Writing was breaking the shackles. Truth loitered over to hear me out,” writes Manish Gaekwad in his new book Nautch Boy: A Memoir of My Life in the Kothas (Harper Collins). Gaekwad grew up in Kolkata’s crowded Bowbazar, an area that used to be known for its courtesans. Most of his childhood was spent surrounded by dancers, patrons, radios playing old Bollywood songs, and the heady scent of betel nuts. “Once a year, I returned home to the kotha in Bowbazar. An unpainted, neglected house, it stands as a cul-de-sac in Bandook Gully. Gun Lane — what a violent name for a place that fired sweet melodies,” he writes. He recalls returning home during vacations from his school in Darjeeling. The book mainly revolves around Gaekwad’s life in the kotha, and his mother. His mother, to whom the book is dedicated, was a distinguished performer in the city. “Mother was introduced to patrons as Kalkatta ki mashoor dancer Rekha Bai,” one of the chapters reads. “Calcutta’s famous dancer. That helped build curiosity around her, even if no one had seen or heard of her.”
An accidental memoir
According to the author, the book was born out of an unexpected turn in his thinking and writing about the book. “The book was an accident. When I wrote my mother’s memoir The Last Courtesan (2023), the idea was to put a chapter in the book about my years in the kotha. But during the writing process, I realised my voice was unlike hers and was also not matching the book’s overall tone. She was an unlettered woman. So, in capturing her authentic voice, I wasn’t interrupting her with my hot takes. I continued to write her story exactly as she spoke,” Gaekwad tells TMS.
On meeting his editor, Swati Chopra, he asked her if the two distinct voices in the book could be split into two separate books. The idea was instantly approved. “That’s how Nautch Boy was conceived,” he adds. Bollywood films and songs have been essentially mentioned in the book. And not to much surprise, the author, himself, was nicknamed after Rishi Kapoor’s character, Monty (“with some variation: Montu, Mantu”), in the film Karz (1980). “My mother was in the audience during the filming of Om Shanti Om [song], where she worked as an extra. That is how she got the idea for my nickname,” Gaekwad mentions in the book.
Books over snacks
Reading at the kotha was uncommon. “It was not the ideal place to read because of the steady stream of interruptions.” What he couldn’t do at home, he did around Bandook Gully. Here, he’d devour comics and magazines “like fast food”. The pocket money would be saved to buy discarded books and newspapers from the “raddi shop”, instead of buying snacks. Such was his love for reading! “It’s not difficult for me to revisit my past,” the author remarks.
“I think of it as an archaeologist visiting an excavation site, trying to piece the past together from broken shards of clay and soil, and coming up with the best possible understanding of it.” “For me, writing is the glue that fixes things,” Gaekwad says, before noting that he did not face any difficulty picking what to reveal and what not to, despite the very personal nature of the storytelling.
From kotha to screen
Alongside his books, Gaekwad has worked as a journalist and scriptwriter; he calls his career “a happy accident” too. He never studied journalism, nor did he attend a film school. “I didn’t even attend college for years…just showed up once a year for exams. All I wanted was to read fiction, poetry, watch movies, and write. My training was writing my daily diary,” he recalls. He later pitched an article to a magazine, and took up the role of feature writer at a daily. After his first novel Lean Days (2018) was published, Gaekwad met director Imtiaz Ali. He collaborated with Ali, and wrote the script for popular Netflix series, She (2020). Gaekwad is quite critical, however, of the way courtesans are portrayed in mainstream media. “Mainstream media is entertainment, no?,” he expresses. “And cinema exaggerates for effect. Escapism is fine as long as it doesn’t turn into caricature. But too often courtesans are reduced to clichés. Instead of misrepresenting them, how about giving the culture its due?” The book’s structure is interesting. Why does one chapter close with April 2002, followed by one that suddenly leaps to 2019? “That’s the interval point of the book, like in a film,” he explains. “I was in the kotha till 2002. I returned in 2019. So I placed one stark page in the middle with just three words: ‘Seventeen years later’. It was to show the passage of time, but also remind readers that this memoir is about my life in the kotha,” Gaekwad points out, adding, “Those years outside can perhaps become another book.”