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We like to think that India is a free country and that we are free thinkers, but the truth
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is that we are still colonized. We think about the world and about our society through frames
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that have been constructed by others. As an illustration of this, ask yourself what comes
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to mind when you think of the word the wife. Is the image that comes to mind that of a
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fallen sex worker, someone worthy only of contempt or pity? Or do you get the image of a bewitching
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courtesan out of Bollywood, dressed in an intricately embroidered anarchally, glowing
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with the jewellery she is wearing under the light of a crystal chandelier? Rekha or Meena
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Kumari are the most beautiful. Both these images are false, but these common impressions
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of the wives reveal a lot about our own prejudices, if only we cared to examine them closely and
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examine where they came from. Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly
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podcast on economics, politics and behavioral science. Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen. My guest today is Sabha Devan, filmmaker and author
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who has made a series of riveting documentaries, including the 2009 film, The Other Song, that
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journeys through Varanasi, Lucknow and Muzaffarpur, looking at the lives and histories of tawaifs.
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She had immersed herself so deeply in the subject that when she was done with the film,
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she wrote a book called Tawaif Nama, which is filled with some incredible stories as
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also social insights that come out of history and sit uneasily in our present times. I am
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delighted that Sabha has agreed to join me on the show today. But before we begin our
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conversation, let's take a quick commercial break.
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If you enjoy listening to The Scene and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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show alive. The Scene and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me. I've enjoyed putting
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together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe, and hopefully yours
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as well. But while the work has been its own reward, I don't actually make much money off
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the show. Although The Scene and the Unseen has great numbers, advertisers haven't really
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woken up to the insane engagement level of podcasts. I do many many hours of deep research
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for each episode, besides all the logistics of producing the show myself. Scheduling guests,
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booking studios, paying technicians, the travel and so on. So well, I am trying a new way
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of keeping this thing going and that involves you. My proposition for you is this. For every
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episode of The Scene and the Unseen that you enjoy, buy me a cup of coffee or even a lavish
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lunch, whatever you feel is worth. You can do this by heading over to scene unseen dot
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The Scene and the Unseen will continue to be free on all podcasts apps and at scene
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unseen dot i n. This is just a gesture of appreciation. Help keep this thing going.
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Scene unseen dot i n slash support. Sabha, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen. Thank
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you. Thank you for having me on the show. Before we sort of start talking about Tawaif
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Nama and you know, everything that's in the book, tell me a little bit about, you know,
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your own personal journey. How did you become a filmmaker? How did all this happen? How
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did I become a filmmaker? Oh Lord, that was years back. Well, actually it started off
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initially as a kind of a rebellion. Both my parents were journalists and it was expected
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that I'd become a journalist. And so of course I didn't want to become a journalist. So the
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next best thing I could think of was to be a filmmaker. But jokes apart, actually I was
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interested in films and I then joined the Mass Communication Research Center Jamia. Although
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at that time I wasn't very clear, you know, at that age about the difference between documentaries
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or fiction. So I joined Innocently Enough Thinking Cinema Karenge Filme Banayenge. And then hey
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presto found myself in this place where, you know, the entire focus was on the documentary
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genre. And that opened a completely wide new world for me. I mean, it was and the beauty
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of the documentary, you know, the beauty of reality and how slippery a creature reality
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is and how difficult it is to define reality. Your reality might not be my reality. So I
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mean, it throws up all these questions and that's pretty much how I entered the field.
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And you know, as a kid in the 1980s, I remembered it to me when I thought of films and popular
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culture, documentaries were like the most boring thing out there. They were that films
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division stuff that you saw once a week on Dudur Darshan or whatever. And it was boring
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as hell. And obviously documentaries are a lot more than that. So, you know, when did
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you first get that spark of discovery that wait a minute, this is not some boring thing
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about something, you know, where somebody is droning on and on and stuff you're not
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interested about. You can create magic out of this. At Mass Communication Research Center,
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I pretty much thought the same, you know, I was quite horrified when I realized that
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I was at a place where they specialized in documentaries. So, you know, I had these visions
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of like being condemned to making these awful films division documentaries. But we think,
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I think we had some wonderful teachers at that point and also exposure to world cinema.
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And we saw documentaries, you know, which were certainly not like the films division
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propaganda that we had grown up associating documentaries with. And also the early 80s
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was a very exciting time for the Indian documentary because the Indian documentary, independent
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documentary was coming into its own, you know, away from state funding. And that was the
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time when we were students and we were discovering documentary. So we were exposed to the work
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of people like Meera Nair and Deepak Sanraj and Navroz, Anand Patwardhan. And we were
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very lucky, we're quite blessed to have them actually come and show their films to us and
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talk to us. And so yeah, and you know, even in terms of world cinema and documentaries,
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international documentaries, I think there was a certain kind of an exposure that we
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got at Jamia, which then, you know, opened us to the possibilities of documentaries being
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an extremely creative medium. So, you know, and extremely exciting. I mean, documentary
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of that's the matter with any art is what you make it to be.
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And that was also an exciting time for cinema in the sense, Shyam Benegul, Govind Yalini,
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the whole, all of that was also happening. So did you also look at that and, you know,
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think that, okay, maybe I want to make the shift someday and make feature films or were
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you already so excited by what documentaries could do that you were just happy where you
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I was, we were also exposed to, you know, world cinema in terms of fiction. So it was
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an exciting time, both for fiction and nonfiction. And yes, I mean, I think in the initial years,
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there was always this feeling that someday I'll make a fiction, you know, feature film.
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But you know, in the thing is that somehow while working on the documentary and over
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the period of time, documentary stopped becoming a poor cousin to the feature film, at least
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for me as a filmmaker, because it offers just so many exciting possibilities. And it, it's
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also very challenging as a medium, because I mean, there is of course that much that
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you have planned. But with the documentary, there's just so much that you possibly cannot
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plan and which comes in and if you're receptive to it, it can bring magic to what you're doing.
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So I think that initial stage, yes, it was always like, oh, documentary is like a stepping
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stone to feature films. But that was in the initial stage. Then you pretty much realize
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the documentary actually is a huge challenge in itself. And many ways, I think more challenging,
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because there's just so much that's not in your control.
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I mean, I guess with a feature film, you've constructed a narrative and that's it. You
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follow the script with the documentary.
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Yeah. I mean, I'm sure with feature films, it's extremely challenging and it's not only
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a certain linear progression. That's not what I meant, but I mean that in a documentary,
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you could say, I want to do this. You could land up in a place and the character that
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you had kind of spent time with, et cetera, et cetera, and thought she was all ready to
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shoot with you. And suddenly something's happened. There's some death in the family or some things.
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There's some emergency and she's gone. And so pretty much you are there, but your character
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is gone. And so what are you going to do? Either you cancel your shoot or you think
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of something else to do. So I think those are the ways, I think as a documentary filmmaker,
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you've got to be really, really very resourceful and trying to work out things at the spot.
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And did you fall into that trap early on that you go there with a fixed sort of notion in
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mind, a fixed narrative in mind, but then you have to adapt or were you aware from the
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start that you just have to leave yourself open? No, I think mercifully, I think it was
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also the kind of training we had at Jamia. I mean, we were lucky because we had Professor
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James Beveridge, he was one of the stalwarts of the Canadian documentary. And it's he and
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his wife, Margaret, who was an ace editor, who helped set up the film school at Jamia.
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We were lucky to have him as our teacher. So the emphasis was actually on cinema verity
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of, you know, shooting as unfolding as things happen. So you don't construct and you don't
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feed people lines. But that's the simpler aspect of it. I think what is more problematic
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and I think a lot of filmmakers tend to fall into that trap. And I think a lot of times
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that comes out of ignorance of not knowing better, and be out of a certain arrogance,
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which is that you presume someone's reality, that you understand someone's reality. And
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you presume where they are coming from. And you presume that they're going to say this
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or they ought to say this. And this ought to be their understanding. And a lot of people
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fall into that trap, even in terms of very political filmmaking. You know, there's the
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subaltern, the subaltern has to be in the vanguard of the revolution. The subaltern
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may not be on the vanguard of the revolution, you know. And so, so I think I did start off
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with certain notions, because how can not someone not be like that, you know, you those
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presumptions. But I think as you grow older, and hopefully a bit wiser, and also you get
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enough knocks in life, to get some humility dinged into you, to realize that you don't
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have the answers. And it's good. It's good you don't have all the answers. Because that's
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the only way that you can relate to people as human beings to human beings, not as like
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filmmaker here and subject there. And it's only then when you can have the two people
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you are talking to people as people, without any preconceived expectations, that it makes
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for a real conversation, actually a meaningful conversation. I think that took me time. And
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that was the biggest learning process. And what kind of subjects were you drawn to?
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You know, a lot of my work has been with women, for the very simple reason that I am a woman.
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And I think I understand women better. Women interest me, women's lives interest me. That's
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I think the most important thing. And having been part of the feminist movement and, you
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know, believing in a certain kind of a politics. Yes, I'm drawn to the kind of challenges that
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women face. So yeah, my protagonists have mostly been women. But the subject, the subjects
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could be any, you know, a lot of my work has been political and working in the realm of
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culture. So it's a pretty diverse portfolio in that sense, you know, that is worked with,
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you know, survivors of abusive marriages. But then I've also worked with girls and young
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women going to the mountains for the first time in just a trek film, which is a fun film.
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And then of course, I worked with this trilogy that I did, which is the other song is part
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of that trilogy, which is on, you know, stigmatized female performers. So yeah, kind of moved.
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And I've also worked, done a film on the women of my own family. It's called Sita's Family,
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looking at middle class women and looking at the kind of issues that they face. I mean,
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women who, you know, made the choice of, you know, working outside the house. But then
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what are the kind of expectations that society has of them, but more importantly, which they
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impose on themselves, the kind of, you know, expectations that they've internalized about
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being good women. So yeah.
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And you know, like one of the things that has struck me over the last few years reading
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history and doing a lot of episodes with historians is that we take the male gaze on history for
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granted. Most of history, of course, is told from a male gaze. And therefore there is a
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lot that is invisible or unseen, as it were, to that gaze. And it struck me while reading
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your book that so much of the book also sort of deals with that about making that unseen
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sort of visible. And what I also found sort of fascinating was, you know, one is of course
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the cliched ways of looking at the virus, which I sort of referred to in the introduction,
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which is, you know, what I grew up with at least. So, you know, this is sort of pretty
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much what you thought. And then you peel back the layers. And, you know, another thing that
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I have sort of discovered in recent episodes with historians is how so much of what we
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think of our own society and culture is constructed by the British when they came here, because
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they were obviously looking for simplistic narratives to explain the world to themselves.
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So they could neatly categorize everything. You in your book, of course, referred to Francis
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Buchanan, but this was pretty much the attitude of the British from the late 18th century
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onwards. They're trying to figure it out. They have access to only the elites who are
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of course upper caste Brahmins. So they get that sort of a version of history and then
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that gets ossified. And the rich, thriving sort of culture of the wives, you know, then
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they shine this moralistic light on it and everything just changes. Tell me a little
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bit about this process.
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See, we need to understand a few things. The thing is not that, you know, I think what
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the book doesn't deal with it in that great a detail, although I do mention it and which
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is that the wives, it's not as if before the India was colonized or before the British
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came, the wives occupied a highly respectable position in society, which is the book. The
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book keeps actually, you know, reiterating that they enjoyed high prestige, which is
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not the same as being respectable, you know, because they were attached to the nobility
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and individual men of the elite and the court. So they had access to power, they had access
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to wealth and they were of course very sought after performers, musicians and dancers. In
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many cases, also poets and writers and patrons of actually artists. They occupied a very
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ambiguous space between, you know, repute and disrepute, which is because of the certain
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stigma of being out of Parda and, you know, out in the gaze of available actually to all
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technically, although they were not. But yes, I mean, you know, it's out in the gaze of
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men. And yet they had a certain designated space within society. They were not certainly
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not looked down upon. In fact, people, you know, there was this much sought after too.
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And what was also very interesting and while I was researching was it's not just the men
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that they had relationships with. They actually would be invited at points of time by the
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women in the Zanana, not very often, but they did. And so to perform on certain special
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occasions, et cetera, which I think is an important point because the ways in which
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patriarchy insulates, you know, women of disrepute from what are the pure women. With the wives,
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that was not exactly happening. So, I mean, not all the wives, but the wives of the highest
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repute, for instance, did have some access to the Zananas of the aristocracy because
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we have mention of that even in the novel Umrao Ja Nada, which actually is, you know,
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is hailed for its very, very authentic portrayal of 19th century Lucknow makes mention of that.
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I think what happens with the coming on of the British is as, you know, as you have mentioned
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very rightly, it's not just the wives. I mean, there was pretty much it happened with
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everything where here is, you know, an alien government, a colonial government trying to
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understand in the simplest possible terms, a subject people and a subject people, which,
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you know, I mean, the most bewildering variety possible and heterogeneity amongst them. So,
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this is not Europe. They chose to colonize India, which is an entire subcontinent in
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itself. And, you know, they had confronted with this kind of a heterogeneity. So, one
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of the ways in which one and, you know, colonizers deal with heterogeneity is to actually somewhere
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smoothen out the differences and to, you know, make uniform or at least impose a certain
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uniformity of understanding. So, yeah, you, they had, you know, you have these volley
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of ethnographers, self-styled ethnographers. They're not ethnographers, ethnographers, but
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travelers who could be missionaries, who could be administrators, who could be colonial traders,
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you know, I mean, it's a variety of people who are traveling in India and making copious
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notes about all manner of, you know, subjects pertaining to the so-called native life. But
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it is not only actually an exercise in naivety or even in terms of, you know, trying to understand
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an alien people. It is also informed by the imperatives of colonization itself. So, it's
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not entirely an innocent exercise. And there is a certain imperative, there's an imperative
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of, you know, divide and rule. And much as it sounds a cliche now, the fact is that there
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is ways in which there is a constant refrain about Hindus and Muslims. Whereas the interesting
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thing is that actually in the early ethnographic records, there are communities upon communities
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of people who return themselves as both Hindus and Muslims, much to the chagrin of, you know,
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the colonial ethnographers. Because how can you be both Hindu and Muslim? In fact, even
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the term Hindu encompasses so much less than what it does today. It's a 19th century term,
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actually. And people not returning themselves as Hindus, people are returning themselves
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as Bhoomeyar or this or that, you know, it's caste based. So, these ways in which there
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is a certain homogenizing of putting them under a certain labeling people. That process
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takes place with the coming of the British. The process gets consolidated, solidified
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with the entire process of census, you know, which from, I think, 1891 or something when
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first census records start getting collected. But there's also a process in which, especially
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after 1857, where there are ways in which there is a certain stereotypes being created
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and quite consciously being created and projected. Among those stereotypes, you know, are the
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stereotypes of the decadent, depraved, you know, less vicious Indian male, especially Indian
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princess, and who are more usually Muslim Nawabs, but could be actually also Hindus.
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And because this is the ruling class, the native ruling class that stood up against
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colonial might in 1857. So, these ways in which they are being maligned and the kind
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of lifestyle associated with them then is portrayed as decadent. Now, here, of course,
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I think what also happens is that evangelism and Victorian morality also come into play
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because a figure of a Tawaf makes no sense. She can only be a prostitute. In fact, that
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treatment is given not just to Tawafs, but even to the Avadasis. So, any female sexuality
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that exists outside of marriage has to be prostitute. So, in fact, that is an entire
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spectrum that gets labeled as prostitute, not just the Tawafs.
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And you know, what also sort of strikes me as interesting is that there are almost like
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two forms of patriarchy playing out here. One, of course, is that the very existence
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of Tawafs as almost a separate class and a separate community of people points to the
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fact that the rest of the women, the women who are married, who are part of households
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are supposed to keep their sexuality repressed. So, that's a separate class. And therefore,
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because you want singing, dancing women who are expressing themselves freely, it's almost
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as if there is a necessity for a community of Tawafs who then kind of looked at differently
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but without necessarily the moral stigma which then the British bring to it. And the British
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come with this moral stigma or this sort of sexual expression, blah, blah, blah. They
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give a moral color to it. And you know, even though sort of like every time I hear of the
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wives being painted as sex workers and prostitutes and the first thing I think that it strikes
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me we have to fight is what is wrong with sex workers and prostitutes to begin with.
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Why should, you know, that be a slur. But given that it is and is one of the things
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that we've normalized and is there, regardless, it's a huge step down. The other question
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I wanted to ask was how empowered are the Tawafs in the sense that in contrast to the
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other women in society, they appear to have more autonomy. Like sure, they function within
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that patriarchal set up and they have to cater to the wishes of men and that's what they
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are trained for. But at the same time, within that set up, they can shape their destiny
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far more. They are the heads of their communities. As you pointed out through examples, they
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even get a major share of the revenue share, like you know, if there are 16 annas, 9 goes
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to the Tawaf and whatever. And they have a very sort of respected place within that community.
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So you know, looking back as a feminist and obviously these are not people who are feminist
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per se, they are making the best of what they can within that system.
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What's your sense of these different degrees of autonomy and how these women are trying
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to negotiate these spaces?
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You know, I wouldn't, I refrained and even in the book, I refrained from using terms
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like empowered because A, Tawafs don't exist as a community. We are talking about them
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in the past tense necessarily because that community has been wiped out. And two, I think
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there are, you know, terms like being empowered, for instance, or liberated. We, these, you
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know, the present context coming out of a certain politics and in the present, I am
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very hesitant to use those parameters for in the past because, you know, I mean, you
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have to see and understand the reality within in the past context, in the historical context,
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within those parameters of the given parameters of those times. Yes, definitely relatively
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speaking and I will keep using the term relative because it was relative. The fact is that
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the Tawafs were not independent of patriarchy. They were very much an adjunct of patriarchy.
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The community existed because of patriarchy, you know, patriarchy and in the sense of male
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entitlement, which wanted actually their wives, but also wanted to have these, you know, fascinating,
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beautiful, talented, witty, you know, mistresses. So, I mean, so the fact is that definitely
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a male entitlement was at the base of, you know, the existence of the wives or devdasis
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that goes without saying. So it's like the men are making these boxes to put women in
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and this particular box has more space within it. But it never, you see, I think what happens
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though is that socially when and with human beings, it never quite works out as you expect
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it to. So for instance, even in terms of, you know, when you're saying that in terms
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of women of the household being sexually repressed, that's our presumption living in the 21st
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century. You know, there's enough writing and glimpses that one gets of this anana,
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which seems to have been a pretty thriving sexual space, which, you know, it is something
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that, but then one would have to understand it within the context of that space. If we
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try to start posing our understanding of what is active, being sexually active or sexually
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liberated, it doesn't work out that similarly with the tavayas. There's obviously, I mean,
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they were there as adjunct and they were very much adjunct of patriarchy. Their entire existence
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was dependent upon the patronage that they received from men. Without that, there's nothing.
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But given all that, within that, the fact is that here's a community of women where
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it is the women within the community who call the shots. You know, they are the ones, for
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instance, who are the head of the households. They are the ones who are the karta of the
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house, you know, in terms of the Hindu undivided family. The tavayas head of the family, actually
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her position corresponded more or less to the eldest son of the Hindu undivided family.
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They are the ones who, you know, depending, I mean, the laws of inheritance were different
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for different castes and communities of tavayas. But in many communities, tavayas daughters
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got a larger share, for instance, of the inheritance from their mothers and aunts, etc., than their
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brothers. In many other communities, at least the community I worked with, they got an equal
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share. Sisters and brothers had an equal share. It varied from community to community. But
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then they were much wealthier ultimately because they also held their own property. They made
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their own property. These were self-made women. So they were also jodhrayans of the community
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at large. The karta community itself was not just made up of women. It was also made up
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of the accompanist musicians, the tabla players, the sarangi players, the majira players, all
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of whom were men, who were teachers to tavayas, who were also their accompanists and who were
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also dependent on tavayas for their livelihood. And in every town, you know, you had these
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karta communities and it was the tavayas and they had their own system of, you know, panchayat
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or council, which to regulate the affairs, internal affairs of the community. And it
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was the tavayas who headed these panchayats, always. So, you know, in terms of the household,
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it is they had definitely, it is they who called the shots of how the house would be
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run, you know, the family would be run. And they had relatively greater autonomy in terms
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of also choosing who to take on as a lover and who not to, which now that depended, you
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know, if you came from, you're a poor tavaya and you came from, you know, a poorer family,
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you might not have the luxury to exercise that choice because you would have to then
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take on anyone who offered. But the, say, the women who were on the higher echelons
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of the community, they definitely exercised that choice. That's very well known. So, you
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know, they rejected lovers, they took on lovers. So, yes, I mean, there was a certain sense,
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a certain autonomous lifestyle, I'd say, that one sees there. And which also I think
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gets reflected in the pursuit of their art practice. That's an argument that I've made
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that actually the tumri and the dadra, et cetera, that we hear, which is from the tavayas
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that reflects a certain kind of autonomous living lifestyle, a certain openness of being.
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So really telling illustration of the centrality of women in the community was an anecdote
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at the start of your book where you talk about how your protagonist shows you this family
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portrait of generations of her family, her aunts and grandmothers and grand aunts and
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all that. And the family portrait is entirely women. And you point out in contrast on how
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a traditional family portrait in any other family. My own family portrait is mostly men.
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My father's family portraits. They're just such few women and they're not part of the
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main portraits at all. So, you know, the so-called official family portrait has all these men,
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but the women are not there. Except much later now, that's only, but that happens only by
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the sixties or so, where then women start making an entry into family portraits. But
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not earlier than that. But yes, I mean, in tavaya households, you know, you have these
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walls and you have these photographs and just women, you know, this my aunt, my great aunt,
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my mother, my grandmother, and there are no men present. So it is a very telling. Men
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are there. They are part of the household, but the kind of status that they have is pretty
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much what women enjoy in a patriarchal households.
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Then, you know, one of the things that sort of your book talks a lot about is the extensive
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training in the arts that the wives go through. You know, the traditions of the Bol Banaut,
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Humri, Hori, Chaiti, Kajri, Dadra, the association of the Kathak with the wives and all that.
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And at one point you say, quote, besides long and arduous training in music and dance, in
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order to be successful, the wives had to be educated in a range of other skills, such
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as a grounding in literature and politics, as well as knowledge of the intricacies of
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social etiquette and of erotic stimulation, stop quote. And I have a couple of questions
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here. One is, how are the arts being looked at by all these people? Like today, the arts
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are something relatively respectable, that if you, you know, know a woman who's a writer
#
or a singer or whatever, it's very respectable. You know, Lata Mangeshkar is absolutely revered.
#
How were the arts looked at back then? And was there a reason that it was, you know,
#
more the province of the wives, so to say? And looked at by whom? Looked at in a general
#
social sense. Okay, by society. By society. Like, you know, you have women in the, in
#
the wife communities, they are being trained in all of those arts, but there is not so
#
much of that happening outside of it. It almost seems- There is none happening outside. Yeah.
#
It is almost as if it is restricted to them. And the second sense that, you know, I got
#
from the paragraph I read out, for example, is that all of this, you know, training in
#
the arts, training in literature, training in practices of seduction is all a means to
#
an end. You have to get a patron. There's an economic imperative at the bottom of it.
#
I think there is a definite shift in the ways in which the arts get constructed and looked
#
upon from the, say, the early 20th century with the coming on of cultural nationalism.
#
And then there's this entire focus upon our ancient culture, which kind of starts, you
#
know, it's part of a certain kind of nationalism and defining a certain kind of an Indian-ness.
#
So that makes cultural expression more respectable.
#
So where, where, yes, music and dance of a certain kind, but then again, that there's
#
a problem there because music and dance of a certain kind is acceptable and not of another
#
kind. I'll come to that later. But I think that if you read, you know, any of the writings
#
before that, and even if you talk to the older people in the community, even now, I mean,
#
not that they came from that century, they pretty much, but I mean, they carry certain
#
oral memories and traditions far more. I sense a very matter of fact, robust dealing with
#
the arts. You know, it's not like these rarefied deities, you know, that whatever, you don't
#
hear that at least from within the community. Music is terribly important and not just as
#
a means of livelihood. I mean, sure it was their livelihood, but it's also the ways in
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which it defines them. So there is their own sense of being gets defined as musician. So
#
I think the ways in which they look at music is so subliminal that it's also defies easy
#
categorization or definition. I mean, even if they, I mean, I've tried to talk to a lot
#
of women about it and then they'll tell you things like they'll give you anecdotes to
#
explain to you what music means to them. And each one of them is important. You know, I
#
mean, in terms of this woman who told me that how, you know, she got this patron and who
#
loved her so much and so deeply, and he wanted to make a respectable woman out of her. And
#
so he took her away and he said, now you don't have to dance and sing for a living. And he
#
looked after her and he was true to his promise. He did look after her and all of that. And
#
she had children from him. Things went, were going fine, but she started falling ill and
#
she went into a deep depression and she was just terribly ill. And, and then finally no
#
medicine worked. And then, you know, and this is like a tale that gets told by a lot of
#
sources. It's one of those apocryphal tales, which a lot of Tawafs will tell you. It's
#
also attributed to Begum Akhtar. The same thing happened to Begum Akhtar, but then a
#
lot of other lesser Tawafs will also tell you that and take that story for themselves.
#
I think the importance is not whether this happened or doesn't happen. I think it's what's,
#
what is it telling you? It's telling you that for all, you know, the music is like, it's
#
your breath. And so you saw all the respectability and status that they could get in exchange.
#
Story explains that how actually without music you die, you know, and you die a spiritual
#
death, if not a physical death. Although in these stories, it's like I was dying physically
#
too, because it's just shriveling up and within myself. So I think that to me is a very powerful
#
indicator of what music means. But it's not necessarily imbued with the kind of spiritual
#
connotations that music gets imbued by, say by early 20th century under the influence
#
of the cultural nationalist. I mean, the community of musicians saw it that way. I think pretty
#
much even in terms of writing, in terms of society and patrons, music is of course, you
#
know, valorized, validated, musicians are made much of. Patronage of musicians indicates
#
a certain kind of your good taste and status, adds, you know, kind of a certain respectability
#
to your position, et cetera. It's prestige. But music and gavaiyas, you know, there is
#
also a certain kind of disrepute attached to it. You know, it's like there is, if you,
#
and I think that has to do very much with a certain fear and a certain construction
#
of, this is my understanding of masculinity and which is that, you know, indulgence in
#
music, in ras, as they say na, jo ras mein lean hona, that's all very well. So whether
#
it is music or whether it is the beauty of a woman, love, you know, all of those things,
#
to be an atheist is something, of course, which is preferable and which is much looked
#
up to. But if as a man, you lose yourself into that, then it is doom for you. So there
#
is a certain kind of a cautionary note always there in terms of be a good patron, but be
#
a judicious patron. If you kind of go completely enraptured by it, then you spell doom for
#
yourself, for your household, for business, for dharma. And that holds true, I think,
#
both for, you know, I mean, pretty much within the, you know, Hindus and Muslims, upper classes.
#
There is that certain, and I think in Mughal writing, again, the ideal Mirza, who's the
#
Mughal aristocrat, the ideal Mirza, he is an atheist. He will patronize artists, but
#
he will also patronize, you know, wrestlers and he will patronize this and he'll patronize
#
that. But he shouldn't get completely and so enraptured that he loses sense of his duties
#
and responsibilities. This is pretty much the same thing as the Karthas of a Hindu's
#
household. If you have the means, certainly indulge in the finer things, but don't get
#
so enraptured that it brings doom to your household. And you have so many cautionary
#
tales about that. So I think that that is the certain role, the certain place that the
#
arts occupied, where arts are very well and they are marker of your status of, you know,
#
the status of the patron. Because they were based so much on individual patronage, without
#
individual patronage, arts could not flourish. But arts did not define in totality your sense
#
of identity of being whatever you were in all. I mean, for the artists, yes, not in
#
the way, for instance, by early 20th century, you have the arts, which start defining a
#
certain notion of Indianness, for instance. Before that, there is also a very robust kind
#
of ways in which arts are looked at, like they're not rarefied. So you have this thing
#
about, you know, when now in early 20th century writing, there's this whole big difference
#
being made between classical music and so called lowly popular music. You see, writing
#
before that, that kind of difference is not made. Also, in terms of the singers themselves,
#
I mean, not that we have too much of oral record of it, because recordings come in only
#
by early 20th century. But in the early recordings, you have singers who are pretty much singing
#
a whole medley of stuff and not just very consciously raga based, you know, music. So
#
I don't know if I've answered your question, but I think there are shifts that take place
#
by early 20th century under the imperative of nationalism, you know, and which then the
#
arts get start getting defined in a certain way, which is how we receive them now, how
#
we perceive them now. That's not necessarily something that is shared, you know, pre-nationalism.
#
And that's a fascinating point you made about, you know, that conception of masculinity, which
#
I'll sit back and process gradually, where it almost seems that you're drawing an analog
#
between the arts and the wives, where men are supposed to patronize both, but not get
#
carried away and give themselves over to both. Would that be? Yeah, I mean, the arts are
#
often symbolized, you know, as beautiful women also, they come in that shape. So it's the
#
musicians, I mean, the wives, yes, but even male musicians. I mean, the fact is that you
#
have to maintain a, basically the whole emphasis was on maintaining, knowing how to maintain
#
a judicious balance of being an estate, but also being a householder and the responsible
#
householder. And that has to be balanced. Now that kind of worldview changes with the
#
coming in of cultural nationalism. And so you have, you know, music, for instance, music
#
now starts defining the contours of Indian identity and, you know, pride of certain nationalist
#
pride in being Indian. So, and that carries with it a whole lot of baggage because then
#
certain kind of music becomes acceptable. A lot of other kind of music is not acceptable.
#
Certain musicians are acceptable. Certain musicians, many musicians really, which also
#
includes all the Tawafs and the Devdasis who, you know, who are seen to embody a certain
#
an illicit sexuality and, you know, their art practice is based on pleasure seeking.
#
Now that is not something which is very acceptable to the cultural nationalists who are imbuing
#
the arts with these, all these spiritual connotations, you know, of some higher purpose and higher
#
being. And so those things change. And so, you know, in that process, it's actually not
#
just the colonialists who give the Tawafs, who gave the Tawafs, you know, a big kick.
#
The bigger portions of stigmatization came actually from our very own nationalists.
#
And as you pointed out in your book, our nationalists were actually educated by the British in the
#
British system. So, you know, they did pick up some interesting British liberal values,
#
but they also picked up this kind of sense of morality. One question that struck me repeatedly
#
while sort of reading your book was about the Tawafs sense of themselves in the sense
#
that if I take the very cynical view that you may disagree with, but if I take the very
#
cynical view for a moment that all human interactions are transactional and that whatever else that
#
appears non-transactional is essentially a veneer, we are rationalizing it. So if there's
#
a kind of women who are living traditional lives and they're housewives and they're doing
#
whatever, in some sense they are self-delusional. But I would imagine that the wives would be
#
less delusional because they would have a much clearer sense of the transactional nature
#
of relationships, of the sort of role that they play within, you know, the patriarchal
#
system that they are part of. So does that make sense to you that there is a greater
#
sense of self-awareness there? And this also struck me like you quoted one Tawaf as telling
#
you, and this also seems to be, you know, an expression of a certain kind of self-awareness.
#
She was commenting more on my class and the kind of, you know, I mean, you come from a
#
certain class and you are kind of inured from the harshness of life. There's a certain naivety
#
that she presumed that I was coming with. But firstly, you know, I don't think that
#
women who were housebound were necessarily delusional at all.
#
Necessarily, but it would have helped if they were for them to be happy.
#
Yes, they sought their happiness and found their happiness. There are ways in which they,
#
I'm sure, I mean, it's just that so much less is written about from within the household
#
in terms of, you know, I'm sure they also found their ways of playing patriarchy. You
#
have to, if you have to survive, whether in a nice way or a bad way, but that's not the
#
point. The point is that if you have to, it's an unequal relationship. And so people who
#
are placed in that position and the wrong foot, then they find their ways to play the
#
system. So that's because if you see, if you were to talk to, I mean, I've, you know, I'm
#
not talking about the wives here, I'm talking about housebound women. And they interest
#
me a great deal because my own family, for instance, and especially my father's family,
#
pretty much represented that, you know, it's a very patriarchal family and very tradition
#
bound to a certain extent. And yet there are all these stories of these grandmothers and
#
grandaunts whose word was law. Now, how was their word law? You know, because technically
#
they did not enjoy, they did not even have the right to inherit, et cetera. So how was
#
their word law? But their word apparently was law. And even none of the men crossed,
#
you know, if they said some decided something, then even the men couldn't go against that.
#
So I think that it's a complicated field. It's not that all women could. I think most
#
women had a shit time and a horrible time, but I think we can't make victims out of everyone.
#
So and the fact is that the women lived certain lives. And that's for me, that's what I'm
#
saying is that as a documentarian, I mean, that's what has always been interesting. What
#
were those lives? What did they make of it? How did they look at it? I mean, so I don't
#
know. They were delusional at all. Pretty much might have seen that, man, I'm situated
#
here. Now I've got to work myself into a certain way. And, you know, I mean, they were after
#
all there they were in this hive of complicated, really power laden relationships, how to move
#
and make your move. It seemed like some elaborate kind of a chess game. If you look at it from
#
the outside and well, they were, they played it. So maybe some played it better than the
#
others, but no, I think, I think my phrasing was clumsy. I wasn't using the term delusional
#
as, as a way of dissing them. Like my very cynical view is that I think we all need delusions
#
to survive and we choose our own delusions. You know, some may believe in God or some
#
may overemphasize notions of romantic love or whatever. And it seems to me that the wives
#
by virtue of their position would at least be disabused of some of the typical delusions
#
that I think that again would be romanticizing them because, you know, the fact is that yes,
#
that I think there's maybe a greater awareness than most in terms of having an awareness
#
of the transactional nature of their relationships, which may be many of us. And I think especially
#
the middle-class, we are uncomfortable admitting that. And so we kind of say, we put a lot
#
of things to it, but that's the same as sex workers too. There is a certain, uh, and there's
#
a recognition of that because with this sex worker, for instance, it comes stripped of
#
everything else. You've got to recognize it for what it is. And I think with the wives
#
too, what they were very good at actually was to create illusion. So I think that is
#
the interesting point because, you know, here are women who are entering into, well, I will
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be your lover. You will be my patron. You will maintain me that monthly income, but
#
I blah, blah, blah, you know, it came with a certain ways of being. And so it was a certain
#
transaction, but it was never stated as such. It was all played out as this elaborate love
#
affair. And, uh, you know, with, uh, they are in control of those. Well, yes, but which
#
is what they would like to believe that they were always in control, but believe me, there
#
were a lot of stories, even in this book there are where sometimes they were not in control.
#
They do the human beings, you know, human beings win in love, lose in love. And I think
#
that's how things go on. So yeah, I wouldn't make them into some super women. And that
#
was my endeavor also in the book. So they're not that these super women who are also clear
#
eyed all the time. Relatively speaking, yes, because the nature of their relationship with
#
the outside, not within themselves, there is a certain recognition because it's also
#
easier to recognize the transactional nature of that relationship because that's how it
#
takes place. And yes, there is a certain kind of wisdom and smartness that is there because
#
they are survivors and these are self-willed women. I think that is really important. They
#
don't have any padding of, you know, family or someone padding you up, forget about family,
#
just your class privileges or where you come from or, you know, none of that. So if you
#
are a survivor, then you cannot afford to be in some delusional state. You've got to
#
be far more clear eyed. That certainly, but to the extent that for women who were, I mean,
#
we were talking about the heydays of the Tawaif culture. Yes, there were young Tawaifs who
#
also fell in love and who also stupidly wanted to throw away their, you know, thriving careers.
#
Who fell in love during wrestling matches as we shall discuss shortly. And who, well,
#
who, you know, it was just as well that Dilip Singh went off. Otherwise she was quite happy
#
to have gone after which is young Tawaif. So those things happened. I mean, after all
#
these men and women and this love strikes also. No, and it's interesting that the story
#
you mentioned about the Tawaif falling ill because she has been separated from her music
#
seem poignant to me and that also seemed to speak to this point. And I hope I'm not simplifying
#
too much that whereas they might recognize the contingent nature of everything else,
#
their relationship with music is not contingent because if you are a musician, there is nothing
#
transactional about that. It's all encompassing. And therefore when separated from the one
#
genuine thing in your life, I can sort of sense where that.
#
You know, there are lots, actually music is of course a very, very, very important thing,
#
but that's not the only genuine thing in the lives of Tawaifs. You know, their relationships
#
with each other, for instance, I mean, the kind of very close relationships that women
#
share with each other. Now that is something and the book has it, you know, except I'm
#
not that I'm not underlining it, but the fact is their primary relationships are with women,
#
with other women, women with their own family, their sisters or their daughters or nieces
#
or whatever aunts or very often adopted children, children, friends, women, friends from within
#
the community. And these are really intense relationships. So I remember one of the women
#
who's now a very good friend, very early on, I was flicking through her photographs and
#
I came across this two photographs with the same woman and with her arm around her and
#
there's something about it. So I said, who is she? And she said, you know, and that seemed
#
okay friend, you know, she's also a Tawaif, but from Gaya, not from even the same town.
#
Then over the years, I got to know her. To this day, I don't really know the nature of
#
their relationship, whether it's sexual or not. I don't know. And I don't think it matters
#
because I'm not sure that for her to is the kind of woman she is, there's a certain abundance
#
of so much to her, you know, in terms of the ability to give and the ability to also take.
#
So I don't know. But yes, I know why those photographs are there, because the intensity
#
of that love, that friendship, you know, she's our friend. It really struck to me. I can't
#
explain it, but it meant so much the way she said it. And of course, then I got to know
#
her and I've met the other woman and I know how close they are. I mean, it's, it's like,
#
you know, that if this woman, if there's something plaguing her, then the other woman will definitely
#
know, you know, she will know what is the real issue. So those are also relationships,
#
which are very, very important. Actually, family relationships, it is the other part,
#
which is rarely talked about, which is there in the book, of course, book talks is locates
#
them in their family is we make this categorization between family women and wives, family women
#
are respectable women and wives, wives, and somehow in popular culture, in cinema wives
#
are always shown, you know, these alienated creatures from nowhere, almost with no one
#
who've come and then there is some like conniving, you know, lady of the, you know, owner of
#
the quota who has either kidnapped her or bought her or whatever, whatever. The fact
#
is they all belong to a close knit community and very close knit families. And those families
#
in these are women who are heading those families. And so carry a huge sense of duty and responsibility.
#
Now, there, a lot of it is not, most of it, I don't see it as transactional at all, comes
#
out of, well, those are givens. It's like very much like I'm the elder son of the family.
#
I've got to do this. So we've got to do it. And so, you know, you say, well, why do you
#
have to do this? Why do you have to get your nephews into jobs, find jobs? Who else will?
#
I have to do it. And until they don't, they have to live with me. So, you know, in fact,
#
I see in Tawaif households, there's a lot of emphasis on that. These are women who are,
#
you know, taking care of very extended families, very, very extended families. A lot of them,
#
you know, when acting fairly parasitical in nature, because in this is one woman earning
#
or maximum two women earning and everyone just kind of living. But that's the nature
#
of those families used to be. Now, of course, it's changed. But there's nothing there.
#
Now, whether it's delusional or, you know, it's pretty much the same as family, you know,
#
as we see it in the other families. Fair enough. And a lot of your book does come across as
#
if it's just a story of another family and there's so much intimacy and affection. Yeah,
#
because we don't see them. The writing, actually, I think a lot of times that point doesn't
#
come across. The book, of course, is located in the family. These are families. And also
#
the ways in this family quarrels, family tensions, but also closeness and estrangements, but then
#
rapprochement, all of that, pretty much of what Indian families are all about. So except
#
that here it's not really the same, because here it's the women who are actually the drivers.
#
And in those ways, actually, certain dynamics change very much. But the expectations and
#
the responsibilities and duties, they are pretty much played out in a similar manner.
#
True. Let's take a quick commercial break. And after the commercial break, we'll come
#
back and talk about one of the most fascinating characters in your book. That's Tharman Bibi
#
and her story, which also, I think, you know, her life seems to be set just as the sands
#
are shifting and you know, so much is changing for the Vyavs and indeed for India. So I found
#
it quite fascinating. Let's take a quick commercial break. If you're listening to The Scene and
#
the Unseen, it means you like listening to audio and you're thirsty for knowledge. That
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being the case, I'd urge you to check out Storytel, the sponsors of this episode. Storytel
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is an audiobook platform that has a massive range of audiobooks from around the world.
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Their international collection is stellar, but so is the local collection. They have
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a fantastic range of Marathi and Hindi audiobooks. What's more, I do a weekly podcast there called
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The Book Club with Amit Verma, in which I talk about one book every week, giving context,
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giving you a taste of it, and so on. Download that app and listen to my show. And as long
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as Storytel sponsors this show within this commercial itself, I will recommend an audiobook
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that I liked on that platform every week. My recommendation for this week is The Ivory
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Throne by Manu Pillay. This is a marvelous book about Kerala and its badass women and
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eye-opening in so many different ways. Manu had joined me on episode 156 of The Scene
#
and the Unseen to speak about this book. And now you can listen to the book on Storytel,
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The Ivory Throne by Manu Pillay. Download the Storytel app or visit Storytel.com. Remember,
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the Storytel with a single L, Storytel.com. Welcome back to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Saba Devan about a fantastic book, Tawaif Nama, and indeed all her work
#
on exploring the history of the Tawaif community. And you know, what I loved about your book
#
also is that it's not a boring retelling of this happened in history, that happened, but
#
it's got all these wonderful, vivid characters who come so alive. And one of them, of course,
#
is a character of Dharmun Bibi. And Dharmun Bibi is not just a young Tawaif, she's also
#
a wrestler. So, tell us a little bit about, you know, her early life and what her journey
#
reveals about, you know, those times. I think, see, Dharmun Bibi is an early 19th century
#
Tawaif. And so, now she is important because she represents just a certain glimpse of,
#
you know, the kind of role that Tawaifs played or, you know, the kind of access that they
#
had to power and the way that they were being looked at just before 1857. You know, in fact,
#
the whole thing builds up to 1857, you know, the rebellion of 1857. And therefore, when
#
this story came to me and, you know, this family, they talked about their great-great-great-grandmother.
#
I was like completely, you know, taken in because, A, I had not come across a continuous
#
family history that went that long back. And B, she is just lovely, you know, and then
#
there was a mention of her even in the Gazetteer. I found it. So, I said, wow, I mean, she's
#
absolutely lovely. But she is not the only, you know, the thing about being a wrestler,
#
strange as it may sound, it actually, there were other Tawaifs of later vintage who also,
#
I'm not too sure what the connection was, but I think maybe it's like a physical regimen
#
or exercise. You're really fit at least. Probably. Because I've come across at least two or three
#
instances of, you know, women of Tawaifs either being interested in wrestling. Interested
#
in wrestling. Fine. You are in the patrons of wrestlers, which also you don't kind of
#
associate, but yes, like, but also being in doing wrestling, knowing wrestling, knowing
#
this Latwazi. So, you know, these swordsmanship, etc. It's very strange. That kind of goes
#
out then by about late 19th century. One doesn't find these references as much, but in Banaras,
#
I have come across. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, even the great Vidyadhari Bhai, who is the
#
great Thumri singer, I think, yes, I mean, she was very fond of, you know, wrestling
#
or she could do wrestling herself. I'm not, I can't remember that, but I think even her
#
something about it. If you look at it, it's also about a certain mobility and freedom
#
of space of accessing. See, if you are wrestling or you are, you know, doing Latwazi and all
#
of that, and also horse riding, then there is an access to open spaces. You know, there's
#
a person who has enjoys that kind of freedom to access and freedom of movement. It is not
#
exactly speaking of that really. And one of the memorable scenes in your book, and it's
#
interesting, I should call it scenes because you are, of course, a filmmaker and this scene
#
seemed so cinematic to me. Like if ever a web series is made, this could really be a
#
pivotal scene in the pilot episode is that wrestling match where you describe how this
#
wrestler Dilip Singh is just beating all comers. And then at one point where he's beaten
#
everyone, he's like, you know, does anyone care to challenge me? Does anyone have the
#
courage? And this young 19 year old, the wife, which is of course, Harman Bhai has a self
#
confidence to say that I will challenge you. And then she challenges him. And then that
#
wrestling scene itself is so tinged with the erotic that they are actually wrestling with
#
each other. And it's a clash where eventually none of them win. And then they eventually
#
become lovers. And all of that was sort of incredibly fascinating and be one then wonders
#
that the people who are telling you the story, her great, great, great granddaughter, you
#
know, in their imagining, how is all of this happening? Are they romanticizing it? Are
#
they sort of building it up? Are you filling in certain blanks yourself?
#
Yeah, I think what I was interested in was in the ways in which the story was being told
#
to me, because I think after all, these are stories that are coming down so many generations,
#
there surely must be additions in them, which I was open to. And my interest was not that
#
this has to be some authentic, that each part of the story has to be validated. Because
#
my interest in these stories was of the Tawaifs telling their own stories. I mean, see, what
#
is important to them in the telling of the story about say, Harman Bibi.
#
And even anything they've added would actually be revelatory.
#
Absolutely. So that is, that is why I was so interested in hearing from them the stories
#
about, you know, these women in their families, because that points towards the ways in what
#
are the things that they valorize? What are the things that are important? Where is the
#
erotic? And erotic, I realized pretty much could also reside in a wrestling match. And
#
in fact, it was very erotic, you know, when I could see immense possibilities that it's
#
something if I had been just presented, if I had to think of it, maybe for a moment I'd
#
be a bit flummoxed. But once I was told that story, definitely, yes, of course, an extremely
#
erotic moment and charged moment.
#
In fact, the image that came to mind is in the film Ghosts, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore,
#
and they're doing that sculpting bit and that's an erotic moment in that act of what is otherwise
#
something totally unerotic. And I was also, you know, there's also this sort of fantastical
#
element in your book, in the stories, which are obviously coming through from what the
#
stories that you're being told, and you're reproducing them. For example, much later
#
when Dharmand Bibi, you know, she and her husband Kuwar Singh have rebelled and they're
#
on the run and all of that. And she's hiding in a temple and she's giving birth to twins.
#
And every element of that little bit is obviously not true, but obviously also true in a certain
#
way. For example, every time the English try to enter, there's a lightning strike and
#
The Devi is protecting. That's how they read it. And see, for me, I think that's the documentary
#
part of filmmaker part of me. I realized pretty early as a filmmaker and documentary filmmaker
#
that reality is very relative. You know, in terms of what is reality, it could be a slippery
#
creature and your reality is not the same as mine. And for me, what is more important
#
is in terms of the ways in which a story is told. It's not the whether it happened or
#
it didn't happen. It's actually, ultimately, what is the story telling me? What is it pointing
#
me towards? So there is this kind of element of magical realism, which is there throughout
#
the book. Now, here is a community that, you know, is also very steeped in by the way in
#
Sufi worship and that cuts across Hindus and Muslims. And there is a ways in which that
#
they, I think that could be true of a lot of other Indians. It's of looking at realities
#
where this kind of, you know, this chunk between what we call the fantastical and the real
#
world necessarily does not exist. So what is, you know, there are ghosts who enter your,
#
you know, world and they are also creatures and they are also there are Sufi saints who
#
are your benefactors and they are people almost. I mean, they become like characters in your
#
story and they are like these, your family elders almost taking care of you. So I pretty
#
much realized that, I mean, this was an amazing treasure trove of stories and I didn't want
#
to reduce, be reductionist and, you know, because I think for me, the way they were
#
told to me, I was interested in telling them as they were without passing judgment because
#
how can I claim that my reality is of a superior nature or more rare? I mean, or my idea of
#
reality. There's no ways in which there's certain arrogance that I could be speaking
#
And for me, for instance, that, you know, the whole bit about when Dharmand Bibi is
#
giving birth to the baby girls in the sanctuary of Mundeshwari Devi's temple. Here's a Muslim
#
Tawaif. This is a narrative which flies in the face of colonial writing and also later
#
even the, you know, the Hindu nationalist writing.
#
It shows you how natural our syncreticness is.
#
Yeah. So, and here are these Muslim Tawaifs, three generations down or four generations
#
down telling me that story about, so it is their telling of the story that I'm going
#
on and where Mundeshwari naturally becomes foster mother almost. She, she's Devi. She
#
is the mother, mother goddess. She has to be Dharmand's mother and she will have to
#
protect Dharmand and Dharmand becomes her daughter. And this Dharmand, this great warrior,
#
the wife warrior is now at her most vulnerable because, you know, she is giving birth and
#
she's helpless and the enemy is outside. And so of course she's in the embrace of her mother
#
who then takes care of her and protects her. When I heard of it, I actually had goosebumps,
#
you know, because, and then they attribute and says, you see, Sada Bahaar, don't forget
#
she was one of the twins who the daughters, Dharmand's daughter and Sada Bahaar, you know,
#
has this mystical destiny and she's also very fearless in many ways. And they said that
#
Sada Bahaar was after all born under Mundeshwari's gaze. And it somehow becomes that, you know,
#
that transmission of a certain energy that happened. It's all very fascinating and this
#
also kind of ruptures this kind of ways in which you patriarchy posits the illicit sexuality
#
of the tawaif and the Devi. You know, aap ya Devi hain, ya patita hain. But here actually
#
the tawaif is giving birth in the sanctuary of the Devi. The Devi becomes the mother.
#
So of course I love this story and it said so many things to me and provided me with
#
an understanding with the ways in which they construct a certain syncretism, a lived syncretism.
#
It's not like a spoken of or romanticized. This is like very matter of fact way this
#
story was told to me. And I just hope that the readers also kind of give them that kind
#
That's one of the things that made your book such a fun read is that you have allowed these
#
stories to sort of, like you said, you just documented them and it strikes me in a way
#
that all histories are in some sense or the other mythologies. And you know, the fact
#
that a lot of this history is actually almost oral histories coming down through the generations.
#
So you know, all these layers are getting added on and there were some beautifully filmy
#
layers and all this. But you know, in her life also there are these sort of, you see
#
society and the economy and politics changing as well. You know, for example, in the fact
#
that as you pointed out, she was besotted with the lips and she wanted to be with him,
#
but his economic circumstances led him to, you know, follow his brothers into the army
#
and he's gone. And then she is being wooed by this man old enough to be her grandfather
#
Coor Singh. And at first he's not willing. And then comes this very filmy element of
#
her aunt Zahuran being wooed and poisoned by this Khanazat Khan. So to cut a long story
#
short and it's a delightful filmy story. Again, she dies and she gets into this marriage.
#
And it's a wonderful, beautiful, loving marriage, which is, you know,
#
It's not a marriage. It's a partnership.
#
It's a partnership. Yeah. She's a mistress, but it's almost like a marriage in the sense
#
that she's the official sort of, I mean, there's another very nice story you tell about how
#
this English official comes to Coor Singh's house and you know, other Tawaifs are performing
#
for her. And obviously Dharmam is at an elevated level being the mistress of this man and she's
#
not expected to perform. But then the Englishman says, no, I want to see her. And he can't
#
piss off the Englishman because his economic fortunes are going down and he depends on
#
the British. And she performs and he's getting to sort of carried away by this. And I'll
#
quote from your book, Dharmam seed silently. This Virangi foreigner was behaving as if
#
she, the leading Tawaif of Shahabad was a humble Naciniya, a low place dancer, or worse,
#
a poor prostitute selling sex to English soldiers. Stop quote. And there is again a delightful
#
story about how she keeps piling him with drinks and then sends one of her, so drunk
#
and then sends a maid servant dressed in her clothes and the guy doesn't realize the difference
#
all of which is like incredibly filmy. So if Bollywood people are listening to this.
#
These stories come down. The book is also begged into actual research and you know,
#
I mean, and archival research. And so, which is part, which took a lot of time, but actually
#
to understand the community, how do you understand the community? I guess the context I was providing
#
and I was working hard on them in researching the political social changing context. You
#
know, this is like the unfolding of India through this family over 200 years. And the
#
thing is that the history of music and musicians in India, especially there's not that much
#
written material. It's very based on oral accounts, oral histories. You have to actually
#
depend on those and you come across actually over and over again, you come across very
#
many stories. I make no claims that any of these stories necessarily it's exactly how
#
it happened. It may or it may not have happened that way, but it's the family's understanding
#
of their sense of self. They derive their sense of self from these stories of their,
#
well, grandmother, aunts, grand aunts. That is what is giving also like, you know, getting
#
channelized into their sense of self. And what is that construction? How are they constructing
#
these histories? That speaks to me a lot about how the community constructs itself, what
#
the community values. It gives me a peep into their ways of being. So, you know, some of
#
the stories, whether unbelievable or not, but some of them are actually very delightful.
#
And the ones which have the element of great element of magical realism. Later on, there's
#
this story of this, you know, aunt of the protagonist who literally loses her way. She
#
has this destiny of being one of the greatest musicians. And it's a cautionary tale actually.
#
And you know, the wife narratives are bound with cautionary tales. So she loses her way
#
because of her own hubris. And then ultimately, because she had for long served, you know,
#
the rag and ragni swell, it's they who come to her rescue literally. And she finds herself
#
in a forest and they rescue her and they take her away. I mean, it's an incredible story.
#
So, and it speaks to me about the intensely close relationship that, you know, these musicians
#
have with their music. That's actually what it's speaking about in a very personal relationship,
#
which was so, which is defining so much of their being that ultimately where you're saying
#
that if I'm in the danger of being killed, it is my music will come and save me and music
#
literally in the shape of a man or woman personified. I just found that those stories fascinating.
#
And let's listeners think that the book is just a magic realist exercises. No, that's
#
just a small part of it. I found a lot of the background research very meticulous and
#
I am kind of fairly familiar with that period. What I, you know, found very interesting and
#
wasn't so clued into was one you've written, of course, about slavery, that it was so prevalent
#
and it's not something that happened in America in the mid 19th century and was abolished.
#
It was very prevalent in India where people would sell their children and people would
#
even sell their wives and all of that. There'll be sales deeds. There'll be sales deeds. And
#
shockingly enough. Yeah. So it is part of our recent history as well. And our culture,
#
as it were. And what also kind of struck me was how much of the wife families, how much
#
of the community is sustained through adoption. Like Dharman Bibi's aunt was herself adopted,
#
as you pointed out. And there's a lot of sort of like you write quote, adoption of girls
#
children among childless the wives was most common, but it was not considered unusual
#
for the wives with biological daughters of their own to adopt as well. More daughters
#
in the family meant more earning members and prosperity for the quota. Stop quote sort
#
of pointing to the economic incentives of all of this.
#
No, but actually as the book points out in the later chapters and that is from post 1857,
#
you know, the rule shifted from East India company to the crown, the British crown directly.
#
And so, you know, there's the IPC and all of these, the law changed and adoption by
#
wives was declared illegal. So, you know, those wives who had already adopted, well,
#
then their foster daughters could not claim property because it was not recognized by
#
the state and any adoption done thereafter from 1860 onwards was anyway deemed illegal
#
and a criminal activity. So, and then there's this entire thing about how this family Sada
#
Bahar and her, you know, twin and their foster mothers lose their entire fortune in being
#
taken to the courts over this whole issue. But the thing is that adoption was fairly
#
common and there are hangovers of some of those terms which still remain. So, you know,
#
for instance, even to this day, I was rather shocked when they use the term Malkin. Malkin
#
is kind of slave owner, kind of conjures up things. So, but it's obviously a hangover
#
because Malkin's now they say it simply means, you know, like the mother of a active, this
#
is being now used in context of bar dancers, some of whom come from the wife families.
#
But the process of adoption from the outside stopped. And that is because by the criminalization
#
of the entire tradition by the colonial state. So, they were being, you know, this point
#
of time, 1870s, 1880s, you have a plethora of court cases if one comes across in the
#
archives and where especially actually of, you know, dancers and singer communities from
#
West India and also from the Devdasi communities and also some Tawafs, which is on litigation,
#
which is on this very fact that oh, so and so is, you know, an adopted daughter. Well,
#
her claims upon property being contested because she's illegal. So, you know, that so de facto
#
within her claims are not recognized. So, this process, there was an entire, there seems
#
to have been a big churning actually within the community. That's actually where my archival
#
research came in handy is looking at that and piecing the things. Also the fact, I think
#
that somewhere around late 19th, early 20th century, at least from within the Tawaf communities,
#
sanction from the outside came to an end because there is no memory of adopting daughters from
#
the outside. Yes, adopting your own nieces, that kind of within the family, that continued
#
and that continued because well, you know, they just felt that that needed no official
#
sanction. One of the smart things that Tawaf communities in the North did, which I don't
#
know why it was not followed by the communities of dancers and singers in the West and South
#
was that they actually had an embargo of not accessing law courts. It's really very interesting
#
and because they kind of realized quite early on that, look, we are the losers every time
#
we drag some family matter or, you know, issue into the courts because there's just so much
#
bias and hostility and prejudice against, well, so-called prostitutes. So, who are not,
#
and certainly their customary lifestyle, their norms, customs are not being recognized at
#
all. So, there was a certain embargo, which is really very interesting that they imposed,
#
you know, if you go to access, if any family does do that, then they would be excommunicated.
#
Now, whether that was imposed all across all the communities in the North, I don't know,
#
but seems to have been imposed at least in a lot of places and people have a memory of
#
that. And in a sense, it's a fantastic, and it's a, it's a, it's fantastic as an example
#
of fighting colonialism, you know, which would, our nationalists today would perhaps not think
#
of that as a typical example, but it's an act of civil disobedience. Yeah. So they basically
#
here it was of survival of protecting your own customs and norms. And so very typically
#
the answer I would get was ki hum kisi ke maamle mein nahi padte, koi humare maamle
#
mein nahi padte. You know, so we don't meddle in your affairs, you don't meddle in ours.
#
We said, we don't want to go to the courts. We'll settle our affairs ourselves because
#
they realize they're very smart that they would, they were losers in colonial courts.
#
And that, you know, kind of a discomfort of accessing law courts kind of still continues.
#
I mean, it's not, although now of course there are no tavayas. So, you know, this, but, and
#
things have changed substantially, but you hear of fewer numbers of cases going to the
#
courts. The emphasis still is of resolving it within the community somehow. In fact,
#
one of the most striking factoids, which provided an impetus to the already moralistic stance
#
of the British, the most striking factoid was that more soldiers died in the 1857 mutiny
#
from venereal disease than in combat. And this completely blew my mind. More European
#
soldiers died in 1857 from venereal disease than in combat. And, you know, you already
#
had existing offenses of adultery and enticement in the Indian penal code to that. It was added,
#
you know, prostitutes and dancing girls, quote unquote, as you've said, were forbidden from
#
adopting children since this was presumed to be for the purpose of inducting them into
#
prison. Your words. And you also say, quote, colonial lawmaking thus contributed substantially
#
to the dissolution of the autonomy and privilege position as independent women of substance
#
that courtesans had customarily enjoyed. Stop, quote. And then you talk about how, you know,
#
state surveillance goes up and there are all these efforts.
#
See, that is one part of it. That is the criminal aspect, criminalizing the tradition. The other
#
aspect was in terms of, even in terms of personal, you know, the so-called, you know, this, the
#
lawmaking was divided into, you know, this criminal, personal. Yeah. So, um, and so here
#
what happened was that, I mean, that had existed even pre 1857, but post 1857 you had Muslim
#
personal law, Hindu personal law. So communities were to be governed, you know, their matters
#
pertaining to inheritance, separation, property, all the civil matters would be, and that was
#
to placate actually, you know, what was perceived to be the traditional, more traditional elements
#
within Indian society, who it was felt had got very offended by, you know, colonial evangelical
#
activity. And that was one of the reasons for 1857. Now, so all civil matters came under
#
these, you know, Hindu law, Muslim law, Christian law, et cetera, et cetera. These were necessarily,
#
you know, they are necessarily patriarchal in nature because where men are privileged
#
in all of these after all over women, any of these law things. So, um, the customs,
#
you know, whereas what the Tawafs or any of the communities, it's not just the Tawafs.
#
I mean, it's any of the communities, the other communities, they had followed thus far customary
#
law. Now customary law a, because they were all these communities who are not of, you
#
know, so-called high caste, you know, many of them did not have all of this written down.
#
This came as part of a certain oral, uh, you know, uh, tradition, uh, an oral memory of
#
law making that what happens is, and it does not fall neatly into being Hindu or Muslim.
#
So for instance, nut Tawafs, if they are nut Hindu nut Tawafs and Muslim nut Tawafs, they
#
all follow the same, you know, customs. And that is true for all the other communities
#
of Tawafs also in terms of inheritance, property, whatever, whatever. Now, as far as the, and
#
where, of course, women are being privileged, you know, in the Tawafs. Now, if they go to
#
the, this was the greatest blow to the position and autonomy of the Tawafs, you know, and
#
one of the reasons why they stopped accessing law courts, because when they went to the
#
law court, the first thing was that, you know, if there was any law, uh, case, you know,
#
say a brother contesting against his sister, the brother automatically stood much greater
#
chance of winning the case because that is how actually, whether it is, you know, Muslim
#
personal law or Hindu personal law, it is patriarchal, it privileges men, any of these
#
law makings. Secondly, their customary law was not recognized because they said you are
#
prostitutes, you are criminals. So to, to claim that you are, this is custom is to say
#
as if a band of thieves has a certain customs. So, you know, their customs were disparaged.
#
And then thirdly, there's a certain identity of being either Hindu or Muslim imposed on
#
them. It's fascinating. If you go through the legal archives where actually there are
#
these contests made saying, you know, but your honor, my client is neither Hindu nor
#
Muslim, but identifies herself as what, what, what, and this is no, how can that be? It's
#
very clear. Her name is this. Her mother's name was this. They follow the custom of burial
#
and so they have to be, you know, Muslim. So there, there's a certain imposition is
#
also a certain ways in which there's a congealing of identities that takes place in late 19th
#
century is all a parcel of ways in which identities is this disparate Hindu Muslim. They get shaped
#
also in this period, but actually it's also, it's a greatly contributed to the erosion
#
of the status of the wives. So it was not just the criminalization, which is, you know,
#
in terms of state surveillance in terms of, you know, like for instance, the, the ways
#
in which the contagious disease acts, where you were had to go and get yourself compulsorily.
#
I mean, you examined, et cetera, et cetera, all that was there. Anyway, it was the actually
#
civil law, which was really, really eroded their position, which is why actually they
#
said goodbye. They had a good sense to say goodbye to the law courts. As far as these
#
cases were concerned, they resolved it within themselves.
#
No, and it also strikes me, but how it is such a blow to the beautiful diversity of
#
our country by, you know, using the coercive power of the state to force them into these
#
categories and even any kind of passive resistance that they do, like, you know, boycotting the
#
courts will eventually fail because we are talking about them in the past tense. We,
#
you know, we, and like this, I'm sure we've destroyed so many other.
#
No, also these are communities which were always much more marginal, you know? Yeah.
#
I mean, they were dependent upon their survival on patronage. The fact is that their patrons
#
themselves were, you know, in many ways negotiating. I mean, either they were buying their piece
#
and that was fine with the colonial state, but many of them were not able to buy that
#
piece also. And these are communities that are anyway, much more marginal, much more
#
vulnerable to all the pulls and pushes. And it's not just the Tabayafs. You have communities
#
across board who were being pushed around in this ways and being forced to then start,
#
you know, self-identifying themselves in certain ways, which, you know, and I think that had
#
a very profound impact in terms of the reshaping of Indian society. Very, very profound ways.
#
I think that really needs more study and more work.
#
And you've of course written very beautifully in your book about how through the second
#
half of the 19th century, they're more and more already being marginal, they're more
#
and more marginalized and so on. And interestingly, they have that brief moment in the main
#
stream when the gramophone comes in and it's almost they who make the gramophone mainstream
#
instead of the other way around. Tell me a bit about that phase and how that played out.
#
Well, you know, the coming of the gramophone, I mean, that's there in the book, it's actually
#
all well documented. You know, there's a big market with the coming of the actual gramophone
#
and the recording machines. There's this whole like big fascination for the recorded voice.
#
So one part of course was to record your own voice, your loved ones, et cetera, et cetera.
#
But there was much greater demand for music, indigenous music. That's how it's very fascinating
#
that early 20th century, you have these all these companies from Europe and America, you
#
know, it's racing and coming to India, who's going to beat, be the first one to reach here
#
because this was recognized as a huge market, the huge potential. Now, what is really interesting
#
is that, OK, they come in and the people, the only class of musicians who really show
#
an interest in recording for them are the Tawaifs and the Devdasis and very few of the
#
male musicians, especially, you know, the Khayal singers and Drupadiyas and all, you
#
have much fewer numbers. There were many reasons. See, why the men didn't want it is, you know,
#
the obvious reason is A, the purists amongst them felt that it compromised the integrity
#
of their music because something, you know, Khayal can be sung over so many hours. It
#
has to be like you have to explore leisurely each nuance and of the rag. And then you hear
#
this was even less than, you know, three minutes. You have to get it over with. So, obviously,
#
there was the purists felt offended. It was seen as something terribly crass and crude
#
commercialization. Yeah, I mean, so that was happening and a certain and a vulgarity. So,
#
so that was one part of it. But well, I mean, all, you know, all the this is very all very
#
high minded. But actually, there are also other reasons for it, which were less high
#
minded, which was a, you know, the value of music of some of the fair was based on the
#
fact of its exclusive worth, so that it was being performed for a small audience in these
#
exclusive gatherings of, you know, in the courts and in princely mafils. And so they
#
felt that that their value, the value of the music would go if it was accessible to all
#
on the gramophone and could be easily copied by everyone. So then what is their exclusive
#
value of their music or their style? That style could be copied by everyone. Then there
#
was a genuine real fear of plagiarism. So which dates back then till at that time. And
#
the third was actually, you know, and you hear that is in terms of, you know, the horn,
#
the gramophone horn, if there was a fear that this actually, I mean, it's actually speaks
#
of many things. If you think about it, there's this thing, fear that this sucks the soul
#
of the very singer of the singer. People are similar fears about cameras and their photos
#
being taken and all that. So, and well, I mean, you know, if you were to look deeper
#
into that, it's this, you know, in terms of looking at the market and music and what it
#
meant, et cetera, et cetera, that can, one can go into that. So the male musicians had
#
those fears, real fears, and therefore very few of them till at least almost 1920s. Very
#
few of them, much fewer numbers, except for certain notable, you know, examples like Ustad
#
Abdul Karim Khan Saab. He sang, but otherwise you have very few people with the wives who
#
came in, you know, large numbers. They were the main people who recorded for the gramophone
#
wives and Devdas. See, they were being hounded out of the courthouse. There was an entire,
#
you know, this period coincided with this whole anti-notch movement where, you know,
#
there was this entire public campaign against organizing notches, as they were called, notch,
#
you know, the wives' performances in elite homes, you know, for weddings or other celebrations.
#
So that was, there was, there's an entire hounding that was going on at various, in
#
various ways, in the press, in real ways where, you know, the patrons would be stopped physically
#
from holding these notches, et cetera. So they were under pressure to reinvent themselves.
#
And gramophone came along and was almost perfect for many of them to actually reinvent themselves
#
as gramophone singers and to, you know, to make an image, have an image makeover.
#
So on the one hand you already have that artistic training and you're, you know, great performers.
#
And on the other hand, if you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. So you just kind
#
of go with it. And so I think also with the wives, if you read their biographies and you
#
realize that these are women who are always at the forefront of exploring, you know, these
#
long frontwards. They were the first actresses. Yeah. So I mean, also, you know, they're great
#
travelers and forget about being great at every level. I mean, you know, they were always
#
willing that if there's an opportunity, which they could, there was a possibility of some
#
opportunity to pick up everything and to strike new roots at a completely new place. It speaks
#
of a certain way of being. I mean, and that's of course, you know, a community living by
#
their wits also of survivors. And so they're constantly moving. I think moving physically
#
from one place to another, but also then that also translates in being able to move from
#
one kind of a performance space to another kind of a performance space, you know, being
#
open to new opportunities in life. I think, so it was not just the gramophone. They were
#
theater, then there were films. So in fact, in terms of the ways in which we see now,
#
I mean, the cinema and theater and the recording industry, music, it was so much to the wives.
#
And would you say the community really died out or would you say it just got absorbed
#
into the mainstream? Just as the arts got absorbed into the mainstream in the sense
#
that now there is no taboo against, you know, people will send their daughters to learn
#
Bharatnatyam and Kathak and there's no taboo. In fact, there's even an aspirational sort
#
of attraction for the arts and you know, all of that. So the community died out not just
#
because it did. Unfortunately, it would have been, I think, you know, there are ways in
#
which inside it as it may be, but ways in which certain, you know, art forms, et cetera
#
have been wiped out, you know, in terms of, well, them not being as popular or the television,
#
you know, hegemonic kind of entertainments, market-driven entertainments taking over.
#
Where everything is dumbed down and all that. Yeah. But this is not, I don't think that
#
is the case here. I mean, that displayed one part of it. The major part of it was the stigmatizing
#
and sustained stigmatizing and shaming of this community where they were literally hounded
#
and pushed out of the kothas. To the extent that you pointed out at many former tavayas
#
won't even call themselves that. They'll say they're gaikas or they're singers or whatever.
#
There's no hope in hell that you will find one former tawaif who will acknowledge, you
#
know, call herself a tawaif to a stranger. There's no way because tawaif now anyway is
#
synonymous with being a sex worker. We may argue and rightly so that why should a sex
#
worker be looked down upon? But that is how society does look upon them. And it's also,
#
it's actually a certain systematic vilification that they have suffered, you know, over the
#
decades till actually say in Banaras, you know, that hounding, physical hounding went
#
on till they were actually, they had, they were forced to shut kothas finally by the
#
early 1980s. And that just didn't happen because old people's taste change. That too happened.
#
See, a lot of things happened together. For instance, one thing that happened was that,
#
you know, the emphasis on companion marriages. So, you know, you, with the emphasis on women's
#
education, women coming out of parda, getting educated, the emphasis on marriages where
#
your husband and wife share, our friends share ideas. That's a completely new concept for
#
India in many ways. So if the emphasis on that kind of a relationship, then really,
#
I mean, the need for a mistress who is educated, if your wife is educated, you know, those
#
that itself kind of was, you know, the, the, that need lessons. Even that need for companionship
#
of a cultivated, you know, companion. I mean, if that kind of, you know, was being undercut
#
and cut away, but in terms of the cinema itself, the coming of cinema and film music, that
#
I think went and before that, the gramophone recorded music. The thing about, because otherwise
#
kothas were also a site was not just a sexual site. Exactly. It was a site for going to
#
listen to music. But if there was recorded music by the same voices available, then you
#
know, the quota was not the only place you could access music. And not just that, that
#
also struck me that, you know, when you mentioned quota shutting down earlier, it struck me
#
that many of us may attach the same stigma to quotas as an old tawdry brothels as we
#
do to the wives. But as your book brings out, they were both kala academies of a sort.
#
There were places where people interested in the arts and the culture would gather and
#
early form of the literary festival. In fact, where you, you know, you speak of quotas where
#
you have these platforms and you have places for people to say it. And this is where all
#
of art is sort of saying all these discussions, you know, literary discussions with the time
#
I have playing hostess. So you have all these poets and they are, you know, they are reciting
#
and so the quota was actually a literary, a site for a whole lot of literary cultural
#
activity. Exactly. We can note it now in a singular way as just being a site for sexual
#
activity. That was not necessarily so. So we've spoken for almost two hours about your
#
book and I'd recommend all my listeners read it because it is both entertaining and moving
#
and enlightening. I think it carries so many insights about our society, which, you know,
#
we tend to take so much for granted. I'd like to now sort of turn to your working processes,
#
you know, both across filmmaking and writing and to writing itself. And one of those here
#
is that, you know, you're working. I mean, these are people you're spending a lot of
#
time with. They are your friends. They are close to you. There is an intimacy there.
#
You know, you point out about how, you know, you got fever and your friend looked after
#
you and all of that. But at the same time, they are fulfilling a utilitarian role for
#
you. You know, they are the means to the end of your book, so to say, how do you sort of,
#
you know, reconcile those things? Is that something that sort of bothered you while
#
writing the film or while writing the books? I don't think they were, I would call it
#
utilitarian because the ways in which relationships flower and this, these are relationships that
#
have flowered over a period of 20 years. You see, I started work on the other song way
#
back nearly 20 years in 2001. And I finished the film along with the other two films, which
#
is part of the trilogy. Trilogy got over in 2009. And then I started working on the book,
#
which was a continuation, you know, with the same people and just the research going deeper
#
into the research. Both as a filmmaker, I mean, actually I identify myself primarily
#
as a filmmaker. You know, I mean, even now when people ask me as a filmmaker, the writer
#
bit is very new to me. And well, as a writer now, my relationship with the, all the people
#
that I've worked with, if one has a utilitarian approach to, you know, people, there's only
#
that far you go with people. If one is using them as a means to an end, then that remains
#
just that. Then the kind of rich, the relationship between people as human beings, then you don't
#
see them. You stop seeing them as human beings because they just become a means to an end
#
to you want your film done. So they are that. And insert many ways, then you're stripping
#
them of their humanity. That's a real problem. So, no, I do not see my relationships with
#
everyone I work with are not, you know, what I was sort of asking is that they're both
#
personal, obviously in genuine, but at the same time, there is an element that we are
#
working, we are researching. I am looking at their lives and it's not that I will share
#
an equally close relationship with everyone I work with. That is true. I don't. And I
#
think that also depends from people to people, circumstances, et cetera. I think for me,
#
that's not just for the, the, the wives that I've worked with. It's equally true for all
#
the other people I've worked with, all the other films I've made. I mean, it's a cliched
#
question that's asked of nonfiction in general. I had, you know, these are relationships that
#
I forge, not necessarily don't have to become my bosom buddies, but the relationships that
#
I forge and I take care. And I think that is reflected then in the films is one in terms
#
of mutual respect. And that is why I mean, people always tell me what takes so long in
#
your film. I mean, you know, my films take so long in making, not all, but some of them
#
have taken immensely long. And because for me, the process is very important. You begin
#
the relationship. You go wrong in the process. Then you don't have a film. And the process
#
is not just glibly saying, Oh, what does mutual respect mean? Mutual respect really means
#
actually a of respecting the other person, respecting the boundaries that they are setting
#
out for themselves, respecting those and not trying to be clever and hoping the boss one
#
day or the other, I'm going to skip them. Because people are not stupid. If they have
#
some boundaries, learn to respect them the way you have boundaries and you want them
#
to be respected. And yes, over a period of time, if you know, there's a relationship
#
that intensifies and you know, you, they allow you in good for you, if not too bad. It's
#
also means of opening up yourself, you know, because that is a relationship and that is
#
a real problem. The unequal power dynamics, especially in filmmaking, where I'm right
#
up here, I'm looking at my subject. I expect them like with a microscope, I expect them
#
to open up their lives. But what about me? You know, and I don't work like that. There
#
is a certain giving and taking in terms of like sharing my life of sharing the way I
#
am as a person. And that is building up of certain relationships, not necessarily of
#
like friendship, but in terms of just also as colleagues, but relationships which have
#
to be based on a certain equality. And I guess also based on honesty, because you're very
#
upfront about what you're there for and how much they give is up to them. Absolutely.
#
And so for instance, I mean, there is a certain process that is involved and it's true from
#
the film I've made is that especially with, you know, the, the trilogy I made, because
#
it was very sensitive. Here were women who were really sharing parts of their lives with
#
me, which I felt very privileged that they trusted me enough to do that. But then there
#
was a certain process we followed. We, we cut the film and then the rough cut had to
#
be passed by them before and anything. If they said, no, this, you know, you know, people
#
say something and then they change their mind and say, no, I'm not comfortable. I said that,
#
but I don't want that to come. And what, what is it? You've got to respect that you've got,
#
because I genuinely believe in, you know, in all humility that a film or a book is not
#
more important than a human being or a human life. So, you know, you can do this, no great
#
film at the expense of someone's peace of mind or whatever, you know, their existence.
#
I, that's how I work. And that makes for a very slow moving process. But I think at the
#
end of the day, at least I sleep easier that, you know, the relationships I've shared thus
#
far with everyone I've worked with. It's like, I feel, yeah, fine. Some people have become
#
lifelong friends. I mean, like the protagonist of the book and her family. I mean, that family
#
is now family to me and she's a very close friend and, you know, comes and stays with
#
me and all of that. There are some others who might not be my close buddies, but yes,
#
we stay in touch. There is, you know, festivals, et cetera. You wish each other or whatever.
#
So just, I think it's also, I just feel that in some ways I'm very lucky because it enriches
#
my life. Very wise words. Let's kind of move on to the other thing that was very interesting
#
to me is that, you know, you made all these films, as you said, you're mainly a filmmaker
#
and then you wrote this book. How different was constructing the book as opposed to the
#
film? Like what were your sort of writing practices? How would you discipline yourself?
#
What did you learn about the process when you got into it? You know, in some ways, some
#
of the basics were not that different because filmmaking, except in spurts, when you're
#
working with a crew, when you're shooting or when you are finally putting it together
#
with an editor, it's essentially a very lonely exercise. You are on your own and not lonely,
#
but on your own rather. So in that sense, working on the book didn't feel that very
#
different. I mean, the research process was the same. I didn't do anything different.
#
I followed the same processes, just that it became much more intense. The process of like
#
my archival research obviously had to be much more thorough, intense and long drawn out
#
wider than I'd done for a film. I don't need to do that much for, you know, film, which
#
is at the maximum 120 minutes long, which has many other elements too. I think my greatest
#
challenge as a royal writing and certainly in the first part, first phase, first few
#
years I'd say, A was to find my voice. I mean, as a filmmaker, over the years, you know,
#
in some way you fall, you get up, whatever, by just doing and you learn, you get a sense
#
of what is working, what is not working. You get a grammar. You learn and as a film student,
#
there's some basic grammar of the medium that one learned. Here I had to learn the grammar
#
myself or well hope that I'm getting it right. And also improvise a bit because it seems
#
to me a very unconventional grammar for a typical Western novel or typical Western book
#
rather because it's actually a second person voice, but contained within that is it very
#
shifts to third person because you sort of take over the narrative of that second person
#
who's telling you. That was difficult to begin with because that was the other part. That
#
was the other challenge. So one was, of course, like, is this reading well? Is this reading
#
at all? Because as a filmmaker, when I see something, I say, okay, this shot is not working
#
and I know why this is not working. And I could have a sense of what could work. I might
#
have not done it, but at least I have a sense. Something else will. As a first time writer,
#
that was a challenge. You know, I'd be constantly like, like scared. And this seemed to me to
#
be a very bold choice is going with the second person account, second person voice. And then,
#
you know, though it's mostly third person because it's that person's voice. Well, this
#
came out of the other challenge. And that challenge was, how do you write the story
#
of people who are living, who are very much there, who do not wish to have their identities
#
revealed, but whose story you wish to tell honestly? Because there is, it's very important
#
to share those stories. It's really important. And, but how do you protect them, their identity
#
in the process? That I think was my toughest challenge because it's much easier to write
#
about people who are dead and gone, you know, but these are living families and I have a
#
sense of responsibility, duty towards them. You can't just like put them out, you know,
#
to so, okay, okay. I changed their names, but that was the simpler part. Changing names.
#
Then I tried, but that wasn't good enough because I was fearful, maybe not everyone,
#
but at least some people who knew the or knew of them could still be able to figure out
#
that this is so and so, because there were certain things I wasn't changing. The Babua
#
was not changed. This town that they come from, originally come from and Banaras. So
#
I was very fearful that then people could perhaps put the pieces together, put the pieces
#
and I didn't want that. So then became this challenge that, okay, the thing is that my
#
stories I have to be authentic and they have to be as they were told to, you know, they
#
have to be narrated as they were told to me, but they don't necessarily have to be exactly
#
of the same person. So once I decided that, you know, so yes, there is this family, there
#
is a family definitely, but you don't know their name. Only I know them. As long as I'm
#
true to the family in terms of the ways in which the family functions, the family dynamics,
#
the family broader history, then I started making composite characters also. So there's
#
some character that say, for instance, I would, you know, it's fit in from somewhere, put
#
them in. That started, that was also a very intensely creative process, but also then
#
it was also diffused chances of easy identification. You know, people say, okay, but this is not
#
like his family. And that's all done very deliberately. You know, some characters have
#
been introduced because how does it matter to a reader that this family is actually there?
#
Because you're not actually getting to know that the real family with that's the whole
#
point of it. You have, they have to be protected. They don't want to be known. How have they
#
reacted to the book? They're very, very happy. There's the protagonist, she, she loved the
#
cover and she told me, she said, this is just like me. Well, it says key, you know, you're
#
the, the artist origin, send made the cover and it's really a very beautiful cover. Very,
#
very beautiful. So this is, this is just like you, you know, he's done such a good likeness
#
of me. Well, he hadn't, he had just, this is his imagination. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
#
So, yeah, but for obvious reasons, they don't want to keep the copy in their house and that's
#
very understandable and it's very, very sad. So it's just very proud in, you know, she,
#
and I know that there are times when she's very tempted to say, that's me. And I've told
#
her, I said, you know, anytime you feel like saying so, it's your story. You say it, but
#
then that's her call to pick. Fair enough. So my, you know, my final question before
#
I release you from the torment of this non air conditioning studio is that, you know,
#
the book is done. Um, it might seem that it's just a book of history, that the wives are
#
a community, which is no more, but it seems to me that especially in current times, it
#
carries a lot of resonance because this imposition of morality, this imposition of a certain
#
kind of narrative where some things are right and some things aren't and where everything
#
has to belong. Some people belong, some don't, some people belong, some don't, and everything
#
has to fit into these neat categories. Seems to me now as oppressive for all of us as,
#
you know, what happened to the wives was oppressive for them. You know, so when you look at these
#
current times and you're also someone who's a social activist yourself, you're active
#
in all of this. That's a new role. I feel very strange when people say social activists.
#
Well, I mean, you started off the not in my name. I think this dispensation has forced
#
many of us to by default, just forced us activism. I never thought, you know, that that is something
#
I would be doing, but then they leave you with not bad choice. So I mean, I don't even
#
know what my question is. It's kind of a lament. I'm like one of those old men at those Q and
#
A's who's, you know, not asking a question, but giving a comment. But your book spoke
#
to me also because of that reason, because I think that what happened to the tabaifs
#
in a sense is happening to all citizens who care about, you know, our diversity and, you
#
know, our sense of what India is. And is that something that also kind of strikes you as,
#
you know, someone who's made these films and written this book?
#
Oh, it was very clear to me while I was writing the book, because the latter part of the book
#
especially was written and a lot of things changed in that period in the life of my protagonist
#
and so it's documented. And especially in the past five or six years, it was very obvious,
#
you know, what was, you know, I could see it. I mean, I could see it, of course, at
#
the level of, you know, what was happening around at a macro level and reacting, et cetera.
#
But here I was dealing with a family and with my friend who, you know, she's always, always
#
been shamed and, you know, victimized for identity. So find this, she was victimized
#
for being a tabaif. She left that far behind. It's leading, I don't want to reveal the book,
#
but yeah, it's leading a certain life, which is very different. The book actually talks
#
about it. It's, you know, a very respectable life. How does she leave behind being Muslim?
#
And now she has to deal with being a Muslim in the India of today. And well, and also
#
a single woman, you know, woman headed household with grandchildren, young grandchildren. It's
#
a very vulnerable position to be in, especially in UP, to be in UP and in Banaras, to be a
#
Muslim in Banaras. Although Banaras actually has a very sizable Muslim population, which
#
is a very well-kept secret, but it would strike me. And, you know, while I was writing the
#
book, it really would come home to me because it was also the ongoing conversations and
#
it was becoming more and more about her sense of identity as a Muslim then. And also this
#
just completely, I mean, here is someone who I don't know of anyone, really, I don't know
#
of anyone who in her lived life and her practice, she was intensely a spiritual person. You
#
know, there's a lot about Appa that I kind of go along with, but it's not that I fully
#
understand because I'm not, I don't necessarily share that. But an intensely Catholic, you
#
know, very Catholic in her belief systems, completely. I mean, you know, the secularism
#
of course means that you keep religion away from other aspects of life. But in the Indian
#
context, secularism actually means when all religions are given that equal importance.
#
She is the great one practitioner I know of that Indian version of secularism, you know,
#
just genuinely. There's no bias, no prejudice, never. And I mean, come on, her, the person
#
she had her longest relationship with, like her husband, her longstanding love was a Hindu.
#
Her children had a Hindu, come out of that union. So she, I remember when, you know,
#
15, 16, 17, when the mob lynchings were at their peak, she's really perplexed. She just
#
couldn't make sense of it. And she said, how can they do this? How do I explain to her?
#
You know, because, and the point is that it's not happened overnight. The point is that
#
there are, I think it's been a, we might tend to now conveniently say, oh, 2014 was this
#
like, that's when things went bad. But I think the fact is there's been a slide and there's
#
for a very long time. I've done an episode with Akshay Mukul on his book, the Gita prayers.
#
This has been a strain in our society for decades. The Tawaif Nama, actually the people have
#
commented and I was conscious of it. I mean, it's not that I did it consciously. It's as
#
much also a book about Hindu nationalism and the fact that that dark underside of nationalism,
#
which is Hindu nationalism has always been present. It's just that, you know, it could
#
at certain ways, points be balanced out, but it was always there. And almost as an extension
#
of British colonialism. And then there's been a slide in, you know, I mean, especially from
#
the 1980s onwards with the whole thing of opening up of Ram Mandir, you know, Yodhya
#
and all of that. I think that kind of, but it's not as if before that it didn't exist.
#
It was there. It was that darkness was there. You know, the so-called non-communal parties,
#
they opened the doors for this, for them to come in and we are paying, all of us are paying
#
the price for it today. And today, of course, I mean, the very existence when she says she's
#
panicked, she's paranoid, you know, this whole thing about not accessing courts and all.
#
Now it doesn't hold because she is paranoid. She says, you know, about, she's been running
#
around, collecting every shred of paper about, you know, proving your identity. So what do
#
I say? You know, you buy caught it. It's someone, she's one of the most vulnerable people.
#
And people like that can't afford to say, the only way I believe in, but that has to
#
be at a community level then. It cannot be at an individual level because, you know,
#
they're just, the people are just so, so vulnerable. You can't push them into, you know, this
#
and can't hold you in front of that. So, I mean, if there has to be a, you know, this
#
civil disobedience, well, then it has to be across localities or communities, whichever
#
way it works best. So, yeah, I mean, I have strangely, you know, the, I've, this book
#
came out and then from, since last year, I've been busy with the thing of promoting it and
#
going through the thing and it's been fun, but it's also somewhere the danger that we
#
are all in and which is looming in a way because we, well, we are ignored by many things, you
#
know, the class and all of that. But, but the danger that India is in at the moment,
#
I think that anyone, anyone with a modicum of brains could see just, you know.
#
And in a sense, that's what your very fine book is also about. Thank you so much for
#
coming on the show. Thank you.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, head on over to your nearest bookstore online
#
or offline and please buy Tabayif Nama by Saba Dewan. We, you know, barely scratched
#
the surface of what the book is about and I guarantee you'll enjoy it. Saba very smartly
#
is not on social media. That's how she gets work done. But you can follow me on Twitter
#
at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A. You can browse past episodes of The Scene in the Unseen
#
at sceneunseen.in and thinkpragati.com. Thank you for listening.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene in the Unseen? If so, would you like to support
#
the production of the show? You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute
#
any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking. Thank you.
