Book Excerpt:The Dancing Girls of Lahore : Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan’s Pleasure District by Louise Brown
We are sitting in the best room, talking about my work and the book I’m writing about Heera Mandi. Maha wants to know what new things I’m saying about her. I say, “Everything,” and she’s pleased.
“I’m the star of the book, aren’t I?” she questions.
I confirm she is and that the children are stars too.
I think I understand the kind of star Maha wants to be. She enjoys lots of Bollywood films and she knows one especially well – Pakeezah, which means “Pure Heart,” a classic film made in the early 1970s. It’s a story about a tawaif who is rejected by her lover’s family and who dies in childbirth. Her daughter, a courtesan too, struggles for honor and fulfillment. The film romanticizes the world of the tawaifs even as it damns it. Meena Kumari, the legendary Bollywood actress, played both the lead characters, alluring and gracious even as she neared death both in the film and in reality. Sumptuously dressed, adored by men, technically skilled in the performing arts, innocent and yet battered by life, the courtesans in Pakeezah possessed the pure heart of the film’s title. It was Meena Kumari’s last movie – arguably her most famous – and one that immortalized the tragedy of the courtesans she played and her own tragic death from alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver. Perhaps Maha wants this kind of immortality too – a lasting record of her life, something to lift her out of the ghetto.
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Maha dances slowly at first, concentrating on her foot work, her feet striking flat on the floor and her ankle bells chinking in a slow, rhythmic pattern. She smiles, lifts an eyebrow, and swings her hair so it falls in a silky curtain over her face. The music changes tempo, the pace of the tablas accelerating, and Maha motions her daughters to turn up the volume of the tape deck. She’s dancing energetically now, her feet moving faster, her arms held high. Even though it’s the middle of the night, it’s still oppressively hot in her cramped rooms and, as she dances, the fabric of her green shalwaar kameez adheres to her back. Her face and neck are beaded with sweat, tendrils of hair sticking to her skin. She is breathing fast and excitedly – transformed. Maha loves dancing; it has been her life, her passion, and part of her livelihood since she was a child.
Louise also has some knowledge of the histroy behind all this. She knows who the famous dancers were – and where they were (and maybe still are)…
The Punjab Secretariat in Lahore is a strange building that has had many incarnations. It was originally a tomb built in the early seventeenth century, then it became a residence, and for a time it was a British church. Today it is an archive housing books, city records, a few old maps, and, tucked into a corner, a white marble sarcophagus engraved in intricate detail. A little notice declares it to be the tomb of Anarkali – Pomegranate Blossom – the nickname given to Nadira Begam, who was a favorite dancing girl in the hareem of Emporer Akbar.
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