When the music is over…

And he still lives his memories. What he recalls are not recent memories, but tales of his childhood, of his growing up years. “We were five brothers, and my grandfather had given us nick names after the five Pandavas. I was Bhima. We arrived in Pune from Tuljapur – our native town – when I was not even 10. Our entourage arrived in the city, bag, baggage, household items and cattle in tow and set up home near the courts in Shivajinagar. We kids would trudge all the way to the Jungli Maharaj Road to get water,” he says with a faraway look in his eyes that evidently tells that he lives in the past.

Being from a family that was traditionally involved in performing `gondhal-jagran’ at different homes, folk art has been in Ambure’s blood stream. “The sacred thread I wear around my neck has a `kavdi’ (a sort of sea shell) tied to it, which goes to show that this tradition of being a `gondhali’ runs in our family.

“Even as kids, we accompanied our elders to the homes that had given them the `supari’ (contract) to perform. The folklore and songs were an integral part of our dialect. We would don colourful outfits, pick up some primitive home-made music instrument, and just start singing and dancing. There was no formal training, yet we were professionals.”

But folk art is slowly dying, and not everybody chooses that as a way of living. Nor did Ambure, who did everything from selling cages to capture mice to working in a kiln before enrolling into the police force in “1930, I think it was,” he says with a sheepish toothless grin, wordlessly asking that his failing memory be excused.

A memory he cherishes of his tenure in the police is of the time when he was amongst others on guard at the Aga Khan palace, “at the time when Gandhiji was in confinement there. I would look at him from a distance and fold my hands in reverence. Soon after independence, Ambure quit the police service and immersed himself in the pursuit of the tamasha.“I had met Patthe Bapurao early in my life, and had accepted him as my mentor. After I quit the force, I got my tamasha troupe together, and we toured all around the state – Satara, Kolhapur, Karad, Sholapur – performing tamashas like Sonyacha Diwas, Imani Sardar writing pawadas on Raja Harishchandra, Babasaheb Ambedkar. But the one on the Gandhi dynasty is his latest composition, tracing the life not just of Indira Gandhi, but also those of her two sons and “the sacrifice of the family for the nation,” and he suddenly breaks off into an animated rendition of `Indira Tujha Jai jai kar’.

And that shakes him out of his reverie. With tears in his eyes, he actually falls at the feet of anybody willing to lend a sympathetic ear to his present tale of woe. “All these medals that are pinned onto my shirt – they are reminders of a glorious time whose memory is also fading quickly. I have a home, a family, but since many years, I have been living on the streets, sleeping in the courtyard of the Dashbhuja Ganapati temple or under the awning of a nearby grocery store. I eat what these people can spare. I have been beaten by goons hired by my family, I cannot step into my own house,” he says, and his friend of many years, Dattunivarti Ansure, a grocer, adds, “I’ve known him for over 40 years; he’s always lived here and become some sort of a local figure. We’ve seen his pictures, heard his songs, know that he was a good artist. But this is his present.”

And all along the time his friend has been talking about him, Ambure has settled down on the temple floor, tucked his bag (that contains everything that has some meaning in his life) beneath his head, and slipped into dreams that bring alive his past…