Saba Dewan’s Tawaifnama is not merely a book tracing a family of tawaifs, it is understanding the sexuality associated with these women in the given society and the times that they lived in. It is an arduous task and not easy to pen down and Saba has managed to do the impossible.
The biggest irony is that while we are in 2019, the details of the tawaifs (who still have their recognisable families) still need to be written with a changed name, and the alias is what remains, the actual woman is lost, which was also in the case of a recent book by Neelum Saran Gour—Requiem in Raga Janki—on ‘Chhappan Churi’, where the sub-text on the cover had “A Novel” written in it.
We need to tell their stories and yet because of the bias in society, either the name is withheld or it is termed a novel.
Saba has circumvented it by writing the story as “You say…” clearly making the woman who told the story own it as her own. As the author puts it: “…names have been changed and identities have been blurred, but my endeavour has been to be faithful to the narrating of the tales as they were told.”
The introduction leaves one with a sense of loss of identity and the striving for respectability in the modern world: “You emphasised that, even though there were a few bar dancers among the tawaif households you knew, your family had chosen the more difficult but izzatdaar path of not living off the earnings of daughters any more, preferring instead to settle them in marriages.” And later as the protagonist says: “But there is no future in music now for our girls even if they want to pursue it. People stopped listening to our songs years ago.”
The author does not mince words in saying exactly what she must have been told. It took her nine years of work to bring out this documentation.
Reading the tumultuous lives of the tawaifs makes one overcome with emotion. These real-life stories are fairly very recent, pre- and post-independence. The language is simple, self-effacing and approachable to bring out the raw emotions of the women.
Reading the book, I am struck by the remarkable fluidity with which Saba moves from one woman to the other, moving from Benares to Bhabua, from pre-Independence to post-Independence, and taking the reader along with her. Despite their differences, all the women are strongly bound by the common thread of being a tawaif.
Discussions on tawaifs have always been accompanied by sniggers and innuendos, and these women are rarely spoken about with respect even within the artist community. It is important to recognise the tremendous efforts of the author to reach out and gain the trust of the women who finally open up and reveal personal stories. The author also covers the landmark period of 1857 that brought with it the degeneration of tawaif culture.
Contrary to popular beliefs that club all tawaifs under one umbrella, Saba painstakingly finds historical references to find the many sub-castes, communities within their own tawaif framework which they zealously protect with a sense of hierarchy. Interestingly, even in the same family the sons and daughters would follow different religions. She also refers to the genealogies, clan rivalries, financial fortunes and marital alliances that the tawaifs have.
Their lives are full of dramatic imagery that they seem to pass from one generation to the other. In fact, some incidents seem straight out of a Bollywood film, like the one which shows Sadabahar returning all her jewellery for the ailing son of the patron. Or the scene of a snake entranced with the singing of a tawaif. As this is a personal story told by a tawaif there are also interesting bits about shared cultures, norms, beliefs, such as the daughters-in-law in tawaif households—whether Hindu or Muslim—wearing vermilion as a sign of married status. Or the birth of daughters being celebrated and the birth of boys being unwelcome.
A mention of the rejection of tawaifs as music teachers in the newly opened private schools is ironical: “You complain angrily about how people with a degree in hand barely able to string two notes together, secure jobs that genuine musicians are denied.” The tawaifs started to suffer as they were forced to live “respectable” lives. A comment puts this in the right perspective: “What did this self-righteous idiot know of long hours of riyaz and diligent art practice that they had put in to become tawaifs?” Truly.