Tumble of Joy ~

Crowd waited for what it seemed like their favorite skit coming next. Majority of them were starry eyed children of all shapes and sizes. Some sitting on the edge of their plastic seats with their grins tucked-in-milk-teeth while some stayed motionless in air, somewhere in-between sitting & standing.

In the center of the animated crowd, stood a spot lit circus ring and a spot lit the ringmaster with painted cheeks and lips. “… and here comes your little tumble of joy, my frieeeeennnnn” And a tiny colorful cloth ball rolled it’s way between his stocking-legs from behind, stealing the ringmaster of his balance. The tent wobbled with instant uproar of laughs. Children clapped and cackled while they watched the cloth ball unfolding itself into their loved elfin clown.

Tim, the tumble of joy!

Tim bowed to his little audience making a funny gaseous sound while bending. The ringmaster faded away twitching his pointy nose. A gigantic guffaw responded. Tim winked at the crowd and his comic snorts made his red-round-nose look bigger with every snort. Then suddenly dropping on his back and shaking his tiny feet in air; he enacted his signature mime-laugh. Children anxiously watched his moves for a moment and cracked up in the very next.

For nearly four decades, Tim had savored the special place in hearts & laughs of people of Townsville, a small town where he had lived & performed as a clown since he was a boy. He had dexterously mastered his comic style into a continuous play of clowning and audience-applauses that it was difficult to really trace out who really motivated whom.

Tonight was his last night of performance. ‘Or was it the beginning’, he smiled at the thought of having a hearty laugh with his circus-manager on the same lines that morning. His eyes had the radiance of a child and so had his heart. While juggling he scanned his audiences like always. Yet again two kids mimicking him tumbled their way across the seats causing commotion in a corner & invited some independent laughs. “My tumbles of joy”, he said to himself.

It was hours past mid night as he walked his way from the circus tent towards his caravan. Jovial sounds of the circus fading behind him were replaced by some inaudible beats that continued playing in his feet, finger tips and the jiggling head.

Tim had recorded it all. The circus tune, the sounds of drums, the bells and the rings, the commentary and the anxious pauses, the squeaky sounds of wheels with weight, the sounds of feet dropping hard on strong shoulders, the sounds of rope, the breath, the sighs and the phew-s, the beautiful girls and their smells, the makeup, the dresses, the feathers in the hats, the chuckles, the giggles, the cries, the colour drapes and changing colour lights, the whips and the roars, the bears and the snakes, the boos and the coos, the children and their parents who sat there when children once, smells of the gunpowder, the popcorns and the gas balloons, those rare sneezes and the coughs from the smitten silent audience with bulging eyes and open mouths, the never ending crying of the new-born-s from audience, the glitters in air same as that on the cheeks, the big teethe smiles, the stretched wide arms, the long legs with pointy toes in air, the sounds of horse shoes hitting the dusty-ground, the everything and the every essence from his forty years for passion, love and life in the circus.
And while the tune played in his heart, the tall-dark-handsome-shadow moving along (as he liked calling it) tap-danced once-in-a-beat, in the bright moonlit night.

That night was his last for performance but surely not his last in the circus. The circus never departed from their little ‘Tumble of Joy’. He lived with them rest of his joyous life as the care taker & laugh maker.

~