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The trendsetter
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Legendary Pandwani artiste Teejan Bai talks about her predilection for breaking rules
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Photo: K. Gopinathan
Teller of tales Teejan Bai defied convention to practice an art form that was till then the sole preserve of men
She seems tired. Her eyes give it away. Though her full-bodied histrionics is as fresh and engaging as it has always been. After repeated performances across Delhi as part of the just-concluded SAARC Folklore Festival, Teejan Bai is in the Press Club
of India, doing what she is best known for — Pandwani style of narrating and enacting tales from the Mahabharata.
She loves to talk about her past and the present — the past with pain and the present with pride. “We are tribals from the Durg district of Chhattisgarh. My parents didn’t have time to take care of me because they used to go to the fields to work, leaving me at the mercy of the servants, who would feed me and then put me to sleep. I wanted to study but my parents had no time to get me admitted to school,” she says.
Bored of life, she says, she started spending time with her maternal grandfather, Brijlal Parthi. “He was a great Pandwani performer. I started learning from him.”
Defining moment
The defining moment in her life came when once he fell seriously ill and couldn’t go to a performance. “So he asked me to go. I didn’t want to leave him in that condition, but he insisted. When I returned after the performance, he was dead. I understood that he wanted me to carry it forward, so I did.”
That was her first public performance at the age of 13, in the Bhikli region of Chhattisgarh. Interestingly, Teejan says she didn’t initially learn this art to carry forward a legacy but “to impress” her friends with her knowledge of the tales from the Mahabharata.
“But my nana’s death changed my life,” states the Padma Shriawardee. Not that the path was easy. She was accused by many from her community of being a woman of easy virtue as she performed in public.
More so as she used to perform singing in the Kapalik shaili, which is a stand-up performance meant only for men.
Traditionally, women used to sing (and not enact) in the Vedamati shaili or the sitting style. She recalls, “I was discouraged. To keep me away from performing, my mother would lock me in a room and beat me. People would call us names. I was married but never taken to the in-laws’ house. I was chucked out of the home. But I refused to budge. What I wonder still is, since I was not doing any ‘nautanki’ but enacting the shastras, why was I ostracised?” But her fame reached far and wide, especially after veteran dramatist Habib Tanvir arranged for her to perform at the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s house in the early ’80s.
Now at 52, having travelled to many countries including England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Turkey, Tunisia, Malta, Cyprus, Romania and Mauritius, she barely regrets not being with her community.
“Everything happens for the best. Even today, I am an outcast in my community. But I don’t care. Today, I teach students even in foreign countries who are carrying this Indian tradition forward. And interestingly, most of my students are girls. I have taught 150 students, especially in Russia and Mauritius,” says Teejan with a tinge of pride.
If her Russian students “are expert at Draupadi cheerharan”, her Mauritius students are winning accolades for “the Arjuna episode”.
“They perform in their native language. They give me translators and I take my own translators there,” she says.
Placing betel leaves between her teeth as she readies for her performance, she says, “All my three sons perform with me now.”
Sadly, she adds, “I too couldn’t spare the time for them to pursue their studies. So they studied till Class 8.” With moist eyes, she sums up the conversation, “Maika bahut yaad aata hai….(I do miss my childhood home.)”
RANA SIDDIQUI
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