra with fond mem­o­ries of par­tic­i­pat­ing in folk dance, a friend of his sug­gest­ed he check out a Tamasha show – a tra­di­tion­al form of musi­cal the­atre, often con­sist­ing of more than 100 per­form­ers, that trav­els from vil­lage to vil­lage around the state.

After a for­tu­nate encounter with a man who sup­plied trucks to the roam­ing per­form­ers point­ed him to the site and gave him the con­tact details for Papu Dada – one of the group’s organ­is­ers – he shoved some spare clothes into a bag, grabbed his cam­era and went to the site of the evening’s show. There, he was greet­ed by a flur­ry of lights, music and bright colour, and quick­ly felt a sense of wonder. 

“I was amazed, like ​‘wow, this is a dif­fer­ent world here’,” recalls Khedekar. ​“As a kid I was per­form­ing on stage, but it wasn’t that elab­o­rate – every­body was in make­up, the cos­tumes were elab­o­rate, the light­ing was vibrant mixed with tra­di­tion­al music and singing.”

Ask­ing for Papu Dada, Khedekar was invit­ed back­stage, where dozens of per­form­ers and crew mem­bers were fran­ti­cal­ly prepar­ing for the next acts, while those who had just come off stage were catch­ing a quick chance to rest and grab a bite to eat. 

“Per­form­ers were com­ing and going, hav­ing their din­ner, going back and dress­ing, there’s a lot of dif­fer­ent sounds and lights. I didn’t take any pic­tures, I was just look­ing at them like ​‘what is hap­pen­ing here?’” he says. ​“Then Papu Dada was kind enough to ask me, ​‘have you had din­ner?’ and I said ​‘no’.

“He’s like ​‘okay, you can have din­ner here, the food we cook is a lit­tle spicy but you can man­age it,” Khedekar con­tin­ues. ​“From that day, I start­ed trav­el­ling with them from one vil­lage to the next, and I start­ed pho­tograph­ing every­thing.”

Khedekar would pro­ceed to spend months on the road with the per­form­ers on numer­ous stretch­es until 2022, mak­ing pic­tures as well as muck­ing in with the pro­duc­tion of the shows, and even get­ting on stage and per­form­ing. Now, some of his pic­tures are pre­sent­ed in his new­ly-pub­lished pho­to­book Tamasha. With a mix of por­trai­ture, can­did shots of objects and cre­ative col­lages, the pic­tures are a warm, vibrant and inti­mate win­dow into the cos­tumes, per­for­mances and char­ac­ters of the nomadic show, as well as the wild oper­a­tion that mov­ing 100-plus per­form­ers, artists and crew on a dai­ly basis takes.

“They’re doing it for like sev­en or eight months a year,” Khedekar explains. ​“There are around 70 peo­ple there who per­form, but it’s not only like they per­form – some­times if the truck dri­ver is not well they have to dri­ve the truck, you all cook togeth­er and eat food togeth­er, you have to set up the tents every­day and even a small office space.”

The book is also a cel­e­bra­tion of a joy­ous cul­ture that has in recent decades come to be looked down upon and maligned by many. Orig­i­nat­ing in the 1800s, Tamasha troupes have tra­di­tion­al­ly been made up of Dalit folks, which is his­tor­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered the low­est caste in Indi­an soci­ety – the word itself rough­ly trans­lates to ​‘oppressed’ or ​‘bro­ken.’ In the 20^th cen­tu­ry, as much of India moved away cul­tur­al­ly from tra­di­tion­al forms of song and dance, they became stig­ma­tised and shunned in many areas as they descend­ed upon vil­lages with their giant mov­ing operation.

But that land­scape is chang­ing as more peo­ple come to val­ue the skill, tra­di­tions and knowl­edge that Tamasha encap­su­lates, and troupes are increas­ing­ly made up from peo­ple across dif­fer­ent class­es and walks of life. 

For Khedekar though, that time spent with them means even more than just the per­for­mances and enter­tain­ment. ​“It’s my fam­i­ly,” he says, smil­ing. ​“I say fam­i­ly because every­body stays under the same tent, every­one cooks food and eats togeth­er, per­forms, then goes again to the next vil­lage. A lot of them have become my friends, so Tamasha has giv­en me an extend­ed fam­i­ly, and I’m [grate­ful] I can be part of that.”

Tamasha by Abhishek Khedekar is pub­lished by Loose Joints.

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