The Last Courtesan by Manish Gaekwad

Author:Manish Gaekwad [Gaekwad, Manish]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Published: 2023-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Bombay

Ireached my elder sister Babbo’s house in Kalyan. I stayed there for a week and then told my jijaji, brother-in-law, Anoop, to take me to Bombay.

This is Bombay, he said.

He was slurping on tea, chewing on a khari biscuit in the morning.

Not this one, I said. Bombay, where the girls perform mujra.

He put his cup down and looked at me. He was a good man. Tall, fair, with kind eyes and a polite tone. He had heard of my mujras from my sister, but had never watched them. I gathered that he did not know where the mujras of Bombay took place. But he did not show the slightest hint of ignorance.

What will you do there? he asked.

Naach gaana, I said. I will sing and dance.

I told him about Congress House. I told him to find out where it was. He nodded and said he would arrange for a trip.

We were going to embark on the trip of a lifetime. I was nervous and excited.

I had leased out my room in Bandook Gully to Sarita, a girl in the kotha. I told her to pay the rent to the bariwala on time. I would return if I felt like after a few months.

One day, Anoop jija and I boarded a train from Kalyan to VT station. When we arrived there, I was suddenly aware of entering a very big world. The station is so massive with oonchi chhath aur British-zamaane ki banawat – high ceilings and colonial architecture – that I felt like it was a portal through which we were entering a whole new world.

I was excited because this was what I wanted to do. I had a junoon, passion, to do better in life, to succeed in my line of work. And Bombay was where the real money was, where the real adventure was.

From there we took a taxi to the Congress House area near Grant Road. The taxiwala knew exactly where it was. We reached the venue and saw a signboard with ‘Bombay Sangeet Kalakar Mandal’ written on the gate. It was a narrow entrance leading into a compound. The gate was imposing and deserted in the afternoon, which I immediately understood and relaxed because kothas are usually quiet at this hour.

I had heard that the tawaifs of the kothas in the compound got so fed up of being called prostitutes that they formed an association and registered it as Bombay Sangeet Kalakar Mandal. They conducted interviews within the compound, speaking to singers, dancers, musicians, and compiled the list to present it to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to declare them as artistes. Later, when she visited the actual Congress House building across the street, the tawaifs met her and thanked her for recognizing their work. They did not want to be clubbed with the flesh trade because that brought a lot of law and order problems with it. The tawaifs did not have to face those problems if they were established as artistes, who did not indulge in any illegal or criminal activities.

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