IT’S EASY TO MISS THE CIRCUS ACADEMY in Thalassery, sandwiched as it is between bakeries on a street festooned with red flags, a lonely building hidden behind a bus-stand. Entering through a side door one morning in September, I found myself in a large cinema hall that had been stripped down and cemented, a projection screen hanging limply on one wall and a few spring mattresses scattered over the floor. A woman in a nightie peeped out from behind a door to say that the students were out, and would be back at 5 o’clock.
The academy was set up in 2010 by Kerala’s then ruling Left Democratic Front coalition. According to Sreedharan Champad, a former trapeze artist who has been documenting the history of the Indian circus for the past two decades, whom I met in Thalassery, “The opening of the academy was a campaign move by the Left Democratic Front coalition ahead of the 2011 elections. But the plan went up in smoke when they lost the election two months after the inauguration.”
The academy was intended to promote the circus in Thalassery, a coastal town in northern Kerala which had once been one of India’s most thriving centres of circus. Keeleri Kunhikannan, a gymnastics instructor, founded a training centre here in 1901, after meeting and being inspired by Vishupant Chatre, who established the first Indian circus company in Maharashtra towards the end of the 19th century. Kunhikannan’s centre produced a number of performers who were vital to the Indian circus industry in the mid-20th century, such as MV Shankaran, the founder of the famous Gemini Circus. Champad explained that during the 1940s and 1950s, many poor families sent their children to work in circuses, where their expenses, food and clothing were taken care of. “Before you knew it, 90 percent of people—men, women and children—in the circuses across the country were from Thalassery,” he said.
But in the decades since the 1970s, the town’s circus industry has seen a steady decline owing to a number of factors, such as the risky nature of circus jobs, the migration of large numbers of young people to the Middle East and, according to Champad, the lack of respect accorded to the form. Without an accompanying growth in the industry and the craft of circus, Champad said, the founding of the academy was a move that was bound to fail. “The world has progressed and circuses have become more sophisticated, so playing the trapeze or walking the high wire does not cut it anymore,” he said, “We have people who have the skills, but we need to get out and see how countries abroad are doing it and take cues from them.”
I returned to the academy at quarter past five to find that training was in progress, with three teachers training 12 children. A 13-year-old boy ran across the hall with his arms pinned tightly by his side, gaining speed with each step. Then, he lifted himself off the ground, curling into a ball as he arced into the air. Then, unfurling as he began to descend, he landed cleanly on his feet. “Shabaash! But you need to finish with more flourish,” said Ramanathan, a teacher. He explained to me that the children come from circus performer families in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Nepal. They train at the academy to obtain certificates that will allow them to work when they are of legal age. During their years at the academy, they attend a school in Thalassery while undergoing circus training in the mornings and evenings.
Ramanathan summoned the students to practise “boneless”: a series of acrobatic stunts where performers twist and contort their bodies into knots. “A jolly life,” he said about his 30-odd years at the circus, first as a trapeze artist, then as a booking manager. “It’s been more than ten years since I left the circus, but I have so many memories to keep.” He counted travels across the country and the birth of his son in the circus as treasured moments from his life in the industry.
But Ramanathan, too, is pessimistic about the possibilities for the academy. “Every month we send a detailed list to the collector’s office making requests for performance equipment like trapezes, roller skates, wires and even safety measures like nets, but there has been no response from the authorities,” he said. “Their lack of interest is demotivating for us. We come in everyday to train, and the children are enthusiastic, but the academy has not taken off.”