Mitsou,
the Funambulist
By Jacob Gelt Dekker,
Calcutta August 2007
“ Aaah, ooh, eeh” cried the
awed guests at the wedding party as they witnessed this
special high-wire performance, entertained, but worried
from fear for the fate of a little boy, Mitsou the
Funambulist. Mitsou, the tight rope walker clad in grand
gold, had been introduced as “The most famous Child
Funambulist of Andhra Pradesh” performed against the
background décor of an acrobats’ stage. When Mitsou
nearly missed his step and, for seconds, caprioled
grotesquely suspended in thin air, the crowd held its
breath. Was that slip real? Did this child gamble with
his life or did he play with the crowd’s delight of
fear? The crowd sighed and roared. Steadied again,
Mitsou shuffled forward, gripping the cable between his
toes and wiggling his peculiarly large head for balance
much like Indian Striped squirrels achieve their balance
by swiveling their tails. The crowd howled, ready, in
the deepest darkness of their unconsciousness to see
Mitsou’s skull squashed onto the concrete pavement
underneath with his brains splashed all over like gores
from an overripe pumpkin. “Forward lame foot!” they
hissed. “Forward sluggard, pallid faced dwarf!” Women
shrieked in ecstasy, wagging their tongues, wailing high
pitch, like tribal women do whenever exited. “Man is a
rope fastened between animal and Superman, a rope over
an abyss,” Niesche had Zarathustra mumble these words,
while he was observing a marketplace performer. “ Man is
to become Superman, rising beyond himself; like a snake,
chewing off his own head.” “I am the jester,” Mitsou had
told me, “a jester, making newly weds understand their
foolishness and at the same time bestowing blessings on
their new attachments.” Banjarans--- Indian gypsy
dancers--- and Hijras--- male transvestite s
and devotees of Hindu mother goddess Bahuchara Mata---
make a living performing at Indian wedding parties.
Newly-weds, attaching to a new life of procreation and
futilities in a society where strife for detachment is
the greatest achievement, need Banjaran and Hijras to
guide them across that precious bridge in life. After
all, was karma not playing a cruel joke on them? Mitsou
and his troop acted as divine gurus, full of eternal
wisdom. Balancing in perfect equilibrium on the high
wire, the little boy oracled gracefully, “Is not
refuting all truths equal to accepting them? Is not Man
in danger of falling into the abyss of nothingness?”
Than he shrieked in triumph, full of deviance of death
lurking in the depth below. In a weeklong marriage
ceremony all truths of life were put to ceremonial
tests. The unreal became real. Bride and groom lived
like kings and queens in fairytale splendor. This was
the moment of triumph for Mitsou, the funambulist, and
his group.
The newly-wed’s Taj Mahal
palace was made out of canvas and bamboo sticks erected
by homeless
gypsies. The jewelry, adorning ropes, turbans, gowns, shoes, hands, feet
and
heads, noses and cheeks, was borrowed and fake. Intricate henna patterns
covered
hands and feet of the bride, supposedly artistically applied by artisan
servants, were
just quick glue on stencils. Mitsou’s balancing act on the tight cord was
nothing less
than the incarnation of future marital life’s tribulations with death and
defeat always
lurking deep down in the gorges of the abyss. For money, Mitsou would
cast thousands of spells of good luck to divert
adversity and warding off bad karma. Total eradication
of evil would be considered against eternal perpetuation
of the life cycle. After all, for good luck one needs a
bit of bad luck. Startlingly, Mitsou was the son of a
Hijras. “One day, “Mitsou had told me out of the blue
with the great wisdom only privileged to children, “One
day, I will become a Hijras, a devotee to goddess
Bahuchara Mata.” Making such pledge to me, an important
foreign guest, was more than a holy oath taken in public
in Bahuchara’s temple of devotion. Mitsou had beamed
with pride,
shining like a morning sun. Tradition dictated that once
Mitsou proved his fertility in marriage by procreating a
child, he would be free to become a eunuch, like his
father, and pay the ultimate sacrifice to his Goddess
Bahuchara Mata by radical castration. In the act he
would be challenging all those who were about to
commence their life cycle in holy matrimony. Mitsou‘s
eunuch life would be the embodiment of temptation of the
flesh denied. The boy’s dream was to become living
mockery of life’s reality.
|
