In search of the other song

I had been visiting Benaras since 2002 to conduct research for a film that would document the journey of the tawaif, or courtesan, within the cultural, social and political landscape of late 19th- and 20th-century North India. It was an uphill task – the history of the arts in India, and especially music is largely based on oral narratives and material traces, and these, when it comes to tawaif artistes, are even more fragmentary since this community has always stood on the margins of society.

Benaras was home to a large community of tawaifs till the mid-20th century. It was also the centre of an exclusive musical style of bol banao thumri and its associative light classical forms, such as the hori, chaiti, kajari and dadra, practised and preserved almost exclusively by women from courtesan backgrounds. The city continues to have a self-image of being a centre of Hindustani classical music, validated no doubt by the presence of well-known male musicians, patrons, music schools and music societies. It has, however, long since been deserted by tawaif singers and the music that once echoed in their kothas, salons. So where does the courtesan live in the city's memory? At musical mehfils (gatherings) hosted by wealthy merchants and at concerts held on the ghats of the Ganga, I received the same answer: the tawaif is dead, she sings no more those beguiling melodies that made men forget their way back home.