A courtesan’s journey
Seema Sachdeva
Once upon a time the Mumbai bar dance industry flourished. The mujra mehfils and high-end dance bars had patrons ranging from diamond merchants, film producers to businessmen and underworld dons. One fine day, the government took a moral stance and declared thousands of such dance bars illegal. It is in those uncertain times that Devasis sets his debut novel. Through the journey of the protagonist Pallavi Singh aka Munia, the book looks at the socio-economic implications of the decision to ban dance bars in 2005, which rendered more than one lakh dancers, and an equal number of support staff, jobless.
The story opens in the last quarter of the 20th century with the protagonist Pallavi Singh, then the 13-year-old Munia from the ravines of Chambal, stepping into womanhood as she bleeds. Like all young women of her Bedia biradari, marriage is a taboo and her body a commodity. So a courtesan she must become, in keeping with the tradition.
Her quiet life in Mirpura village is replaced by the frenzied pace of Bombay where she has to learn the art of becoming a concubine. Under the guidance of Madhuri Ma, she’s trained in shringar and lasya (the art of enticement), besides dance and simple arithmetic. She is also given “coaching in diction to pronounce Hindi and a smattering of English words properly.” The sensitive, introvert and lonely teenager Munia is soon transformed into graceful and coveted courtesan Pallavi Singh, who is adept at enticement and deceit. Thereafter, she’s dangled as a carrot to wealthy patrons.
“Unhurriedly yet deliberately, all the natural inhibitions that a girl would normally have about sexuality were stripped of her.”
High-end dance bars of Bombay, later renamed Mumbai, go head over heels to have Pallavi in their roster of dancers. Her ‘fame’, however, is cut short when the government decides to ban dance bars.
As the dance bars are impending closure, Rabindranath Royce Chandrabhanu Kashyap aka Roy, a seasoned journalist, is commissioned by his editor to do a human interest story. His initial reluctant reaction of “Why glorify prostitution?” is soon replaced by the realisation that the dance bar is merely a manifestation of the bigger issue.
The protagonist Pallavi Singh comes across as a strong, financially independent woman, who wants to break free of the life that has been thrust upon her. Once the dance bars are closed, she refuses to “go back to randigiri” and decides to open her own beauty parlour to live a respectable life.
Through the eyes of Roy and Rajkumar, the two men in Pallavi’s life, the novel looks at how prejudices define her existence.
The well-researched narrative gives a historical perspective on the evolution of prostitution in India and adult entertainment. It also makes a case for the need to honourably rehabilitate the De-notified Tribes of India, besides looking at human trafficking and para-prostitution in India.
Bold and racy, the narrative begins well though it becomes predictable towards the end with too many coincidences. Deceit and intrigue are interwoven in this tale of love and pathos. The novel could have ended in a perfect fairytale yet it doesn’t fall into that trap. Marrying meticulously researched statistics with fiction, the writer helps to debunk many myths and gives an in-depth understanding of the lives these women choose to live, willingly or unwillingly.
