The booming voice exploded like cannon balls in the auditorium. It ricocheted across the walls, making an easy victim of many in the audience. It was impossible to not be struck down by the sheer intensity and force of that voice. Words didn't seem to matter. Probably, he would have made even a nursery rhyme sound just as powerful. But he wasn't singing a nursery rhyme. He was singing about characters from the longest poem in the world and adding a few more feet of verse to it. The story was that of Draupadi's secret admiration for Karna, the Shudra warrior who was fiercely hated by all five of her Kshatriya husbands. The singer on the stage that evening was Lokshahir Vithal Umap.
Umap, all of seventy five, mesmerized the audience with his commanding performance of the Gondhal. I noticed that he was standing at least five feet away from the microphone, which i later discovered, was the only way in which he could strike a compromise with the sensitive microphones for he wasn't born into the world of condensor mics or recording studios. He was born in the world of open air performances for audiences in villages and towns where there was no remote possibility of any sound systems and the artist could depend only on his laryngeal prowess to reach the farthest corner of the audience. Umap assumed Draupadi's role with the same ease as he did with any other character. All he had to do was drape that waist cloth over his head to enter Draupadi's character and within a moment switch to a male character. The play was performed in the traditional Gondhali fashion starting with a prayer to Renuka Devi down to the bright coloured waist bands and turbans of the performers. The stage came alive with those colours and the accompanying histrionics of the Gondhalis. The humour in the script swept away any undue inhibitions in the audience that would have kept them from enjoying this satire on the vulnerability of the characters in the Mahabharat. Even Iravati Karve or Cecil Katz couldn't have imagined the depiction of the characters from the epic in the light, humourous manner that the Gondhalis did. Of course, there was also no pretense, whatsoever of any literary criticism. It was plain, simple folk drama brought alive with toungue in cheek references to the moral flaws in the characters and compositions that gripped the listener's pulse. But if it wasn't for Umap, then i fear ifl the script would have got translated into the impressive performance that we were witnessing then.
I did get in touch with Umap later and even recorded a short radio jingle with his son in 2007. Umap's art was combined with his strong dedication to Ambedkar. I looked out for another opportunity to watch Jambhul Akhyan but didn't manage to and finally in November 2010, when we were travelling back from Satara, Sunil broke the news that Umap had passed away that morning. Umap was on stage at eighty years of age when he fell down, an end befitting one whose life had belonged on the same stage. I believe it may have looked like a benevolent Banyan tree being felled down by an arc of lightning. "Aani Karnala Paahuna, Draupadicha Mana Paghulala", the verse from Jambhul Akhyan keeps ringing in my head even now and brings alive the Gondhal and those Gondhalis who rocked the stage that night.
