Tawaifnama is a book which revolves around a family of Tawaifs in northern Indian. It takes a look at how the Tawaifs have shaped Indian history and how the changing times have affected their personal histories.
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00:00 Post-independence India was also unwelcoming of Tawaif artists.
00:06 So the end result was that, you know, the way the Tawaif is now,
00:12 the word becomes synonymous with a sex worker, plain speaking.
00:17 Hello and welcome to Outlook Bibliophile.
00:27 Today I have with me a guest who has gathered much acclaim for herself as a documentary filmmaker,
00:33 but has now come up with a new offering in form of a book called Tawaifnama.
00:38 So this is the book that I have with me.
00:40 So congratulations, ma'am, for this book.
00:43 Thank you.
00:44 So Tawaifnama basically, as the name suggests, deals with the story of a Tawaif, a family of Tawaif.
00:51 And you have traced their history across generations.
00:55 And it deals with how, you know, they have played a role in shaping the history of India
01:01 and as well as how, you know, changing times have changed their personal history.
01:06 So the first question that came to my mind was that, like, you have always dealt with the visual medium.
01:13 You're a visual storyteller.
01:15 So what prompted you to write a book?
01:18 I mean, were there some limitations with that medium which you thought that probably a writing could compensate?
01:23 No, it wasn't limitations.
01:26 I'd actually in 2009, I'd done a film on Tawaifs, called The Other Song.
01:33 And it was simply that I'd researched extensively for the film.
01:39 And as you know, the film has a given frame and literally.
01:44 And so there was just that much that could be contained in the film.
01:49 And there was quite a bit of research that was just there with me.
01:54 And therefore, there's a suggestion that I do a book.
01:59 So I think it was more to expand my horizons.
02:03 And it was exciting because the new medium of expression for me.
02:08 And, of course, once I started writing, I realized the kind of, you know, that the research that I had in hand was quite inadequate for it.
02:18 There was just a whole lot of work that I had to do for the book.
02:23 But, yes, I'd been, it was for me as a filmmaker to express myself through another medium was challenging and also has been exciting.
02:35 Learning something, a new language.
02:39 So, like, you know, the book basically deals with, you know, how the word Tawaif in the earlier times did not have as much stigma as it currently has now.
02:51 Now it is considered like a dirty word.
02:54 So why did that change take place?
02:57 That's what the book traces, actually.
02:59 The book traces the ways in which from early 19th century to the present, you know, the figure of Tawaif started being viewed differently.
03:14 And so and a lot of historical factors contributed to it.
03:21 Colonialism directly contributed towards it.
03:24 The colonial rulers could not understand, you know, within their moral framework, the Tawaif didn't fit in.
03:33 There is this woman who, well, was, you know, had a sexuality outside marriage and yet was very much part of public space and had a fairly enjoyed high prestige in elite societies.
03:47 Where did she come from?
03:48 So there was a lot of prejudice and biases that colonial rulers brought with them.
03:53 And there's an entire history of lawmaking, which, you know, they legislated, which is, I mean, which they came up with against prostitutes and also against Tawaifs.
04:07 So that is one part of it.
04:09 The nationalists from late 19th century and nationalists of all hues were very critical of the Tawaif too.
04:17 Because in many ways, they internalized lock, stock and barrel, the morality of the colonial rulers, you know, because it gone through an English education.
04:28 So that's the kind of morality that they internalized in the process.
04:32 So that is yet another layer.
04:35 The end and post independence India was also unwelcoming of Tawaif artists.
04:43 So the end result was that, you know, the way the Tawaif is now, the word becomes synonymous with a sex worker, plain speaking.
04:55 And from being custodians of art, of music, of dance, they are now absolutely stigmatized figures whose art forms have been appropriated by the middle class artists.
05:12 So do you see yourself, would I be wrong to say that you see yourself as a savior for the Tawaif because your book attempts to like restore the glory or the honor which probably they had at that time?
05:25 Not at all. I have suffered from no savior complex.
05:29 And I am no savior.
05:31 I am a documentarian.
05:35 As a documentary, documentary filmmaker.
05:38 I was working, I did a trilogy, in fact, on stigmatized women performers, of which the film on the Tawaifs was one.
05:48 And so my, my work as, you know, either a filmmaker and now in this very new role as a writer is to ask questions, is to raise questions and is to throw, you know,
06:04 show a light on areas which might have been hidden.
06:08 I don't think, I at least don't suffer from, you know, any delusions of playing saviors.
06:18 And frankly, Tawaifs don't need me or you to be their saviors.
06:22 They have, you know, negotiated very harsh circumstances.
06:27 I can't say it's that they've done very well.
06:30 I mean, because the circumstances are very difficult.
06:32 But they found ways to survive and they found ways to reinvent themselves.
06:38 So they don't need no saviors.
06:40 I'm just a documentarian.
06:42 I'm just documenting their history.
06:44 Yeah.
06:45 So, like the mainstream cinema has done its fair share of, you know, thematic themes, which is based on Tawaifs.
06:53 Like, for instance, I've grown up watching Umrao Jaan and Pakiza.
06:56 So their treatment of Tawaifs is usually, you know, in two binaries.
07:04 Probably they'll be considered as a fallen woman or they'll be considered, you know, as a victim or absolutely heroine.
07:10 So, but your book, do you think it demystifies the Tawaifs, so to say, like it presents them as like just as people?
07:18 Well, I would, I would hope so.
07:20 You know, I mean, the fact is that the women that I have been in conversation with now for the past, I don't know,
07:31 and they've become good friends of mine.
07:34 For me, they are flesh and blood women.
07:39 And so I don't even when I was writing or even when I was doing the film,
07:45 it was not as if I was very consciously saying, oh, I have to demystify them.
07:50 They're already demystified.
07:52 You know, they are, they are human beings.
07:56 So, and with very little or nothing in common with the ways that the Tawaif is represented on the silver screen.
08:03 So, well, I would hope so.
08:07 I would hope that once you read the book, you realize that, you know, the Tawaifs here have very little to do
08:14 with the ways that the portrayal has been on in cinema.
08:19 So, like in your book, you write about how the Tawaif, you know, at that time, unlike the so quote unquote, the cultured women, you know,
08:28 they were the ones who were lettered.
08:30 They were the ones, you know, who had autonomy, agency over their over themselves, over their body, their sexuality.
08:36 So, but then I've read in your interviews that you said that you do not see the Tawaif as, let's say, a modern day feminist.
08:45 So, why is that?
08:47 See, they were the cultured women.
08:50 You know, the fact was that they epitomized high art and culture and elite cultures of their respective areas.
08:59 And certainly, you know, they enjoyed a relatively autonomous lifestyle.
09:04 I say relative because there were no absolutes for women in South Asian societies.
09:09 It was all very relative.
09:11 And yes, they had, they enjoyed access to property.
09:16 They had property rights, which women from so-called the respectable classes certainly didn't enjoy.
09:24 They had access to education, again, which Parda bound women did not have access.
09:30 But being a feminist is a conscious political choice.
09:37 And it involves a politics, which, you know, to foist that politics on to these two women, to any women for that matter, is unfair.
09:51 So, it's not as if they saw themselves as feminists or were coming from a thought-out, worked-out feminist position,
10:01 or were even talking about the liberation of women.
10:04 I think that if once we are able to free them from these constructs, you know,
10:10 either of being the fallen woman of Hindi cinema and pulp literature,
10:15 or the feminist icon of, you know, contemporary feminist discourse,
10:24 perhaps we have a greater chance of meeting the real women,
10:29 and also understanding their histories better, rather than putting these little labels.
10:35 Because then we are all, what we are doing is to trying to put them in our neat little slots,
10:40 to make them fit into our preconceived notions.
10:44 So, ma'am, you have been associated with the movement which was 'Not in My Name'.
10:50 You launched that movement, which was against the lynching that was taking place against the minority community.
10:57 And it got a massive support.
10:59 So, even in your book, you have the same sort of themes that you deal with,
11:05 about how, you know, India at one point in time used to be this place where, you know, Hindus and Muslims, you know,
11:10 stayed together and existed in harmony, and there were like culturally, there was no singularities as such.
11:17 But then towards the end of the novel, your protagonist, you know, has this sense of fear,
11:23 about not only her profession as a Tawahyaf, but also as a Muslim.
11:28 So, do you think that the minority in the country at the moment shares that same sort of fear as your character does?
11:35 You know, I'm not quite sure what answer I'm expected to give, because it's quite evident, is it not,
11:43 in terms of the kind of times we are living in, and the kind of fear that not just the minorities,
11:54 but the Dalits and other more vulnerable communities could be living under.
12:01 So, unfortunately, that is the way it is at the moment.
12:08 I don't think India, since maybe 1947, but then I wasn't there in '47 to experience it.
12:19 Those were not our times.
12:21 India has been on such a brink in terms of, you know, communal politics, as it is just now.
12:35 So, do you think the country is moving towards a darker time, or do you think there is light at the end of the tunnel?
12:42 Because your character, it just ends, you know, where she's actually a little scared of the environment she's living under.
12:50 So, do you think things will get better?
12:53 Well, I can only hope, as a concerned, deeply concerned and deeply worried Indian,
13:02 that eventually there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we emerge out of these dark times.
13:09 And being an optimist, I've always been an optimist, I would hope, I continue to hope,
13:17 because the day you stop hoping, then everything finishes.
13:22 So, now, coming back to the book.
13:25 So, like, when I read the book, I could sense that you share this deep, intimate bond with the central character,
13:32 whom you do not really name as per her request.
13:35 But at the same time, I could feel that you were able to write about her objectively.
13:41 So, can you talk about that balance?
13:43 How difficult was that, having that personal relationship and yet being objectively able to write about it?
13:49 I think it's, that was a concern for me, because I wanted to be able to write.
13:56 Also, I wanted to be able to communicate some bit of my essence, some essence of, bit of my, the essence of my relationship with her.
14:05 To give a sense, which is, you know, it's not just always all warm sisterhood.
14:13 You know, we fight, we have tensions, we, you know, all of those things also happen.
14:18 As it happens in all friendships, all intimate friendships.
14:23 I think what helped me was the period of years.
14:29 I mean, I have now known the central protagonist and her family for over 15 years.
14:38 And I think, yeah, so that's over such a long period of time, that I think that helps.
14:46 We've gone through good times and bad times and also indifferent times.
14:52 And I think that helps, that has helped in being able to write about it.
14:58 Perhaps if I started writing too soon about that relationship, it's, I might not have been able to be,
15:08 I might not have been able to actually look at my friend the way perhaps I could in this book.
15:17 Because I, there's a great deal of comfort I have with her.
15:23 And that reflects. And I, and therefore I can write about her without feeling defensive.
15:29 And also I feel confident that she's just such an amazing person.
15:37 That I feel confident that even some of the not so nice things that I write about her,
15:45 vis-a-vis say her daughter-in-law or those are fine, those, I mean, they are there.
15:53 But that is for all of us. We all have our grace.
15:57 But I think it is because I have this very long relationship with her, I could do so.
16:02 So ma'am, one of the things which I admired about the book was that it has a lot of elements.
16:09 Like it is, it can be classified as a historical account.
16:13 At the same time, it's fictional. At the same time, it's biographical.
16:16 But it has even some elements of fantasy in it also. It's fantastical as well.
16:21 So did you like plan it that way that this is how I'm going to write the book or it just organically happened to be so?
16:27 See the fantastical happened because those are the stories that those were told to me.
16:31 And they spoke to me at many levels.
16:34 So I think that it's a very rich, that it reflected a really rich inner world within the community.
16:42 You know, in a spiritual world, and which I wanted.
16:47 I definitely I mean, it had to be there in the in the book.
16:52 But in terms of writing it, no, I didn't plan it.
16:56 Because you see, this was the first time I'm writing it. So I didn't know how to plan it.
17:01 I just wrote I just it came organic, just grew organically.
17:06 I mean, this is the only way I knew to write.
17:09 So I wrote it. And I guess at times I would write more like as a filmmaker would in terms of the original drafts.
17:22 But in terms of my script outlines more.
17:28 And therefore, that was a real worry for me.
17:32 Because I did not want it to read like a film script.
17:36 I wanted it, you know, but I, you know, I did the best I could.
17:42 But no, I didn't plan that I have to have this element or that element.
17:47 I knew what was very, for me, why it was so important to tell this story of this family,
17:56 was that of all the stories that I gathered, they were actually reflecting in different ways.
18:03 They had a bearing on the making of India as we are today in some way or the other, you know.
18:09 And it was like a huge jigsaw puzzle. And they all fit in together to make this modern India.
18:17 And that's the sense I wanted. I mean, that is the way what I was approaching.
18:24 And they came from very different directions. So they covered very different areas.
18:29 So yes, necessarily, the research was very widespread and the writing took forever.
18:35 But that's what I knew I wanted to do. How I would do it, I just did it. I mean, I just wrote.
18:43 Yeah, because you talked about your research, because once you start reading it,
18:48 the reader gets the sense of that you know the subject that you're writing about.
18:52 And that's clearly because you've been associated with the subject since almost close to a decade, over a decade, I guess.
18:58 19 years. 19 years. Because I started working on the subject in 2000 for my film.
19:05 Yes. The other song got made in 2009. And then it's been a decade since.
19:11 So for a person who's watched that film, since it also deals with the same subject of Tawaay of setting in northern India.
19:20 So what, how is that film different from, let's say Tawaay of Nama that you have now come up with?
19:26 That's, if you've seen the other song, the other song deals with the one aspect.
19:32 It deals with the ways of, in which the Tawaay of not just the censorship by outside
19:43 factor forces of the Tawaay of art, practice and her lifestyle,
19:49 but the saddest of all for any artist, self-censorship.
19:53 And it deals with that aspect and it deals with the history of that as to why.
19:58 So that actually is just one part of the entire story of Tawaay of Nama.
20:04 So, yes.
20:07 So, and I read the book, I mean, one of the most interesting characters that I came across was Pyari Khaala.
20:13 I thought that she was one of the most interestingly sketched character.
20:17 She's old, but at the same time, she's flirtatious.
20:20 She's dying of cancer, but at the same time, you know, she's living it up.
20:24 So who is your favorite character, if I may ask?
20:27 Pyari Khaala happens to be one of my, I loved Pyari Khaala.
20:32 And yes, very deeply.
20:37 So it's difficult to say favorite character because these are, don't forget, these are real, they were real life people.
20:46 Some of them are no longer with us, but, and I had a relationship with almost all of them.
20:54 So, I don't know, is, my friend is there, of course, the central character.
21:02 But I had an independent, a very good relationship, friendship with her elder sister Asgari.
21:09 And I found Asgari a really fascinating woman.
21:14 Unfortunately, sadly, she's no more.
21:16 I mean, it's difficult to say because these are, these are real life people.
21:20 So, yeah.
21:22 So now just about your research a bit, I mean, if you could tell us, walk us through how it was for you, the research part of it.
21:30 Well, the research very broadly was divided into two parts.
21:38 One is, of course, fieldwork, which was extensive times that I spent in Benares, in Bhabwa, and traveling across Bihar, mostly Bihar, Western Bihar, Western and Central Bihar.
21:59 And that has been, as you can make out from the book, over a period of many years and very long period spent with the family and just being and observing.
22:13 There's also the other part is a very intensive archival research.
22:20 So, which was done, which was done with me, by me and my associates, research associates, whom I've thanked in the book, who were critical to, you know, the research that they were able to bring in.
22:39 And, you know, in Delhi at the National Archives in the Nehru Memorial Library, or even in Benares, there was, we did a lot of archival work in the Bharat Bhavan, which is part of the Benares Hindu University.
22:58 So, that we were collating all this material, a lot of times, it's like, I wasn't sure where this would fit in.
23:09 But, you just collect a lot of material.
23:14 And so, you know, just, and sometimes that sometimes you are searching, it works both ways.
23:21 Sometimes, you are searching something specific, in terms of what you have in hand and you are searching to substantiate it.
23:32 Sometimes, you stumble upon research material, which opens up your doors to understanding something, which you might have heard, but you never gave, paid too much attention to.
23:44 And which kind of opens new doors to that.
23:47 So, it works both ways.
23:49 And that's what it did with me.
23:51 And, so yes, that's how it was.
23:56 So, after Tawaif Naaman and its success, do you think you will go back to filming or is there any other book that is in line that you are planning to write, probably?
24:08 I think, I don't know, I haven't thought. I just took so long, the making of, I mean, the writing of this book, that just now it's just a break.
24:22 I'm just taking a break from, I think probably I'll go back to a film.
24:28 Being away from, that's the language I feel I know best.
24:34 Something that strikes me right now is that like filmmaking is another, you know, like you have to associate with so many different people at the same time.
24:44 Like you have this crew all the time, but writing is a very isolating experience.
24:48 You have to sit alone and write.
24:50 So, can you tell us about that?
24:52 But even filmmaking, actually, see there is periods of hectic group work.
24:59 And it is, I mean, it is, of course, it is, you know, working with a lot of people.
25:07 But there are also long periods when you are either researching for the film or writing a film or just thinking it through, that you are all alone.
25:17 It's not that different, I realized.
25:21 I mean, yeah, sure. And also, even in the book, you work very closely with the editor over a period of several months.
25:31 That person might not be sitting in the same room as you, which is the difference.
25:36 You know, when we are working and we are working with the editors, film editors, then it's like over a period of months, but then in close proximity too.
25:45 So, it's different, but not that different.
25:49 At least that's what I felt.
25:53 But I think I've been long, too long from filmmaking.
25:57 And it would be nice to go back to it now.
26:01 Thank you so much, Subhadivam, for talking to Outlook.
26:06 Thank you.
26:07 That's all we have for today on this show of Bibliophile.
26:11 Thank you for watching.
26:12 [Music]