ABSTRACT
I can see them clearly. Looking at us over their shoulders, arms raised in a gesture of farewell, one by one, they vanish into the night: the sad-faced clown who is also the leader of the troupe, the men who act in female roles, the elderly lead singer, the fl ute-player who can now only play the harmonium because there is a hole in his heart, the only woman in the troupe who happens to be the clown’s wife in real life — all of them hurry with their pieces of luggage because they have to catch a train and travel all night to cover the distance to Lalgola by the morning. From there, they will take a bus to their destination where they are scheduled to give their next performance. I might have wondered whether there is something sadly symbolic in this disappearance into the night had I not known that tomorrow they are going to reappear somewhere else to regale another audience with their form of folk drama, most of their regular viewers, like them, coming from the rural poor. This happens to be the regular routine of the alkap artists of Murshidabad in West Bengal in the peak season for rural performances, which starts after the harvest of rice in October and continues till February-March. For the rest of the year, they are mostly at home, working on the fi eld as small and marginal peasants, as share-croppers or agricultural labourers, or pursuing small trades or agriculture-related professions. Some performances go on throughout the year and bring some of them a bit of extra income.
