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Sunday, March 15, 2026
TopicTawaifs

Topic: Tawaifs

Caste and kotha didn’t go together. It freed many lower caste girls

In 'Nautch Boy', Manish Gaekwad offers a memoir of his life, documenting his experiences as a queer child growing up in a kotha.

‘The Last Courtesan’ is a saga of guns, gangs, ghazals. Author didn’t want it to be a movie

Manish Gaekwad brought a lot of Hindi-Urdu words into the text. 'That’s how she spoke, and that’s the language of her story–why change it? Why interrupt a woman while she is talking?'

Haseenain-e-Lucknow—a photographic record of tawaifs and what it tells us about Awadh

The album was produced as a luxury item, with no more than a few copies, and suggests an aesthetic link to the Mughal 'muraqqa' tradition of illustrated albums.

Why’s Bollywood obsessed with Tawaifs? ‘Heeramandi’ brings back the stereotypes

According to Pakistani film critic Omer Adil, filmmakers of the subcontinent have created a fantasy chimaera, a celluloid courtesan, which has nothing to do with tawaifs.

‘Mujra, tawaif not bad words’—Classical dancer rescuing courtesan culture from British gaze

Manjari Chaturvedi is bringing tawaifs’ songs and performances to life through ‘The Courtesan Project’, which she launched in 2011 and discussed at IIC’s recent Music Appreciation Programme.

Tawaifs weren’t just into art and culture. Their role in Independence remains forgotten

When the British Raj encountered Tawaifs—women with agency and autonomy—they were confounded and threatened, unable to categorise this community within their social divisions.

On Camera

Menstrual leave doesn’t work in ‘real world’. And that real world is designed by, for men

When a woman menstruates, when/if she decides to marry, when/if she decides to have kids, should not be factors when looking at a woman’s potential from a hiring standpoint.

US strike on Iran’s key oil export island Kharg raises fears of wider supply disruption

President Trump said the US had bombed military targets on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, but spared oil infrastructure.

Supreme Leader Mojtaba, the man Iran must keep alive & the secret force ‘tasked with it’—all about NOPO

The Nirouyeh Vijeh Pasdaran Velayat, or NOPO, was the only force Ali Khamenei trusted.It was founded in 1991 and is more feared than the Revolutionary Guards.

Peaceful power transfers followed uprisings in India’s neighbourhood. It’s a sign of mature democracies

Rating democracies is a tricky business. I am only using the simple metric of who in the Indian subcontinent has had the most peaceful, stable, normal political transitions and continuity.