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Tamasha
(redirected from tamashas)

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Tamasha 

a basic Indian theatrical form, consisting of songs and dances. Originating around the 17th century, the tamasha became popular in the state of Maharashtra, where performances about the feats of Krishna and the Marathi warrior heroes were staged in an open square, without scenery, makeup, or costumes. Singers, illustrating their songs through pantomime, were accompanied by a chorus and often even by a small group of musicians playing a drum, a dulcimer, and flutes.

Around the turn of the 19th century, the tamasha became a popular folk theater about contemporary life. With the growth of the anticolonial movement, however, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the tamasha began to take an increasingly social direction. In Bombay today there are professional troupes that perform in the genre of the tamasha.



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Some tamashas have a quasi-religious value, such as exhibitions of "auspicious" five-legged cows which are mentioned in nineteenth century accounts of the mela, (58) and a joy ride at the 2007 Ardh Kumbh, "Ma Ganga Devi Yatra," which resembled a roller coaster, except the car moves at a more dignified pace up a construction representing Mount Kaliash, to the source of the Ganga, concluding not with a rush, but a darshan of Shiva and his divine consort Parvati.
As a long-standing observer of such tamashas (shenanigans) I always think I have seen the ultimate in flattery.
 
 
 
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