In the harsh world of the 6,000 women circus artistes (two thirds from Nepal, most of the rest from Kerala and West Bengal), survival isn't easy, despair can be a constant ally. It is okay as long as they are active, performing twice a day, keeping the cash registers ringing. But the moment they quit, the money flow is choked instantly. There are no retirement benefits, no ex-gratia, even the mandatory provident fund that was deducted each month doesn't come their way. It doesn't help matters when the average circus girl's career is a closed chapter by the time she is into her early 30s.

The ones in their early teens--the fresh recruits--earn about 250 rupees a week; those closer to `retirement' take home three to four times that figure. Company girls like Suman, unmarried, are lodged inside the corrugated sheet tents and fed three meals a day. Two sets of circus attire come along when they join. Those still training and raw get no pay; but then board and lodging is gratis until such time the Company finds them good enough to be absorbed by signing the bond.

All circus owners are alike. They come across as unsparing martinets. not quite ready to allow the young girls to mix with anybody. not even those artistes who are married and stay in the small tents adjoining corrugated dorms. Contact with the `outside' world has its hazards; the girls, gullible, can easily fall prey to flesh operators or can be swayed by a few bucks more offered by rival circus companies. If that happens, the five-year bond that each of the company girls sign will mean very little. There is no time for courts in the wandering journey of a circus company.

Away from the dazzle and glamour of the trapeze, the Globe, the big lights, the giant billboards that attract crowds, it is a walk down Mean Street. Ask Sumina Kumari. 16. from Payyoli. home to the legendary P.T.Usha. Already she has been wedded to a life of bondage for live long years. When barely 10. her mother put her in a school at Thalassery, India's Circus Capital.

The next year she got picked up by Amar Circus, Kerala-based group that performs year-round across the country. Thus began an unending ritual for Sumina, very early in life. The circus life took her to many states, paying her little. Then the ritual turned into an ordeal. Sumina's contract expired late last year, but still she could not escape the vice-like clutches of her employers who aren't quite ready to let her -go. Union leaders from the INTUC's Kerala chapter have tried to intervene, but so far the efforts haven't borne much fruit. The circus owners just turn a deaf ear to the numerous pleas for releasing Sumina. Will they?

Her mother, anxious, withering and weak from working as a construction labour, wishes to see her daughter desperately. Will she venture out of her little but and fetch her? "It is a difficult task. I do not have the resources," she explains feebly. To find Sumina she will have to traverse the length of the country and reach some remote town in Punjab. That is where her daughter is, performing before an audience that showers accolades in a language she doesn't understand. Going to fetch Sumina will cost her mother a fortune. So she won't.

For Sumina's mother, with New Year arrived a few thousand rupees. She was naturally elated; she might not have been if she had realised that the money would be systematically ripped away from her daughter's small pay every week.