Shaking dust from my shoes, there’s a road ahead, and there’s no way back home....
(Lyrics of Leaving Home by Queen)
WE ALL make wishes and then take risks to make them come true. Often, it involves leaving behind one’s roots and taking roads mysterious to destinations unknown. The phenomenon of “migration” summarises the age-old story of gold rush, in its various positive and negative connotations, and adaptations to the multiple cultures, situations, and contexts that put together the rich history of humankind. Perceived as tragic by some and euphoric by others, the phenomenon of migration has existed throughout the chronology of human civilisation.
Another phenomenon that has kept pace with the consistency of migration is that of life’s depiction on stage. The heartfelt need to portray the irony bound by the pain and pleasure associated with migration evolved into a folk style of theatre called “Bidesiya”, meaning a migrant. This style specialised in depicting the multitude shades of the lives of those who migrated, and those who were left behind. Humans, being “human”, have always craved to identify with the characters and context on stage. This promptly fuelled its popularity and came closer to the audience’s heart in the pre-Independence era, which was a key time of intra-national migration in India. The state that most suffered migration, Bihar, naturally was the birthplace of Bidesiya and still holds it dear to its theatre heritage.
The name of the form was taken from a play called Bidesiya by Bhikhari Thakur, the legend of Bhojpuri-language theatre of Bihar. The context and presentation of the play became so popular that it generated a new form all together. Before Bidesiya style, productions with songs, drama and crew of male actors playing both male and female characters, were called “Launda Naach” in Bihar. Bidesiya style added grace and meaning to this form by tagging vision with other basic items such as folk songs, folk stories and folk language.
Bhikhari Thakur enriched Bidesiya by merging the elements of contemporary as well as traditional art forms. Impact of Bengal’s Jatra, Assam’s Ankiya, Nautanki and Swang is quite evident in this folk style. Body movements of baul and Bihu tuned with Bihar’s folk songs and sanskar geet, such as sohar, jhoomar, kohbar, sanjha-parati, poorbi, khilauna hori, phaag, chaiti, kajri and barmasa made Bidesiya a hybrid form of over-all cultural trend. The style also included vidushak — a satirical character from Parsi rangmanch and Sutradhar from Sanskrit rangmanch for establishing the message hidden in the play with greater impact.
Bhikhari Thakur was a revolutionary much ahead of his time and had a vision of establishing folk theatre as a powerful medium for the existence of an egalitarian society. When India was struggling for its Independence, he chose his role of being a cultural warrior, highlighting the plights of the undermined section of the society, especially women. Born on December 18, 1887 at Kutubpur in Bihar’s Siwan district, Thakur refused to follow his family profession of barbers. He moved to Kolkata for livelihood, but the seed of theatre brought him back to his native village where he started a theatre company for Ram Leela shows. Slowly mythological characters and stories were replaced by characters from the contemporary life and issues, resulting in Thakur’s productions such as Beti Bechwa, Kalyug Prem, Ganga Snan, Bhai Virodh and Bidesiya.
Bidesiya has been experimented with by various modern directors and playwrights.
In 1984, Bihar’s famous playwright Hrishikesh Sulabh adapted his story Amli in Bidesiya shaili and till date Amli has seen more than 400 shows by various groups across the nation. In 1985, director Sanjay Upadhyay, the icon of Bihar theatre on the national spectrum, re-adapted Bhikari Tahakur’s Bidesiya for modern theatre. The subtext of the play still holds importance in the economically-backward backdrop of Bihar, where migration stands as the only survival instinct. In Bidesiya, there is the protagonist who leaves and the lover who is left behind; “a messenger who carries the lover’s serenade for the protagonist and of course a vidushak, the intelligent satirical narrator, who binds together the lives of the characters and keeps the audience spell-bound leading their thoughts and emotions with every flick of his sharp tongue”.
Sutradhar, a novel by senior Hindi author Sanjeev is based on Thakur’s life. In 2007, Sulabh wrote Batohi, a play based on the creative transformation of Bhikhari Thakur, directed by Devendra Raj Ankur for the reportery of the National School of Drama. The beauty of any artistic creation lies in its being contemporary in all eras. Thakur, in this sense, comes across as a visionary who invented an entirely new form of theatre to portray the biggest irony of our time, the irony of being rootless.