Save the last dance

“Since the colonial times, our forefathers have been Kalandars. We too earned a decent living through bear and monkey dance performances. But about three to four years back some private organisations started harassing us. They said that we cannot pursue this work unless we have a license. We went to Lucknow to get ourselves registered and obtain licenses for our work. For some time we could peacefully pursue our work, but soon the same social organisations started taking the bears and their cubs away from us. Close to 2500 bears have been taken away from us and for some, we haven’t even been paid any money. We were also promised alternate sources of income by them, but nothing materialised. They took our bears away and gave us false hopes of a government job and opening shops or buying auto rickshaws. At that time whoever refused this bargain, was beaten up by the cops. Some of our old folks were even beaten to death!

I wouldn’t say that we haven’t got any money at all, but paying the school fees for six or seven months every two years or giving us five thousand rupees for a wedding isn’t sufficient. We haven’t been given any job yet. Around twenty-five men in our family are unemployed and I don’t know how many more are there in the entire Mathura zone. We really don’t know what to do... We sometimes set up small shops (pheri) or take the monkeys around for dance shows but this doesn’t fetch us enough money to run the house. It is not even close to what we can earn from the bears. We kept our bears like family members. Some of our bears survived for as long as twenty years. The animal was feeding our family and we never kept it unhappy. Whenever they had infections or fell ill, we gave them herbal treatment and even took professional medical help. In fact, I want to know about the 2500 bears they took from us. The two centers of this organisation don’t have as many bears. So where are they? People say that they trade their parts to international markets for good money.....Continue