The books helped her piece together her performance, and even design the outfits. Shah’s book, that has graphic depictions of the dance steps performed in the courts is now out of print, she says. The book is about their role in the social and cultural life of India in the 18th and 19th century.īut perseverance and fortuity led Manjari to Wajid Ali Shah’s book, Bani, another book on Kathak notations that was sold off to a scrap dealer by a royal family, and yet another that she sourced from a library in the Rampur estate.
I couldn’t find much aside of Pran Nevile’s book, Nautch Girls of the Raj.” A picture of nautch girls from Pran Nevile’s book, Nautch Girls of the Raj. “It struck me that even research had ignored the courtesans. But the dancers couldn’t manage to do so for themselves, she says. Some singers such as Begum Akhtar, though, managed to survive and gain fame. But the women didn’t get enough respect,” she says. “The courts had both male and female performers, and with the decline in the fortunes of the royalty, the men became ‘Ustads’. Her research on the subject led her to interesting facts. Read: The Last Song of Awadh: a musical tribute to Lucknow's heritage Later, Manjari did a show with her in the city. “When I suggested that we perform together on stage, she was overwhelmed, and felt that I was according “too much respect” to someone like her,” recalls Manjari, who discovered that Zarina was impoverished, and decided to help her out financially. Manjari says she was struck by the Lucknow-based courtesan’s humility. But they were relegated to being mere prostitutes,” she says.įor Manjari, who specialises in Darbari Kathak, this realisation came more than a decade ago, when she met the octogenarian Zarina Begum, one of the last surviving courtesans, at an event in Lucknow. They were extremely fashionable and graceful too. “These women were great singers, poets and dancers. Now, with her latest performance, Kathak exponent Manjari Chaturvedi is hoping to change perceptions about courtesans and help younger audiences appreciate their talents. The erstwhile courtesan - talented, influential and propertied - was much maligned by the anti-nautch girls campaign led by the British (who wanted to usurp the throne of Awadh), and in time, the courtesan ended up fading into oblivion. In mainstream discourse, however, the courtesan was much stigmatised - the kothewali, or, the “prostitute”, she was always denied agency, aided in no small measure by Bollywood. Instead, the women claimed that they had escaped a life of violence and abuse in their families, and took refuge in the kotha to restore their self-esteem. It’s a narrative that the courtesans Oldenberg met in Lucknow disputed vehemently. One of those, as feminist scholar Veena Talwar Oldenberg explains in her essay on the courtesans of Lucknow, was the stereotype of the “evil kidnapper” and the “exploitative madame”. Despite the remarkable performance by its lead actors, the film, based on a novel by Mirza Hadi Ruswa, helped propagate many myths. Umrao Jaan, the 1981 film, did much harm to the story of the courtesans.
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