After very little persuasion from a friend, I decided to give the circus a visit. I was bored of the usual lunch/movie/coffee routine that passes for daytime entertainment and thought that this might be a refreshing change. The last memories that I have of the circus are cotton candy, sparkly clothes, lions and the trapeze (in that order). This time no lions…but the rest hadn’t changed.
Even then something was different now… The acts were the same: the clowns, the jugglers, the bikers, the animals, etc etc. What I saw, were the downcast eyes of the performers, the complete loss of hope in their entire being, like this was the last place they wanted to be in and yet there wasn’t a choice. My friend and I kept trying to maintain eye contact with the performers and clap as hard as we could in the hopes of getting genuine smiles but we barely succeeded .The clothes that I had thought of as sparkly were just plain cheap and whorish, to entice a truck driver crowd (A bombay circus has two kinds of crowds: parents with their kids and the “looking for a cheap thrill” variety). The women, despite quite a few of them being overweight and middle aged were made to wear these clothes (I had a desperate urge to go on stage and tell them to pull on some clothes). It was quite possible that these women might be prostituting themselves to make ends meet. The animals were being whipped to do their tricks and mistakes brought on more smacks (Maneka Gandhi would have had a heart attack). The clowns didn’t smile :(
All in all I left with a heavy heart.
After the show, we clicked a few pictures and then as were leaving we saw the housing facilities for the performers. They were just open air shacks (we know them as jhopadpattis).This was not the circus I imagined… My friend tells me that its different abroad, that the performers are well paid and the shows are glitzy. Not so here… here it is a means to make ends meet.
This left me thinking about how grateful we should be for what we have instead of cribbing about the silly things that we want (which are just luxuries). About how instead of feeling sorry for people, we should try to make a difference. To remember that each person can make a difference if he chooses too. That this world (or even just our city) is too big for us to sit back and feel sorry for ourselves. The “circus report” is just another example of how people in our country are living their lives and trying to survive. Don’t just think about this, do something !
P.S. – I didn’t stick to the grammer "rules", but I don’t really care as long as people understand what I am trying to say here…
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6 comments:
not the kind of circus review i was expecting, but thought provoking and heart wrenching .... brings out a new side of bhavya that i never thought existed. since when has she been interested in the plight of circus performers living in jhopadpattis ? but anyways. bring on more such reports. to infinity and beyond!
5 yrs n yet u dont know me..."tsk tsk" lol...love ya..mwah !!
hey u sure bout the animal thing coz i heard its banned in india!!
Animals are banned in the U.S not here... there might be a few protesters here but that isnt helping much... and yes im sure coz i saw it...
Reminds me of my night at the dance bar (a.k.a. prostitution havens). The same emotions. The same helpless plight.
However bhavya, these people have always been free to choose. They have made their choice. Ofcourse, their circumstances have restricted their width of options. but, they still had a choice to fight and they chose not to.
my idea of helping these people is not to alter their circumstances in any way. instead we could focus on helping them realise the power and freedom that they already have.
everyone must fight their own battles. we have ours to fight, let them fight theirs. their weopon is their individuality. they already have it. we can only help them find it. but, not before we find our own.
cheers!
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