Who can forget the classic scene from Bollywood film Jane bhi do yaro when actor Om Puri enters the stage dressed as Bheema wearing aviator sunglasses and a mace across his shoulder, frantically pacing the stage? What unfolds then on is a theater of the absurd.

While depicting the epics , the folk theater utilizes exaggeration as a strategy and a technique to evoke contemporary themes. Stories that were never part of the written texts, were appended through impromptu performances in these folk theaters, to highlight any given contemporary issue. Popular mythologies thus used the contested space between the traditional and the colonial worldviews to change the landscape of Indian mythological narratives. The following episode noted in a folk performance from North Karnataka highlights the predicament of transgendered individuals .