Musing on a poet's love life

Manjari Chaturvedi as Nawab Jaan

If we were to ask you to name a few contemporary Hindi poets, chances are you'd come up with Javed Akhtar, Gulzar and Prasoon Joshi. But take a second to wonder why that is. The straightforward reason is that Bollywood has provided these personalities with a vehicle that has driven their words to every corner of the country, and they thus have mass appeal. But that of course wasn't the case in the mid-19th century. So poets back then had to employ a different medium to enter the popular imagination - courtesans, who would sing their verses in the form of ghazals that the public would lap up with glee.

And yet, those same courtesans have been unkindly dismissed as "tawaifs" and "baijis" in the annals of history. Their morals have been questioned. Their calibre has been ignored. They have generally been denied the due credit for playing a cultural role that no one else did back then. But a performance at the Royal Opera House this evening aims to correct this. Titled The Legend of Nawab Jaan and Mirza Ghalib, it puts the spotlight on the possible relationship that a courtesan in Old Delhi shared in the 1850s with arguably the greatest Urdu poet.

Actor Ekant Kaul will portray Ghalib, while choreographer Manjari Chaturvedi will essay the role of the dancer who might have been his muse. "Might", because apart from a solitary poem that Ghalib had written for her, there's precious little we know of the bond between the two. Chaturvedi points out, however, "When do you write a poem for someone? It's when they touch your heart and soul; when they make a deep contribution to your life. That became the starting point for me to find out more about Nawab Jaan, and I learnt that when she had died, Ghalib had placed a shawl over her grave as a mark of respect. The performance is thus based partly on historical facts, and partly on imagination."

The focus, though, remains on the probable role that Nawab Jaan played as a muse for the poet. We do know that Ghalib has mentioned that she was in love with him. The show delves into an imagined realm where this relationship was fulfilled through an exchange of letters, a bittersweet medium where your heart is filled with longing while waiting for a reply from the object of your affection. "The performance uses Ghalib's poetry as a tool to relay that romance," Chaturvedi explains.

She shares that the event is a result of The Courtesan Project, which she's been working on for the past decade to dig out information on tawaifs and baijis who have been unfairly consigned to the dustbins of history. "When I come across certain stories during my research, I share them with audiences through concerts such as this one. There might not be many takers if I were to lecture. The message comes across better if there's a performance," Chaturvedi says, adding, "The point is that in our tradition, we give a lot of importance to a work of art, but unfortunately not to the muse who might have inspired it. We view women performers in a derogatory manner, when ideally, we should first acknowledge their calibre before checking whether they had 20 affairs or not. So, despite Ghalib writing about Nawab Jaan, she was dismissed as a 'naachne-gaane waali'. But how can you judge her art based on her personal life? That's the question I tackle through
this project."

On Today, 7 pm AT Royal Opera House, Mathew Road, Girgaum.
Log on to insider.in
Cost Rs 499

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