Umrao Jaan sings and looks beautiful but real tawaifs had more agency

After writing a memoir about his mother, a courtesan in Kolkata, Manish Gaekwad turns the lens on himself in ‘Nautch Boy’, recounting the story of his unusual childhood split between a kotha and a boarding school. In an interview with Ketaki Desai, he reflects on the matriarchal world of the kotha, and the ways that courtesans have been misrepresented on and off screen

In your previous book, ‘The Last Courtesan’, you wrote a memoir in your mother’s voice. This one is about your life as a queer boy growing up in a kotha in Kolkata. What would your mum say if she was alive to read this one?

My mother has always wanted to tell her story. Even as a child, I remember she narrated incidents from her life in the kotha. Sometimes, she recorded herself so I could listen to the tapes later. She once told me that if her choices in life could help somebody make their own decisions, then sharing her story would be worth it. Writing her memoir was quite easy because she was a very frank, open and slightly irreverent woman. In fact, the process made me realise that I could also be less inhibited about my story. This memoir would probably have been a revelation to her because there was so much unsaid between us. She would probably just give me a tight hug and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

What was the best part of your childhood?

Growing up in the kotha meant there were no limitations, no judgment and no trappings of a patriarchal society. It’s the women who run the kotha household, who cook, clean, do the job, and bring the money home. It’s a wildly colourful, musical and lively atmosphere. I grew up sort of ungendered in that sense — neither a boy nor a girl, just free to be whoever I wanted to be. It was only later when the tawaifs got older and began looking for a man to settle down with that the patriarchy crept in and changed how the children were seen.

And the hardest part? Was it the violence?

In a way, all that violence really taught me not to be violent. It showed me that if I responded in kind, it would harm me more. It kind of made me a Gandhian in the kotha, while Gandhi himself was not very accommodating of courtesans.

How did your queerness intersect with life in a kotha?

Till the age of eight or nine, the women would celebrate my queerness by dolling me up, making me sing and dance. I enjoyed the applause and thought I would grow up to be a tawaif. But when I went to boarding school, the conditioning began — you are told that you have to walk like a boy, that you can’t dance on stage. You can dance to ‘I am a disco dancer’, but you can’t do the feminine dances. I found that weird and I was unable to process my identity — am I a boy or a girl? The kotha had protected me but as a teenager, I had to figure out how I fit in and balance my feminine and masculine sides.

How do you view the portrayals of courtesans on screen — say, in films like ‘Umrao Jaan’, which was recently re-released?

It’s a male gaze perspective. Muzaffar Ali’s ‘Umrao Jaan’ is sort of a martyr figure. She’s singing, dancing and looking beautiful but beyond that, she has no agency. She’s not able to decide anything for herself, whether it’s owning a house or her own body. The tawaifs in the kotha have more agency than that. They decide who will come in, if they want a man in their life or not, where to go, how to eat, and how to dress up.

Tell us about the decline of tawaif culture and how it affected your mum and other women in the kotha?

The 1980s were the fag end. Discos had sprung up in Bombay and Calcutta, and cabaret had become popular. When the patrons left for these air-conditioned bars with strobe lights, some women from the kotha, including my mother, also wanted to make the move. I remember my mother telling me that when she saw the women swaying, she thought, ‘Yeh koi hunar hai, yeh koi naach hai? Yeh sirf khade ho ke hil rahi hai! (Is this talent or dance, this is just women standing around and shaking)’ It looked sleazy to her, with pallus dropping and skirts flying around. A tawaif in a mehfil is completely covered up; all the coquetry is in her eyes. Over time, tawaif culture became conflated with sex work. These stereotypes need to be broken.

You’ve been unusually candid about the publishing industry. What should first-time authors watch out for?

First, find an agent who fights for you. That’s hard because there are barely 10 agents in India. And because their relationship with publishers is stronger than with a writer who will give them business once in five years by writing a book, it’s difficult to trust them. The trick is to find a working relationship with an agent who you can blindly trust.

You’ve been working as a scriptwriter in the entertainment industry. Why is there such a lack of quality scripts?

Hindi cinema has forgotten how to fall in love and romance the way we used to. It started borrowing superhero tropes from the West and the ‘angry young man’ storylines from the South which, incidentally, have come from Bollywood. But with films like ‘Saiyaara’, the audience is coming back to rediscover love again.