It’s not the story, the direction or the acting, but simply the scale of Zangoora that dazzles. Call it nautanki on a grand scale with exorbitant ticket prices
Godda did not have a cinema hall. The people were so poor that few could afford a ticket, though it may have cost less than a rupee in those days. They sought relief from their daily humdrum by watching a man making a clothed monkey dance. A man who had vowed to cycle non-stop around a post for a week drew large crowds. The anti-Indira Gandhi wave managed to animate the people like never before. And then, there was the ‘nautanki’.
A tiny speck in the Santhal Pargana division of what is now Jharkhand, Godda was so small that our father, a junior judicial officer in those days, was one of the two highest ranking government officials, the other being the SDO. So our house occupied pride of place. Not because it was palatial or at the centre of the town, but because the annual 26 January fair began where our boundary wall ended. You could buy or sell many things at this fair, but that’s not why it was such an attraction. The crowds came to see the nautanki.
A nautanki is described as an operative drama, evolved out of ballads and recitals of bards. That barely brings out the imagery. It was, in fact, a simple tale — boy loves girl, someone creates hindrances, love conquers all —told through a series of the most popular Hindi film songs of the day and a few lines of dialogue. The actors, buried under garish makeup, performed (read danced) on a makeshift stage under a loose pandaal. The spectators sat on dirty, torn durries. The many cousins who were always visiting us got to sit on unstable wooden benches. I had yet to begin school, and it was much later that I learned to marvel at how Hindi film songs were the common thread binding the nautanki (among the many, I remember Jai Jai Shiv Shankar from Rajesh Khanna-starrer Aap Ki Kasam) with the clothed monkey (Main jahan chala jaoun bahar chali aai from Jitendra’s Banphool), the non-stop cyclist (Jeevan chalne ka naam from Manoj Kumar’s Shor), and the election campaigners (Jai Jai Shiv Shankar, vidhaan sabha ko bhang kar). I also learned later than nautankis were the main attraction at many fairs in Bihar and other states. Those of you who have seen Teesri Kasam, lyricist Shailendra’s dream project, would understand this.
Those were the 1970s. Godda is now a district. Monkeys prefer to frighten visitors to the seat of the government in New Delhi, not dance to film songs. Non-stop cyclists may be working at call centres pretending to be the average Joe. Political campaigners sometimes fail to buy rights to film songs. And the nautankis at the fairs have become thinly-garbed sleaze shows.
The world has changed. Then again, has it? Sepia-tinted memories of Godda came rushing on a visit to Gurgaon’s Kingdom of Dreams to watch Zangoora: The Gypsy Prince.
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The parts of Gurgaon bordering Delhi are inhabited by some very rich people. Naturally, these offer facets of the country packaged for the very rich. The malls are sanitised, air-conditioned and more crowded versions of what used to be the weekly haat. The gated communities are fenced versions of what used to be mohallas. And Zangoora is nautanki for the rich; the cheapest ticket is Rs 1,000.
You will be disappointed if you went looking for a great story, script, dialogues or acting. Zangoora is not a work of art; it is a work of craft. The story is simple. A prince is raised by a troupe of wandering gypsies after the villain kills his parents and usurps the throne. He comes of age, discovers his identity and goes back to his kingdom. The prince gets the throne and the girl, while a gypsy girl sacrifices her love.
This story will not leave you awestruck. Perhaps it is deliberately kept simple, so that the many foreigners in the audience, who spoke neither Hindi nor English, would have no problem following it. It does not matter whether they follow the story. For, the scale on which the play is mounted will take your breath away.
There are giant screens to your left and right which connect with the events on stage, which has a screen at the back. So a bat begins to fly on the wall to your right, flies through the stage, and exits out of the screen at the left wall. The set management is deft, quick and stupendous. Combined with the two screens, it brings alive a jungle, a scene underwater, palaces, battles, and everything else. An elephant pops up on stage, the hero arrives flying on an eagle, the heroine swings down to the proscenium, and there is a dream sequence in which the hero and the heroine are flying. The costumes, acrobatics, sound effects and choreography are flawless. The acting does not matter. The day we went, the regular actors had taken a break. But the substitutes were just fine.
And then, there are the songs. Many Hindi film songs. Old and new. They depict joy and love, pain, anguish and allure. On the way out, we noticed that the theatre is named Nautanki Mahal. And everything suddenly fell in place. n
Kingdom of Dreams
Auditorium Complex, Sector 29,
Gurgaon 122001
Haryana
Phone: 0124-4528000
