Accompanied by the deafening roar of bikes, the rattling panels of the ‘well of death’ comes Baby Khan astride her bike. She poses with a sideways salute. All the time the bike is flirting with speed in the range of a 100 kmph. “It is nothing,” she says after the show. Tell her she is the ultimate showgirl, a rockstar, she shrugs it off with “it is just another job and no more dangerous than driving on the road.”
Baby Khan is part a team of seven daredevil stunt drivers at the Marana Kinar (Well of Death) or Maut Ka Kuan at the Aluva Manapuram. The ‘well’ is a circular wood-panelled enclosure, with metal pipes for support and around 20 foot high. The action takes place on the sides of this structure which looks like a giant’s cup from the outside. Once upon a time acts such as these were fixtures in circuses, but not any more.
Driving in circles, parallel to the ground – sometimes sitting, often standing, hands-free, saluting and waving – is scary. There seem to be a hundred things that can go wrong, all life-threatening. “Thinking makes it so. If you think it is life-threatening then it is,” says Shanker Ram, Baby’s colleague.
Baby and Shanker are resting after their show. It is eight in the night and they have already done a few shows. They are taking rest before the next round. Baby, who belongs to Tirunelveli, was drawn to daredevilry as a young girl, her father was a manager of the troupe Golden Amusement Company. It has been 20-22 years since she turned daredevil. Baby’s take is that what she does is like any other job a woman does.
Her husband Babu Khan owns the company and she can choose whether or not she wants to work. “She does as she pleases. I have told her often that she doesn’t have to do it. But she is greedy for the adulation and the applause,” he says. Baby agrees. For her the appreciation is the payoff. She has three children, none of whom have followed in her footsteps.
The first step in learning to ride was in circles, the next step was getting in to the well and riding. Coordination between the riders ensures safety, Baby and Shanker say. Shanker and two others drive cars and four others ride motorbikes. For him too it was love at first sight with Maut Ka Kuan . He started when he was 18, “I am 33 now.”
Babu Khan used to be a driver in the well, “I used to drive a car in the well. I set up the first one in 1994.” He has been coming to Aluva and Kerala since 1997. Besides Aluva, he takes the company to places such as Malappuram, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram. “Every Onam I am in the capital city.”
While in Kerala they pitch their tent at temple festivals such as these, in other parts of the country, it is the mela grounds. They spend eight months a year in Kerala and the remaining four in Tamil Nadu.
The ride is not as dangerous as it used to be in the old days, when riders would ride bikes on the dome of a globe-shaped structure. The accidents too are minor, according to Baby. “If the faults are mechanical such as a flat tyre, then we slow down and come down. It looks scary and that is the attraction of the show.” Insurance? No need, say the drivers. “We said it is not life-threatening.” Practice? “Not everyday. At this stage we don’t have to.”
Shanker says, as an employee, he earns around Rs. 500 a day, “the baksheesh we get to keep.” The drivers spend eight months with the company and get four months off. The camp ground is home for the duration.
At one side of the enclosure next to the well are tents. Cooks roll out chapathis in one tent while in another, one of Baby’s daughters irons clothes. A well-fed labrador incessantly barks from a corner. “He is our pet and guards the property. He is let loose at night,” Shanker says.
The mornings are spent checking not only the vehicles but also the nuts and bolts that hold the panels of the well together.
The sounds of raised engines of bikes indicate it’s time for the next show. “There is no paucity of people in our field. There is something about the kuan that draws people,” Shanker says and offers the driver’s seat in the well. Another time may be.
