In his latest work, Manish Gaekwad retraces his life as the son of a courtesan, born into the fraught world of Kolkata’s kothas. Opening with his mother’s near-death labour, the narrative sets the stage for a story where survival itself becomes a radical act. His mother Rekha, a tawaif, defied shame, social stigma, and violence to give her son life, despite the illegitimacy of his birth and the absence of a father who refused to acknowledge him.
Through his mother’s eyes, the reader enters the hidden world of mujras, where courtesans performed for powerful men who sought entertainment but denied them dignity. Gaekwad vividly captures the double standards of a patriarchal society, where a tawaif’s talent was celebrated, but her humanity was denied, and where her child was seen as both a burden and a threat to social order.
The book is an exploration of generational trauma, resilience, and the shaping of identity under constant scrutiny. Rekha herself had been betrayed early, traded as a child bride, violated, and later sold to a kotha. Yet, she remained defiant, determined to carve a legacy through her son. Her demand for a child was not just personal, it was a way of silencing those who mocked her as infertile, and of asserting control over her own body in a world that commodified it.
For Gaekwad, growing up as a nautch boy meant negotiating two worlds: the intimate but harsh realities of life with courtesans, and the outside world that branded him illegitimate. His memoir captures the contradictions, love and violence, belonging and alienation, shame and pride, that defined his upbringing. At its heart, Nautch Boy is about the enduring bond between mother and child, and the complex inheritance of a life shaped by both stigma and survival.
Gaekwad writes with detail, reconstructing a personal history that is also a social history of tawaifs, their art, and the precarious lives of their children. His story is not just about survival, but about reclaiming dignity from a past that others might dismiss as scandalous.
Manish Gaekwad is a journalist and author. He has reported for Scroll and Mid-Day and contributed to The Hindu and other publications. His books include the novel Lean Days and The Last Courtesan, a memoir about his mother. In addition to his writing, he co-wrote the Netflix series She with Imtiaz Ali, worked as a script consultant on Badhaai Do, and served as a senior creative at Red Chillies Entertainment.
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