The Truth about the Tawaifs

AFTER THE LONG wait for the much-anticipated Netflix series, Heeramandi, by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, much of the reception has been critical at best, from angry to vituperative, although nearly everyone has praised the series’ look and songs. Has this major investment in an OTT series by one of Bollywood’s most successful directors been a failure?

To call Heeramandi ahistorical is an understatement. The series takes great liberties with the ‘facts’ as do all Hindi movies concentrating on melodrama and emotions. Yet, no one complains about Mughal-E-Azam, which is a family drama rather than a study of Akbar. It is probably the way many people know Akbar best.

The historical genre in other cinemas likewise adapts events to suit the film—Ridley Scott’s recent Napoleon being a clear example which enraged historians. (I didn’t like it because it failed to explain this great historical figure as a person, a general and a statesman, portraying him as what I can only describe as a bit of a twit. Nor did I expect a mass audience movie to explain the global significance of the Napoleonic Code, for example.)

The most controversial elements in Heeramandi that generated discussion were the tawaifs and its depiction of both the city of Lahore and the freedom struggle.

The culture of the tawaifs was not presented in detail although they were shown as skilled dancers, some of whom also have a love of literature. However, it was these tawaifs, whether they acknowledged their background or not, whose culture shaped Indian cinema and music directly—as musicians, poets, singers, dancers and actresses—and indirectly: for example, it has often been said that the high-pitched style of singing of Lata Mangeshkar was to distance the voice of the heroine from tawaif culture.

Many felt that the culture portrayed was more that of UP than of Punjab. Lahore is shown as a Muslim city but before 1947, it had not only been the capital of Ranjit Singh’s Sikh Empire (see ‘The Rachel Papers’, April 8, 2024), but also was a major centre of Hindu culture as well as the headquarters of the Arya Samaj. As we know, Lahore was one of the key centres of the Hindi film industry before 1947 and many of the personnel who dominated the Bombay (now Mumbai) industry of the 1950s were Punjabi Khatris (including the Kapoors, the Chopras, the Anands).

The drama is set in the context of the freedom struggle, in which it gives a major role to the tawaifs. However, they seem to be fighting for a single, undivided India as there is no indication of the activities of the Muslim League or the impending Partition with its transfer of population. The British are villainous—rapists and murderers—and depicted as the Evil Empire.

Yet, the series for me is not about any of these things. It is contemporary Hindi cinema paying tribute to the Muslim social genre, perhaps even more specifically, Bhansali’s tribute to Pakeezah (1972). The series has all the features of the subgenres of the historical and the courtesan film, showing the social world of Muslims, who are marked by their culture, language, literature and music, as well as their costumes and their surroundings. The courtesan film often shows a queer sensibility, portraying women as powerful, beautiful but tragic. (The moment when Ustaad [Indresh Malik] wears the nath is so sad.) This is the spirit of Pakeezah and of the star image of Meena Kumari. Bhansali’s films are often in this mode of suffering and unrequited love.

Heeramandi shows many other tributes to Pakeezah. It too has a feeling of the coming of modernity (we even hear the train whistle), and scenes which refer directly to the older film whether in the famous chowk seen in ‘Inhin logon ne’, the two backing dancers of ‘Chalte chalte’ or the bowl of water in which Sahibjaan (Meena Kumari) soaks her hair.

The daughters take on much of her role with their tragic lives. Alamzeb (Sharmin Segal) loves poetry (as did Meena Kumari in real life, being an accomplished poet herself) and a dancer in Bibbojaan (Aditi Rao Hydari) whose gajagamini walk will be long remembered.

There were references to other films, with Mallikajaan played by Manisha Koirala, who was Shaila Banu in Mani Ratnam’s Bombay (1995), which contains many elements of the Muslim social, where she sang ‘Kehna hai kya’ in a Sufi-style performance at a Muslim wedding and ‘Tu hi re’ as her veil flies off.

I also thought Fareedan (Sonakshi Sinha) had a strong resemblance to Rekha as a star, Madam X, but also as the eponymous Umrao Jaan (1981) and Zohra Begum in Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978).

The production of Heeramandi is an important moment in Indian media. Bhansali, who has had great success on the big screen, which is suited to his work, seems a surprising choice to make an OTT series.

I am not sure that Heeramandi is good for binge watching. Even Bhansali’s films can be so lush that they are excessive to see in one sitting, his trademark baroque style requiring every surface to be flamboyantly decorated. I binge series when I want to know “what happens next” and Heeramandi was not sufficiently plot-driven for me. It was like a long film rather than a series.

Scholars of Hindi film, such as Ravi Vasudevan, have noted that Hindi films have tableaux, moments of stasis, where the narrative stops. It is striking that Bhansali often places a character centre of the frame, sometimes static in a frontal shot where an iconic image is emphasised by beauty of the person, the costume and the jewellery as well as a perfect symmetry. This visuality of Bhansali is one of the most distinctive directorial marks in today’s Hindi cinema and its power is not diminished by the small screen. It is this that makes one watch his productions so closely as every detail of the image is perfected and the movements carefully choreographed.

Another feature of Bhansali’s films is found in the series as once again his dialogues are already quotable speech rather than everyday speech. (I will not do more than mention the “Urdu” newspaper incident though my Urdu is so limited, I only puzzled over the title.) The songs, of course, are what always make Bhansali’s films and I wonder which ones I will hear at a Gujarati wedding I’m going to in July.

Ten years ago, after speaking about Hindi films and more at the Lahore Literary Festival, I went to dinner at Cuckoo’s Den, on the roof of an old haveli that formerly belonged to courtesans in Heera Mandi, overlooking the Badshahi Mosque and Lahore Fort. It was hard not to be enchanted by the ghosts of the old Lahore and I’m sure I heard a whisper of ghungroos.

cinemaHeeramandiOTT seriesPakeezahSanjay Leela Bhansalitawaif