An evening in Kotha

The word "Kotha" has a different kind of interpretation in the mind of millions of Indians. Kotha is a dreamers fecund terrain. A seemingly private building with an inviting staircase.... steps starting in an alley, a public place.......panwala and phoolwala sitting on both sides of the alley.....adding color and fragrance to the ambience.....curtain filtered sound of ghoonghroo and the plaintive cry of sarangi...the player will be certainly an old man without teeth with a Muslim like beard...a big hall with nawabs sitting on floor... a satisfied looking elderly fat woman with pan red teeth......smiling....at the successful event management and the description goes on. The setting is invariably one of Kotha as depicted in a Hindi Movie.

Today I savoured the depiction of Kotha, thanks to youtube. I watched songs of three landmark movies of different era as I sipped red tea. I started with Pakaajah and then watched Umrao Jaan and finally the contemporary Umrao Jaan of Aishwarya. I have watched the first two movies but not the third one. There is a clear distinction between all the three movies in terms of imaginative depiction of Kotha Culture. The stories are different, actors are different, songs are different and yet there is something common. Kotha is the common site of consumption in all the three.

In the first movie the heroine is less glamorous and yet so powerful. The graphics of pain and agony is painted on her face. She is plumb and appears to be older compared to the heroines of the other two. The age of lovers of the heroines of these three movies decrease as the imagination grows modern. I do not know what is profession of the Abhishek in the third movie but in the other two he is a nawab. The sartorial comparison is still more interesting. In Pakeejah every inch of the heroine is covered. However in the last movie one can see the camera peeping into the blouse of heroine and describing the contours of her breasts.

In the first movie the boundary of male ends in the mujra hall however in the last he ends up in the bedroom of the Tawaif. In the earlier imaginations it was assumed that the audience know that the purpose of visit to Kotha is search for a female body but the later imagination explicitly displays it. May be the director feels that the audience of postmodern era has little knowledge of Kotha. During one of the talks on Kotha culture by postcolonial urban historian from Lucknow Prof. Veena Talwar Goldenberg she blamed Britishers for associating Kotha with flesh trade. I wonder what new breed of Hindi movie director has done.

Beyond body and matter if one looks into the mind of the three heroines the evolution becomes more masculine. All three movies are stories about female as Kotha is more about feminine space than masculine space, males are only visitors. And yet, the female of Pakeejah is more feminine and empowered than the heroine of the last movie. She does not have to tie the male with her dupatta....her influence is more immaterial and yes she also does not have to crawl on the male body ending on his feet. The female, at least by looking at the songs of the contemporary Umrao Jaan, has become weaker and the imagination has become more masculine.

In first two movies the urge for togetherness is from the both sides though the expression is more subdued. In the last movie the urge is more from the females side. Why? How? I believe as the Kotha Culture has weakened so has the female. Look at the lyrics in the first two movies they express a strong urge and yet it is more on the isqana side. In the last movie she talks of "sirf ek rasm nibhane ko to aya na karo... please do not come to observe only one ritual". I consider this as commodification of tawaif, even in the imagination.

In a patriarchal society a female lover has little freedom to express her emotions and yet Kotha was one of the special sites through which she was able to do so in her own way and in her own right. However, through the ages the female in the imagination of Hindi movie makers has become weaker and supine. I doubt if this will be approved by any of the historians of kotha culture. I remember Veena Talwar quoting an elderly member of kotha that real kotha is very different from the way filmi kotha is portrayed. I wonder what she would have said about the dilution of female in the popular imagination.