Teejan Bai: When an Unschooled Village Girl Heard the Call of the Mahabharata

On a humid July morning in 2017, the drive from Bhilai to Ganiyari took twenty minutes. Waiting at her home—Kaushalya Nivas—was Teejan Bai, one of India's greatest storytellers. She welcomed me with the warmth of an old acquaintance. Within minutes she had transported me—not merely to Kurukshetra, but to her own childhood...

During our hour-long chat, she happily narrated her chance encounter and lifelong affair with Pandavani.

Pandavani

Pandavani literally means 'the voice of the Pandavas'—the Mahabharata narrated from the perspective of the Pandava brothers. Though unique to Chhattisgarh, it is part of a pan-Indian tradition of sharing the epic through storytelling, song, music and theatre.

Often, neither the storyteller, singer, performer, nor the audience, was literate. None had gone to school. Yet, since childhood, they had dipped into the ever-flowing rivers of cultural memory that the epic represented. Everyone knew these stories, yet every performer reinterpreted them according to their own genius, and everyone in the audience made sense of them in their own unique way.

India has a long tradition of interpreters of sacred literature — from Buddhist monks, Jaina saints, Alvars, Nayanars, Sufis, to Bhakti poets like Surdas, Kabir, Meera, Tulasi Das  — who shared moral insights in familiar language and style.

They seldom preached from a pulpit. They simply sat among villagers, told their stories, and sang their songs.

Teejan Bai belongs naturally in this long lineage. But she was not merely a storyteller, nor simply a singer, nor just one who played the ektara; she was a performer par excellence. Borrowing generously from Chhattisgarhi nacha and the rich repertoire of tribal folk songs and stories, she emerged as an icon of Indian folk theatre.

She refused to sit on the stage and perform Pandavani in the sedate Vedmati style considered appropriate for women. Instead, using just a little space on a modest stage and almost no props, she strode like a colossus and made the Mahabharata come alive for her audience.

When she entered the stage with her signature declamation—"Bolo Vrindavan-Bihari Lal ki Jai"—she instantly built an intimate rapport with her audience. She was one of them, narrating familiar yet ever-fresh stories in her own unique style. She loved her audience, and the audience loved her back.

Teejan Bai at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, 2015.

A Girl Finds Her Guru

"I was about thirteen, and spent all day with my sahelis playing chupam-chupai, gilli-danda and kabaddi. We had great fun. One evening, when I came home totally smeared in mud, Mother screamed at me, forbade me to enter the house and ordered me to go to the nahar for a proper wash.

I was very hungry, and it was already getting dark. But what to do? With much reluctance, I headed for the canal. Not very far from our house lived Nana—my father's uncle. As I was walking past his house, I heard him singing. It was so mesmerising that I stood there transfixed. My body shivered—'जैसे की मुझे करंट लगा हो'—as though I had received an electric shock. Nana was singing द्रौपदी चीरहरण – the disrobing of Draupadi."

His small thatched house had no door, only a stick-and-straw contraption to keep stray dogs away. She sneaked in quietly, sat in a dark corner, and listened till he finished.

"Every evening, he sang to no audience but to himself. Every evening, I tiptoed in and listened as the story of the Mahabharata progressed."

One evening, Nana heard her enter.

"Who's there?"

She remained silent.

"Who's there?"

"Nana, it's me—Teejan."

"Billi, what are you doing here?"

He fondly called her Billi—cat. Her mother called her Chuhiya—little mouse. Others called her Chhipkali—gecko.

"Just listening to your kahani and geet. I love it."

"Since when?"

"Since the day you sang Draupadi Cheerharan."

That was nearly a fortnight earlier.

"Come here," he said.

She sat beside him.

"For you, I shall sing everything I remember—from Adi Parva to Swargarohan. But first we must perform a little ceremony. Tomorrow bring two coconuts, a little rice, turmeric, vermilion, a few incense sticks and five rupees."

"Nana, you know I don't have money for coconuts and incense sticks. I'll gather flowers and collect the rest from home."

"Very well. I'll arrange the rest. You bring fresh flowers."

The following day they sat facing each other on little straw mats. He performed a simple puja, chanting "Vrindavan-Bihari Lal ki Jai." He first offered a coconut to Vagdevi Saraswati; then she offered one to him. She prostrated before him and touched his feet.

"From today," he blessed her, "you are no longer merely a listener. You are my shishya. One day you will perform Pandavani and many others will listen to you. But you must make one sacrifice. Give up playing childish games with your sahelis. You have no time for them now."

From that day, she stopped playing with her friends. She eagerly awaited the evening sessions with Nana. Gradually, the stories seeped into her body and soul and gave her a thrill beyond words. During the day, while doing household chores, she replayed them—sometimes silently in her mind, sometimes aloud in a sonorous voice, much to the amusement of her younger brothers and sisters.

Her mother, however, was far from amused.

One evening she stormed into Nana's house.

"चाचा, चुहिया अब शादी लायक हो गई है। काहे ये गाना-बजाना सिखा रहे हैं?"

"Uncle, our daughter is now of marriageable age. Why are you spoiling her by teaching her to sing?"

To spare Nana further embarrassment, Teejan quietly returned home.

On another occasion, while acting out the Keechak episode before her siblings, she let out a mighty roar as Bhima.

Just then her mother entered.

Startled by the thunderous scream, she kicked Teejan so hard that, as she laughingly recalled, "it could easily have felled Keechak."

"Hamari naak kataegi, yeh dokri!" her mother lamented. "She will disgrace the family."

Not Just an Ektara

One day Nana gently dusted a musical instrument and placed it on her lap.

"This is my ektara. I play it when I sing Pandavani."

The ektara is a simple string instrument whose hollow gourd serves as its resonator.

"But, Nana, I've never seen you play it."

"Billi, can't you see? The string broke long ago. I haven't mended it yet."

The following day she walked to the nearby village market.

"How much?"

"Four annas."

She bought three strings for twelve annas—a princely sum for a poor village girl.

“I had stolen one rupee from mother's savings.”

While Nana was away selling handmade brooms from village to village, she tried to repair the ektara herself.

"If one string can create music, surely three strings can create even better music," she reasoned.

She carefully drilled two additional holes but failed to fit the strings.

When Nana returned, she expected a scolding.

Instead, he quietly fixed all three strings, strummed them gently, smiled, and placed the instrument back in her lap.

"Now it is yours."

"But, Nana, I don't know how to play."

"No matter. Soon you will. And always remember, this ektara is much more than an instrument. It is Krishna. It is Saraswati. Keep it beside you on the stage. You will be blessed."

She learned to perform Pandavani with the accompaniment of the ektara—which, thanks to her youthful ingenuity, had become a teen-tara.

Later, in her extraordinarily imaginative hands, the ektara became Arjuna's Gandiva, Bhima's mace, Krishna himself, and countless other characters, objects and symbols.

Near a picture of Goddess Saraswati in a corner of her drawing room rested an ektara.

"Is that the one your Nana gave you?" I asked.

"No. The one Nana gave me died of old age. But Nana's soul lives in this one. He is always watching me, urging me to perform better."

Defying Discrimination

"After several months of learning at the feet of my guru, my heart was full of song and I was ready to render Pandavani. When I went to stay with a relative in a village near Sakti, Bilaspur, I made many new friends among girls of my age, whom I entertained by singing Pandavani. Unknown to me, the Zamindar's farm workers sat under a large mango tree and listened while having their lunch.

One day, the Zamindar himself heard me sing. He liked it so much that he organised my first public performance in the village and rewarded me with eleven rupees. That was a princely sum. For the rest of my stay, I sang every day from my relative's little hut. The Zamindar, his workers and other villagers gathered beneath the mango tree to listen."

Thereafter, invitations began arriving from villages near and far, and she gladly accepted them.

In her early years, however, she also faced discrimination. She belonged to the Pardhi Bhil community and was a young woman who dared to perform Pandavani in the vigorous Kapalik style, long regarded as the preserve of male performers. Women were expected to remain seated and sing in the gentler Vedmati style. Teejan Bai broke that convention and, in doing so, permanently transformed Pandavani.

"Once, in a large village, a Sadhu Maharaj had been invited to deliver Bhagavata Pravachan during the long summer days. The organisers had invited me to perform Pandavani in the evenings. When Maharaj learnt of this, he threatened to cancel his Pravachan. He refused to share the same stage with an untouchable woman, even though his discourse was during the day and my performance at night. He insisted that a separate, smaller and lower stage be erected for me. The organisers reluctantly agreed.

Before my first performance, I went to seek Maharaj's blessings. I requested him to bless a देहाती, गंवार, अनपढ़ लड़की—a rustic, ignorant and illiterate village girl—who wished to narrate the Mahabharata in her own simple way, and in Chhattisgarhi. I also requested him to hear me at least once.

Maharaj blessed me.

He attended my performance that evening—and every evening thereafter.

For eighteen days Maharaj delivered his learned discourses in chaste, Sanskritised Hindi, quoting verses from Vyasa's Mahabharata. For eighteen evenings, I narrated the epic in Chhattisgarhi, from Adi Parva to Swargarohan. It was my first major public performance."

Art had quietly succeeded where argument may have failed.

Pandavani: My Life and Livelihood

"The organisers and the villagers showered their appreciation upon me. Besides cash, they gave me rice, dal, ghee, a milch cow and a heifer. My earnings were far beyond anything I had imagined.

But when I returned home with two bullock carts laden with provisions, we had an immediate problem.

Where would we keep them?

Our tiny hut had only one room. It served as our living room, kitchen and bedroom. We had never possessed enough to require storage. The monsoon was only days away, and everything would be ruined if left outside. So, for the next few days, we built a small thatched shed to store the grain and another shelter for the cow and her calf."

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Bharat Ek Khoj

Millions of Indians first encountered Pandavani through Shyam Benegal's landmark television serial Bharat Ek Khoj, based on Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India. Broadcast from October 1988, Episode 5 explores the timeless appeal of the Mahabharata and features Teejan Bai in one of her most captivating performances. For many viewers, she became the living voice of the epic.

(Source: Bharat Ek Khoj, Episode 5, Mahabharata-Part I)

Unforgettable Episodes

Of her several memorable performances, Draupadi Cheerhan and Dushashan Vadh epitomise her iconic narrative and performative style.

Her rendition of Draupadi's cheerharan is spellbinding.

Through an extraordinary interplay of narration, gesture, voice and movement, she conveys Draupadi's outrage at Yudhishthira's folly, the helpless silence of the other Pandavas, the humiliation of a queen, the resolve to avenge the assault on her dignity, and finally, her complete surrender to Krishna.

Dushashan, endowed with the strength of ten thousand elephants, struggles to disrobe her. But as the endless folds of her sari continue to appear, he collapses in exhaustion and despair.

The entire episode acquires extraordinary dramatic power in Teejan Bai's hands.

Among Teejan Bai's most electrifying performances is Dushashan Vadh, one of the most violent episodes in the Mahabharata.

Dushashan had dragged Draupadi by her hair into Duryodhana's court and attempted to disrobe her before the assembled elders. Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, Vidura and even her five valiant husbands watched in helpless silence. Humiliated and enraged, Draupadi vowed that she would leave her hair untied until it had been bathed in Dushashan's blood.

On the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Bhima wrestled Dushashan to the ground, tore him apart and summoned Draupadi to fulfil her terrible vow.

Yet Teejan Bai rendered this harrowing episode with such astonishing artistic sensitivity that the violence never overwhelmed the drama. The gore remained vibhatsa, but never became repulsive. She had never studied Bharata Muni's Natyashastra, yet she instinctively knew how to evoke the appropriate rasa in her audience with remarkable ease.

In the Kathakali sequence in Bharat Ek Khoj (Episode 6), Bhima tears open Dushashan—a powerful visual echo of Narasimha slaying Hiranyakashipu—drinks his blood, and knots Draupadi's hair with his entrails. Yet, whether in Kathakali or in Teejan Bai's Pandavani, the violence is never an end in itself. It serves a larger moral and emotional purpose.

Age Cannot Wither Her...

"How often do you perform these days?" I asked.

"Much less than in my younger days, when I could perform throughout the night. I am no longer as robust or agile. But once I step onto the stage, the audience fills me with energy. My aching body, my stiff joints—everything disappears. I perform for hours without feeling tired.

"I cannot hear well now. I have tried three different hearing aids, but with little success. Somehow, I manage."

"No matter if you cannot hear well," I replied. "You are the narrator, the singer and the performer. Your audience loves listening to you. May God keep you hale and hearty and grant you a long life."

She smiled.

"This house—Kaushalya Nivas—stands where my Nana's little hut once stood. It was here that I learnt Pandavani at my Guru's feet. I built a new house on the same plot. Now I live here with my joint family."

Transcending Linguistic Barriers

Teejan Bai performed with great aplomb during the Festival of India in Paris in 1986-87 and later in many countries across the world.

Why were audiences across languages and cultures spellbound by an oral performance in Chhattisgarhi?

Perhaps she did not merely retell the Mahabharata; she revealed its emotional and moral architecture through an instinctive mastery of dramatic expression.

A Towering Cultural Icon

Had Teejan's mother not sent her to the nahar that evening, she might never have paused outside her Nana's humble hut. The Mahabharata's oral tradition—and Indian folk theatre itself—might have been deprived of one of its greatest voices. A trivial domestic incident became one of those magical moments that quietly enriched and popularised the cultural history of a nation.

She heard the irresistible call of Pandavani and walked into its embrace. The art transformed her; in time, she transformed the art.

Teejan Bai at her home with a guest.

Note:

I had the privilege of meeting Padma Vibhushan Teejan Bai at her home in Ganiyari, Chhattisgarh, in July 2017. This essay is based largely on that conversation, supplemented by published sources on Pandavani and her remarkable career.

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