[my Lounge column on the 1966 film Amrapali, about a courtesan who both embraces and rejects sensual pleasures -- also a recommendation for Ruth Vanita's new book Dancing with the Nation]
---------------------- Growing up in the 1980s, I always thought of Vyjayanthimala, mainly glimpsed at the time in Doordarshan telecasts of Sangam or Jewel Thief, as a proto-Meenakshi Seshadri: attractive and sensual, but also mannered in the way that performers trained in classical dance sometimes were – too many exaggerated eye movements and double takes, even in straight scenes.
Later, I realised that it would be a mistake to assess Vyjayanthimala on the same terms as, say, Nutan or Jaya Bhaduri. She came from a more theatrical acting tradition, centred on an exploration of rasa and bhava, and often seemed to be of another world, well-suited to playing a voluptuous apsara in a celestial court.
This quality is on view in Lekh Tandon’s 1966 Amrapali, where the eponymous heroine is a performer, dancing for the pleasure of others as well as for self-expression; it accounts for the power of scenes such as the spectacular dance challenge that ends with Amrapali being anointed nagarvadhu or royal courtesan, or the equally powerful "Neel Gagan ki Chhaon Mein" sequence.
Based on a nearly 2,500-year-old legend, this is one of our better-looking period films, an attempt to achieve something both grand and intimate, like some of the Hollywood epics of the time. It has something else in common with films like The Robe (1953) and Ben-Hur (1959): a cameo by a venerated religious figure. If the protagonists of those movies had life-changing encounters with Christ (never seen directly), Amrapali features a shadowy appearance by the Buddha. But here’s something funny: though this film culminates in a major character renouncing the world to follow the Enlightened One, it understands the pleasures of the flesh very well.
Its first few scenes might put 2018 viewers in mind of Padmaavat. As the Magadh emperor Ajatashatru, who wants to conquer the nearby city of Vaishali, Sunil Dutt snarls and fumes almost as much as Ranveer Singh’s Khilji does. When we first see Amrapali – a patriotic citizen of Vaishali – we are prepared for the two central figures to be antagonists. It gets complicated, though: when Amrapali tends to a wounded Ajatshatru, thinking of him as a soldier, they fall in love.
If Padmaavat leads towards the self-immolation of its heroine, there is much fire imagery in the older film too. Amrapali is in danger of getting burnt, metaphorically and literally: in one intriguing scene, which presents love as something that can both consume and save, a large flaming statue of Ajatashatru nearly falls on her and she is rescued by the real Ajatashatru (whose identity she is unaware of). Much later, she sings “Birha ki iss chitta se, tumhi mujhe nikalo (Rescue me from this fire of separation).” The scenes that burn brightest, though, are the romantic ones. When Amrapali’s “sainik”, clutches her bare shoulder, telling her she is very beautiful, she uses his distractedness to pour salve into his wound – wherein his groan of pain and the camera’s provocative framing (Ajatashatru on his back, Amrapali seen from behind as she bends over him) lend themselves to more than one interpretation. When she meets him next, she strokes his wound through his tunic, letting her hands linger for longer than required. The song “Tadap yeh din raat ki” has them reclining on a bed, and the film is not at all coy about the likelihood that they have slept together.
It should be said that Sunil Dutt isn’t the perfect fit for this sort of role: his heavy Punjabi enunciation of words like parantu, sheeghra and hriday can be mirth-inducing, and in the honour roll of bare-chested Hindi-film heroes he ranks below another shirtless hunk of 1966, Phool aur Patthar’s Dharmendra. And yet, these scenes have an urgent eroticism that you don’t associate with the Hindi cinema of the time.
One reason for this could be that the cast and crew were freed by dealing with very old history, bordering on myth; it has long been a cliché to look back at the Kamasutra – or mythological stories about polygamous relationships – as indicative of a time when sexual mores were more relaxed. The opulent, revealing costumes that Bhanu Athaiya designed for the film came partly out of visits to the Ajanta caves.
But the film’s tone is also linked with the nature of its protagonist. In her stimulating new book Dancing with the Nation, Ruth Vanita examines the cultural importance of the Hindi-film courtesan (a word used to cover such designations as nartaki, devdasi and tawaif – all terms with subtle differences in meaning, which have experienced semantic shifts over time). Looking at courtesan depictions across more than two hundred films – not just in a few key works such as Pakeezah or Umrao Jaan – Vanita moves beyond the stereotype of the martyred, lonely dancing girl. Courtesans, she notes, were “the first group of single working women in films”. They were unconstrained by the patriarchal family, often functioned as emblems of the nation, represented a mixed Hindu-Muslim culture and could develop unconventional relationships, in addition to expressing sexuality.
Amrapali is a fine example of a film that affirms this multi-dimensional view. Much as she would do in the 1968 Sungharsh, Vyjayanthimala plays a courtesan who drives the narrative with her actions, banters with a male friend (the sculptor son of Amrapali’s guru) and is unconstrained by the need to be virtuous. When she does become maudlin and regretful, it has nothing to do with her sexual life but with guilt about having possibly betrayed her land. And despite the film’s final nod to abstinence, the lasting image is that of the heroine, deep longing in her eyes, telling her lover that the hours before their nighttime meeting will feel like a hundred thousand years.
------------------------------------- [A post about another great dance sequence - Waheeda Rehman in Guide]
[the latest of my columns about "movie moments" for The Hindu; this one is a tribute to those two masters, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger] -----------------------------
A spirited young woman named Joan embarks on a journey. “I know where I’m going!” she calls out as the train starts moving – she is off to Scotland to wed a rich industrialist – but we have already been given signs that she isn’t as certain as she appears; is she marrying for love or for status? The dream sequence that follows clarifies the state of her subconscious. Joan is at the altar, in a bridal gown. “Do you take Consolidated Chemical Industries to be your lawfully wedded husband?” the priest asks. I do, she replies. He looks up and raises his voice. “And DO YOU, Consolidated Chemical Industries, take Joan Webster as your lawfully wedded wife?” Cut to a close-up of the giant locomotive ploughing through the night. Are we imagining it, or does the deep whistle sound uncannily like “I DOOOOO…”?
On another train, in another film, two men – Colpeper, a traditionalist, and Peter, a sceptic – are having an argument. Though they maintain a veneer of civility, the dialogue becomes intense and edgy. The train pulls into a station, and in a final sarcastic response to one of Colpeper’s observations, Peter says, “I’ll believe that when I see a halo around my head.”
At this precise moment, the sunlight coming in through the carriage window creates an ethereal glow behind and around his face.
In both these scenes, three of the basic components of film – light, sound and timing – are used to create a magical, almost mystical effect. And in both, the knockout moment lasts just a second or two at most. But that’s more than enough.
The first film is I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) and the second is A Canterbury Tale (1944). Both were written and directed by the phenomenal duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who helmed some of the best British cinema of the 1940s –beautifully shot films (the others include A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes) that tore the curtain separating reality from fantasy. On the face of it, the stories were prim and stiff-upper-lip, about English stoicism in times of war and other crises. But there was always something playful, sinister or fairytale-like underneath.
Scenes from the Powell-Pressburger oeuvre often come to my mind when someone unfavourably compares cinema with literature, or suggests that the former requires much less rigour on the part of creator and consumer. A good book does things that a film cannot do, we are often told, and there’s no denying this. But it’s important to acknowledge that the opposite can also be true; that the mediums are so different (when each makes full use of its own strengths) that comparisons are a child’s game.
The two scenes mentioned above contain effects that could only have been achieved on film, and for which the written word has no direct equivalent. I plead guilty here: in this column, I have laboriously used words to describe these scenes, but such descriptions can never convey the fullness of the viewing experience. The many sights and sounds, working in conjunction, as everything builds toward a defining moment; how that moment fits into the film’s larger design; how Peter, just when he is most smug and seems to have had the last word, is “duped” by the framing and lighting; how Joan’s self-assurance is wittily undercut by that surreal image of the train engine bellowing.
As a Powell-Pressburger addict, let me also point you to another shot in A Canterbury Tale that was echoed, more than two decades later, in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick’s film has a famous “match cut” in which a shot of a bone – hurled into the air by a prehistoric ape – cuts to a shot of a similarly shaped satellite. (In a split-second, the film has moved a million years forward in time!) Well, the establishing scene of A Canterbury Tale does something comparable. The narrative opens in medieval times – with a view of Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrims – and then transitions to the World War II era via a cut from a hawk soaring across the sky to a fighter plane occupying the same space (the link is emphasized by two close-ups of a man watching from the ground, played by the same actor dressed first in 14th century clothes and then in a modern army uniform). It’s an inventive shot on its own terms, but it is also an apt beginning to a story that will climax with a different sort of pilgrimage, where we come to see that Peter the agnostic might -- though he doesn't know it himself -- be an angel in disguise. With a halo made of light and shadow.
---------------------- [Earlier "moments" column here. And here's a longer piece about A Canterbury Tale, one of my favourite films]
[Did this piece for Mint Lounge. Much obliged to Sayantan Mondal, who made this film available online] ------------------------------------ With mosquito season underway, and given the nonchalance with which most of us are using creams, sprays and other repellents to stay dengue-free and undisturbed by buzzing sounds, my mind turns to the 1992 Gujarati film Hun Hunshi Hunshilal. Which is a musical about mosquitoes, and about people who want them destroyed.
That’s one way of describing it, anyway.
A plot summary would go something like this: in the land of Khojpuri, which resembles modern, democratic India but where the man in charge – played by Mohan Gokhale – is incongruously called a Raja (king), a massive pest-control drive is on. The film’s unlikely protagonist Hunshi (the deadpan Dilip Joshi) works long hours in a laboratory and comes up with an onion-based remedy to end the menace. But then he falls in love with his colleague Parveen (Renuka Shahane), who may be on the side of the “enemy” – she is concealing a diary with information about the mosquitoes’ whereabouts and activities. Who are these mosquitoes? Sanjiv Shah’s film doesn’t clearly spell this out, though there are references to anti-dam activists and other such deshdrohis. The colour red is associated with the insects – “Macchar laal garam! Hatt!” (“Red-hot mosquitoes! Shoo!”) go the lyrics of one song – which might suggest this is a story about anti-Communist paranoia. But I think it’s more general than that: the “macchar” can be anyone or anything that makes people in power uncomfortable. As one conversation in the film suggests, they could be the sound of our conscience buzzing away in our heads, keeping us awake when all we really want to do is to turn our faces away and cherish our own privileges.
The regime’s methods of dealing with this problem are inventive, to say the least. In one surreal sequence, when the king launches a wholesale war on the colour red, his cronies go on a destructive spree and sing things like “Laal tamatar kuchal do.” (Crush all red tomatoes”.) Mosquitoes attack in the dark, the king observes during a press interaction. You’d think the logical solution would be to provide electricity everywhere? Oh no. “We will destroy all bastis and settlements where there is darkness,” he proclaims. At this point, the tortoise symbol on a wall behind the Raja starts to make sense. One question implicit in Hun Hunshi Hunshilal is: when your national saviour is the tortoise coil (a reference to the much-used kachua-chaap of days past), could it mean that you’re slow and lumbering and going around in circles?
By now you would have figured that this film doesn’t set out to make its points subtly but through deliberate exaggeration – a mode that isn’t to all tastes, especially among viewers who fetishize “understated” cinema. But Hun Hunshi Hunshilal knows there are things worth getting very angry about, and that honestly expressing anger can involve being pedantic, using symbolism or over-the-top humour. Watching it, I was reminded of the many “parallel” films of the 70s and 80s – among them Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastaan and Party – that ended with persecuted characters looking accusingly at the camera, daring us to hold their gaze.
I was conflicted about the film for other reasons. It falls flat in places if you’re expecting it to be uproariously funny. There are a few slow-paced scenes and a few self-indulgent fillers. What does work consistently well, though, is its use of music. Rajat Dholakia’s many compositions range from full-fledged folk songs to parodies of Hindi-film music to a stray line or chorus that serves as commentary. Dialogues punctuate musical scenes rather than the other way round. Some of the more stirring scenes made me wish I understood the language so I could experience the words and music directly, instead of squinting at subtitles.
The narrative has traces of George Orwell’s 1984 (in the central character’s journey from being a cog in a totalitarian system to becoming a little more aware) and Ketan Mehta’s splendid Bhavni Bhavai, another Gujarati satire that made powerful use of music and had Mohan Gokhale in an important role (between the two films, from 1980 to 1992, he graduated from playing the oppressed to the oppressor!). But Hun Hunshi Hunshilal is ultimately a one-of-its-kind work. Though its low budget is evident, there are some wonderfully realized moments: the song “Hawa hai”, with its 360-degree pan across the skyline of a city “made of air and illusion” as Hunshi himself seems to adopt a mosquito's vantage point; a scene, chillingly framed to resemble a firing-squad execution, where mosquito figurines are shot at. There are little digs at popular cinema and at the idea of the larger-than-life hero (“Mard ko dard nahin hota,” Hunshi says after being roughed up by the diary-seeking goons; a particularly funny lyric goes “Here come the movies, with the actor too tall and the screen too short”). And there is plenty of goofiness, including some moments that could be random asides or brilliant inspirations or a mix of both: watch the scene that begins with Hunshi dropping one of his beakers at the sight of the heroine, then droning “Saare jahaan se acccha” before singing a version of the classic song “Jaane kahaan mera jigar gaya ji”.
The art design is very funny too, with images of giant mosquitoes, including a poster of one being crushed underfoot by a Hanuman-like deity, and vivid use is made of colour – as in the scene where Hunshi seems to be surrounded by red things, including a red-beaked parrot that tells fortunes. “Abhi abhi toh laal hua tu” (“You have only just become red”) an astrologer tells him.
But my lasting impression is of the clever wordplay that includes digs at ultra-nationalistic fervor – something that is as relevant today as it ever was. In one scene, the words “kshay ho” (let there be destruction) replace the traditional “Jai ho” and there is something scarily immediate about this chant which links nationalism with decay. The film satirizes the idea that once a specific enemy has been identified and vanquished, prosperity will return for good. “When all the mosquitoes have been killed, whom will the government target next?” a reporter asks in one scene. “Good question,” the king replies. “Ha ha. Good question.” And that’s all he says. The thought is left buzzing in the air.
[A post about Ketan Mehta's Bhavni Bhavai is here]
[Did a short piece for India Today about Manjima Bhattacharjya’s new book Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry. Here is my interview with the author, in Q&A form] --------------------------
Intro:Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry is, among other things, an account of the emergence of the glamour industry in India, from Jeannie Naoroji’s “girls” in 1960s Bombay to the post-liberalization era when the influence of satellite TV, India’s wins at the Miss Universe and Miss World contests in 1994, and the advent of India Fashion Week opened new ways of looking at luxury and beauty. It examines the hierarchies within the profession and the prejudices of the Indian middle class towards those who are perceived as trying to “exceed their brief”. It is about young women, often from conservative families and small cities like Benares and Agra, making little strides for themselves. “For her, the anonymity and cosmopolitan freedom in a metro is non-negotiable, and she is willing to fight for it.” The result is a book that is wide-ranging and personal even while it mostly maintains its focus on the challenges and prejudices facing women in the profession of modelling – “profession” being the key word because, as Bhattacharjya points out, this work sometimes isn’t viewed as work at all. ----------------------------------------
While the growth of the modelling industry (or the “glamour industry”) is your primary subject, you also use it to shed light on how the feminist movement – and its perceptions on objectification and agency – has changed over the decades. What was the starting point for this book? Did it come out of an innate interest in the beauty industry, or from your grappling with feminist issues?
Neither, actually. When I started my Ph.D (in the mid-2000s) I had no idea I was going to be studying women working in the glamour industry. The group hadn’t even registered on my radar as a possible area of serious study. All I knew was that I wanted to look at new areas of work that women, particularly young women, were being drawn into in post-globalization India.
At the time, for example, there were hordes of women across South Asia being employed in export processing zones and in garment factories. Tribal girls were migrating en masse to metro cities to work as live in domestic help in newly nuclear families. And there were also a remarkably high number of young girls wanting to be models and participants in beauty pageants – which is what I finally chose to explore in detail because it was so under-studied; in fact I couldn’t find any academic literature on it at all.
Bringing the feminist movement into the picture and even putting myself into the narrative came much later, much more recently. (I’ve been working on this book for a while!)
As you point out, words like “sashay” (to describe walking down the ramp) seem geared to making modelling sound like a breeze – all fun, no real work – whereas the reality of a model’s life is very different. Tell us something about the challenges and difficulties they face.
Models do different kinds of work. There is the performative work, or physical and emotional labour involved in preparing for and performing at fashion shows and shoots. The networking, inculcating a commercially viable image, the enterprise or business part of it, which is also hard work. Then there is which bucket of “modelling” they do – ramp, TV advertising, magazine editorials. The nature of work in all these is different. And then there’s the body work or “aesthetic labour” – like many in the service industry, the work involved in having to look a certain way. And that’s a lot of work! It’s not just vanity, it is their bread and butter, the source of their livelihood.
Challenges include working odd hours, long hours, having to look as fresh as a daisy and maintain poise and smile even when they are bone-tired after a 12-hour shoot, all kinds of (sometimes harmful) products being used on their hair, body, face, doing things that might endanger them for the right shot. And the cherry on top: not getting paid on time or at all or only in part for the work rendered. And often there’s nothing they can do about it because they didn’t have a written contract. But I’d say what irks many of them most is the suggestion that what they do is not really “work”.
You mention how models are often treated as dolls or puppets, or as canvases for designers: hair pulled carelessly, sequins stuck on them with glue etc. Given the inherent nature of the fashion industry, are there any practical ways of improving the treatment of models? I think what’s important is to acknowledge that everyone has a role to play and should be treated with compassion and respect, beyond the right as workers to be paid fairly, on time, work in decent conditions without exploitation and abuse. Practical ways might be to have written contracts, payments processed on time, more transparency in dealings, more egalitarian work cultures, a regulatory body that can respond to cases of sexual harassment.
Why has the organizing of unions for models’ rights not really worked?
Well, there have been experiments in the past to unionize models. In Russia, for example, in the late 1990s. In India too, the last big attempt was around 2003, when a group of models tried to set up “Models United”, and I’ve documented that interesting moment in the book because not many people actually know about it. The effort fell apart for various reasons – mostly, lack of solidarity amongst the models because of the insecure nature of modelling. Ultimately the models who had joined the union could not stay united, because some were scared of losing the patronage of powerful choreographers and designers if they stuck to the charter of demands made by the union. As you put it near the end of the book, an important factor in defining empowerment is respectability. How, as a society, does one sensitize people towards modelling as a profession that deserves to be taken seriously?
I think it’s not just about modelling. The absence of dignity in labour is a long-standing issue in the country. And there are two additional problems when it comes to women: often, gender-based work (or things considered "women's work" traditionally) is not really valued as “work” at all – especially things like domestic work, or home-based work, child care and so on. Secondly, when it comes to labour that is linked to “performing sexuality” or where part of their occupation is presenting themselves publicly in a desirable or sexy way, it is devalued even more and stigmatized. Because all interactions are filtered through a moral and judgmental lens, and they are easily “othered”.
Many models face harassment or find people cross all kinds of boundaries because of their assumptions around what “models are like”. These assumptions – that they are “available”, not “good women” or not worthy of respect - become justifications for misbehaviour. (I remember one of the first articles I wrote - that I was paid for and made me feel like a real writer - was on this. It was called "Why the bikini is badnaam")
So the first step is probably to open up the space to talk about models as people, with interesting lives and struggles and dreams and hopes. And rights!
What do you see as the primary differences between the Indian modelling industry of the 70s/80s and the post-liberalisation world?
I’d say size is the biggest difference. Volume of work was completely different. I mean all we had in the 70s and 80s was Doordarshan, and Femina/ Women’s Era kind of magazines. There was limited work, and there were a handful of models. There was no fashion designer – the local darzi was the designer. All this changed with the setting up of NIFT, and the emergence of fashion design as a vocation in the 1990s. With satellite TV, and the opening up of trade restrictions, there was lots more to advertise, and more platforms for advertising to happen. Fashion magazines like Elle India also began in the late 1990s. The modelling industry sort of boomed from the late-1990s onward, and became diversified. More generally, what are the main differences between the modelling industry in India vs in First World countries?
I think this has been changing. When I did my research, most women who’d modelled abroad would say it was more professional, better paid, more respectable, safer, but also involved much harder work to get gigs, and a lonely life. The girls who are modelling in the First World countries (and China) also start very, very young, much earlier than in India. In India it was more about being networked with the right people, and winning local titles to open up career paths.
With the entry of international modelling agencies, some of these differences might have reduced. But I recently read an expose by a Venezuelan model named Anyelika Perez, which outlined all kinds of sexual, financial and emotional abuse she had faced at a young model (she started modelling at 15). And I wondered if there really was much difference in reality between the two. In both places, models seem to be silent and unheard, without much access to redress.
Perhaps one difference might be that some models in the West have managed to use social media to really speak out, or have a voice and put out their opinions on various things. Less so in India.
What about the hierarchies within the modelling world? Is it more difficult for models from small-town backgrounds, who don’t speak English well, to fit into this world?
It depends. Certainly, when I did my research, the industry did seem to exclude those who were disadvantaged by language or “class”. But some were able to overcome these obstacles by joining grooming classes, or finding the right networks, or joining international modelling agencies. Some weren’t.
From what I could see, senior models, or more prominent models were more powerful and able to command their dues. Younger and newer entrants were more vulnerable to exploitation.
I thought you covered a lot of fascinating ground in the “Short History of Objectification” chapter – particularly about how feminists and liberals should be careful not to mimic the behaviour of conservative groups who are always trying to ban things that discomfit them. And how some feminists of an earlier time may themselves have “objectified” women whom they saw as oppressed or exploited, by treating them only as voiceless victims. How did your encounters with people in the modelling industry change your preconceptions and attitudes?
Listening to people tell their stories from their standpoints is a very powerful thing. And in the chapter you talk about, I think many of the older feminists are saying that: we should have listened to the girls' points of views. Just listening to the girls’ journeys, the kinds of struggles they’d faced to move to the city, the small victories, negotiating to not be married off, to work just a few years, step by step expanding their boundaries - made me appreciate their courage and ambition.
It’s certainly not easy in our country for a girl to move from a small town to become a model. It sounds simple, but there are so many levels of negotiations and transgressions and hoops to cross, hurdles to jump over. Over time, I began to admire how these girls were able to make lives for themselves, create something independently when no opportunities really existed. But I didn’t actually realize how these interviews were influencing me until much later. I started reflecting on this change only when I put myself in the book.
Growing up in the 1980s, I always thought of Vyjayanthimala, mainly glimpsed at the time in Doordarshan telecasts of Sangam or Jewel Thief, as a proto-Meenakshi Seshadri: attractive and sensual, but also mannered in the way that performers trained in classical dance sometimes were – too many exaggerated eye movements and double takes, even in straight scenes. 
The scenes that burn brightest, though, are the romantic ones. When Amrapali’s “sainik”, clutches her bare shoulder, telling her she is very beautiful, she uses his distractedness to pour salve into his wound – wherein his groan of pain and the camera’s provocative framing (Ajatashatru on his back, Amrapali seen from behind as she bends over him) lend themselves to more than one interpretation. When she meets him next, she strokes his wound through his tunic, letting her hands linger for longer than required. The song “Tadap yeh din raat ki” has them reclining on a bed, and the film is not at all coy about the likelihood that they have slept together. 
– all terms with subtle differences in meaning, which have experienced semantic shifts over time). Looking at courtesan depictions across more than two hundred films – not just in a few key works such as Pakeezah or Umrao Jaan – Vanita moves beyond the stereotype of the martyred, lonely dancing girl. Courtesans, she notes, were “the first group of single working women in films”. They were unconstrained by the patriarchal family, often functioned as emblems of the nation, represented a mixed Hindu-Muslim culture and could develop unconventional relationships, in addition to expressing sexuality.
Growing up in the 1980s, I always thought of Vyjayanthimala, mainly glimpsed at the time in Doordarshan telecasts of Sangam or Jewel Thief, as a proto-Meenakshi Seshadri: attractive and sensual, but also mannered in the way that performers trained in classical dance sometimes were – too many exaggerated eye movements and double takes, even in straight scenes. 
The scenes that burn brightest, though, are the romantic ones. When Amrapali’s “sainik”, clutches her bare shoulder, telling her she is very beautiful, she uses his distractedness to pour salve into his wound – wherein his groan of pain and the camera’s provocative framing (Ajatashatru on his back, Amrapali seen from behind as she bends over him) lend themselves to more than one interpretation. When she meets him next, she strokes his wound through his tunic, letting her hands linger for longer than required. The song “Tadap yeh din raat ki” has them reclining on a bed, and the film is not at all coy about the likelihood that they have slept together. 
– all terms with subtle differences in meaning, which have experienced semantic shifts over time). Looking at courtesan depictions across more than two hundred films – not just in a few key works such as Pakeezah or Umrao Jaan – Vanita moves beyond the stereotype of the martyred, lonely dancing girl. Courtesans, she notes, were “the first group of single working women in films”. They were unconstrained by the patriarchal family, often functioned as emblems of the nation, represented a mixed Hindu-Muslim culture and could develop unconventional relationships, in addition to expressing sexuality.
