TAMASHA

Tamasha is a docu-fiction. This photographic project explores everyday challenges faced by Tamasha, a 100 person family collectively known as Lokkalawant that live life like nomads across the state of Maharashtra in India.

The project focuses on their everyday life and is documented to reflects the discriminative and prejudicial treatment towards them. People in the community often see them as just a form of entertainment and often neglect their basic needs.

I have personally observed such situations not only with Lokkalawants but with many others.

Through Tamasha I would like to reflect on similar issues in our society. Some things happen multiple times and repetitively and we get so used to them, that we often forget to react to it. There is always hierarchy and discrimination between people. Always, there is neglect, disregard everywhere because of several reasons.

I made a lot of trips to visit the Tamasha family to create these photographs. Peeking into others' life is not that easy, spending time with them in their space, becoming one of them was very difficult for me when I started. I have spent time with them over a period of 6 months in 2016. I traveled and stayed with the Tamasha tribe to understand and experience their daily life. What started off as an initial idea of just exploring a dying art & culture that has been followed in Maharashtra since the 16th century, I slowly built up to where I am now, allowing myself to explore another side of Tamasha as a performance to symbolise visual arts to convey artistic expression that revolves around discrimination.

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