Nautanki: the famous personalities

                 Nautanki is generally connected to cheap thrills and crud entertainment and is rarely heard of these days. But there are few who still believe that Nautnaki is a theatrical performance with songs and dance numbers, originated in Kanpur, which played an important role in influencing people during the independence struggle to join the freedom movement against the British.

Eventually, over time and as more modern forms of entertainment became available, the art form is reduced to villages and that too with hardly anyone wanting to perform in it. Around the latter half of the 19^th century, Nautanki was also known as Svang. Bhagat, a 400 years old operatic drama preceded this Nautanki. Ain-i-Akbari also mentions Nautanki in its pages.

In the early 1930s, a young girl began acting in Nautanki and rose to fame. Her name was Gulab Bai and she had sort of revolutionized the Nautanki on her time. When she died in 1996, she was widely hailed as the uncrowned queen of Nautanki and even now, her name remains in the Nautanki Hall of Fame. Before her time, young boys played the roles of heroines, side heroines and other secondary female characters. Gulab Bai entered a male dominated industry and made her mark. She breathed in the essence of the Nautanki dramas, gifted her own aura and came to be known as Gulaab Jaan. By the mid 1930s, Gulaab was famous as Gulab Jaan.

Giriraj Prasad was another outstanding Nautanki performer. He was born in Kama village. Bharatpour district (Rajasthan) in 1920. He had learnt Nautanki in the Hathras gharana from Giriraj Prasad Parashar and Natharam Gaud. He was only 16 years of age when he became a professional and joined the company of Guad. Giriraj Prasad became highly skilled in folk and classical music and was highly respected for as an unusual mixture of strength and sweetness in his voice. He was second to Lavani singing.

Giriraj Prasad has a distinctive style of rendering the chaubola meter, imitated by younger performers. He made efforts to revive and vitalize the form and thereby, became the director of a troupe set up by the Braj Kala Kendra at Hathras. He also participated in the Nautanki-based production of Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena’s Bakri or ‘she goat’ in 1973 at the National School of Drama.

Some of the other equally nice performers are Gokul Korea, Ghasso, Ram Swarup Sharma, Manohar Lal Sharma, Chunnilal and Krishna Kumari. 

In the last four decades, some new Nautankis are taking place which involves contemporary social messages such as health, HIV/AIDS, women’s empowerment, dowry, immigration and family planning. But these are comparatively short performances approximately of 2 hours. This provides the audience to break their monotonous daily routine and enjoy themselves for a break.

                   Source: Internet and a few antique books….

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