Bala Gandharva

The Story

Born Narayan Rajhans in 1888, he joined a theatre company as a boy and was given the name Bala Gandharva — 'the divine singer of the stage' — for the beauty of his voice. In an age when respectable women did not act, the young Bala Gandharva played the heroines, and his performances of Manini and of the great female roles of Marathi drama made him the darling of the Marathi home.

His art was double: his singing, of the light classical forms that the theatre used, was sweet enough to draw crowds for the music alone, and his acting, of love, grief, and devotion, was so moving that the audiences of Bombay and Poona treated him with the reverence due to a temple singer. His name is the bridge between the classical music of Maharashtra and its popular stage.

He acted and sang for more than forty years, making his last appearance in the 1950s, and died in 1967. Maharashtra gave him a funeral worthy of a prince, and the Balgandharva Rangmandir — the theatre named after him — stands in Pune as his monument, while his gramophone records still sell and his songs still play in Marathi homes.