After a long time, I read a book that was so gripping that I finished it in one sitting. Prabhat Ranjan has written a wonderful book on the lost world of female singers who lived and performed in the Chaturbhuj Sthan locality of Muzaffarpur in Bihar. A wordsmith of unusual talent, he has coined a word that rhymes very well with “kissagoi” (the art of story telling) and has made it the title of his book “Kothagoi” (telling the stories of the kothas). The book has been recently published by Vani Prakashan. As we all know, kotha was the courtesan’s salon where music and dance performances were held, poetry was written and recited, intelligent conversations took place, and wit and repartee freely flowed. It was a much maligned – and, at the same time much glorified – place where patrons sought carnal as well as aesthetic pleasure and happily allowed themselves to be stripped of their riches.
It was also a place where the traditions of highbrow music and dance were preserved and enriched as performing courtesans learnt these arts from top-notch maestros.
Prabhat Ranjan’s racy style, creative use of language and deep empathy with the subject effortlessly transport the reader to the fascinating phantasmagoria of Chaturbhuj Sthan. His stories are based on the stories that he heard from others who were witness to the bygone era. They can become the basis of further research if somebody is willing to make an effort to separate the grain from the chaff as oral history has its obvious limitations.
The book tells us of Brajbala Devi whose tune Bismillah Khan was supposed to have borrowed for the popular song Dil ka khilauna hai toot gaya in Hindi film Goonj Uthi Shehnai . We come to know of Panna Devi who left Muzaffarpur to settle down in London and whose prominence could be gauged from the fact that when Alain Danielou published a catalogue of recorded classical and traditional Indian music for UNESCO in 1952, she was the only female singer listed from Bihar. Prabhat Ranjan incorrectly mentions that UNICEF had compiled the list in the 1970s. The book inter alia also tells us of the impact the Emergency had to expedite the demise of the Chaturbhuj Sthan as the centre of music and dance. An expert storyteller that he is, Prabhat Ranajan also narrates the poignant story of Sarla Devi, daughter of a female singer or a tawaif, who had with grit and determination decided to educate herself and become a teacher despite active opposition from the “respectable” feudal and middle class families. Sarla Devi started a school primarily for the girls who came from a background similar to her and was shot dead by a lumpen youth. The book also offers us a glimpse into the ways of feudal patrons of the early and mid-20th Century.
“Kothagoi” prompted me to re-read “Ye Kothewaliyan”, a classic penned in the early 1960s by Amritlal Nagar, one of the top fiction writers of his time. Unlike Prabhat Ranjan’s “Kothagoi” that presents reality in a fictional form, fiction writer Amritlal Nagar’s “Ye Kothewaliyan” is a book that presents reality as reality and is based on painstaking research and extensive interviews with tawaifs of all classes. Published by Lokbharati Prakashan, it frankly portrays their world of light and shadow, the tricks of their disreputable trade and their yearning to lead a respectable life. It also offers a poignant picture of how their world was shattered on account of the puritanical zeal of a harsh administration and police that framed stringent rules for their trade and frequently raided their kothas, thus making life miserable for most of them.
Nagar has interviewed Vidyadhari Bai, one of the most famous singers of the pre-Independence era, in her modest village dwelling. We also come to know from his book how Badi Moti Bai, another very famous thumri-dadra singer, had failed the audition for the All India Radio and was thus deprived of even this modest source of earning. How the puritanical zeal of the then Information and Broadcasting Minister B. V. Keskar turned all the Bais into Begums and Devis is anther story that the book tells us.
While “Kothagoi” has been written in the free-flowing romantic style reminiscent of Phaneeshwar Nath ‘Renu’, “Ye Kothewaliyan” avoids romanticising the world of the courtesans as it was a combination of bright light and depressing darkness. In these two books, separated by nearly half-a-century, this world comes back to life for us and we realise how terrifyingly beautiful it must have been. One cannot help quoting a song that Prabhat Ranjan heard from nautch girl Sunayana at the Ramnavmi Fair in Sitamarhi: “Jin babu ne diya rupaiya ve hain mere dil ke andar, main hoon unki Hema Malini ve mere Dharmendar.” (The person who gave me money lives in my heart. I am his Hema Malini and he is my Dharmendra)
The writer is a senior literary critic
