An artiste-cum-tea seller singing song while serving tea at his tea stall.
The 3-day Rajgir Mahotsav concluded yesterday. After the program was over in the night and before returning to the headquarters, I chose to roam through the mela ground where I got attracted by a tea stall being run under the open sky of the mela ground.
The tea-seller happened to be a talented folk artiste of his own kind. In order to entertain his customers, the tea-seller while serving tea,wore an interesting get-up and often took to dancing in accordance with the music & lyrics of the songs that were mostly patriotic.
To me it was no less entertaining than those performed a short while ago from the mainstage.
But you know branding with name & fame matters and when it matters it matters immensely and that too in all walks of life.
It's the effect of this branding that an artiste performing from the mainstage gets paid in million while the other, being out of that pandal covered mainstage, had to take recourse to selling tea and dancing & singing simultaneously in open sky to eke out his living.
Art wise both were doing the same thing.
But one with name & fame and the other without it.
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Apart from that the खटिया(cot) laid spread for the customers at the stall not only provided a typical relaxation to me while sitting thereupon but the feeling also drove me to my long distant past when I remembered how, during my childhood days, I, for my childish enjoyment, would hop & freak on that string woven cot only to be get scolded by my mother.
In fact my father would relax and sleep during summer on that string woven cot called खटिया laid in the "आंगन"(courtyard).
What "आंगन " of our times looked like can only be a matter of imagination for the young ones whose birth happened in apartments or places far removed from rural set up of the past.
Those days of childhood are still saved in my memory.
R.R. Prabhakar.
03.12.2023
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