HEERAMANDI: LA WHORES OF TODAY AND YESTERDAY’S LAHORE

TO HEART OR NOT TO HEART? IN AN AGE OF INCREASING AUTOMATION, NON PERSONAL INTERACTIONS AND TINDER VS TENDER LOVE, HEERAMANDI LOOKS LIKE A PARADISE THAT AT LEAST DECORATED AFFAIRS OF THE BODY WITH A HINT OF HEART…SANGEETA WADDHWANI EXPLORES THE WHORES NOT OF LAHORE…

Living with the expectation of love, let’s face it, is like putting your precious heart on a gambling table. There is your heart, emanating feelings, raised on a diet of filial love, Bollywood and fairytales.

But the man spinning the roulette returns it, explaining, “We trade only in what is tangible. Money, sex, sex, money. What is this feeling thing? It is not today’s currency…in fact, this feeling thing only creates a debt! Like a credit card that lends you a dream only to reclaim what you owe with interest. Arre…Hatto! Be a modern Mallikajaan…move with the times, move to the next item in your harem or seduction ki dukkan…that sells…

So LOVE, my dear, is that slippery slope, navigating a gap between illusion and reality. Feelings are irrelevant, often your worst enemy. The proverbial rose-tinted glasses crack once the dreamy strobe lights of the hook-up party die out…and each of the participants (we can’t say lovers) goes their own way.

Am I right, Xennials, Gen Y and Gen Z?

Lets throw into this Age of the Apes behaviour, the swarming tribe of swinging (read cheating) married people, and you have a tamasha the ISKON pundits would decry as an absolute sign of the Kali, Kali yuga, and social scientists will quantify if they can with statistics  (like did you know Bangalore is the infidelity capital of the world, according to Gledeen, the app for married people dating other married people?)  Hmmm…as Bejan Daruwala famously said. ” We live not in a time of astrology, but technology.” Morality is so passe!

Tinder, Bumble, Truly Madly and scores of dating apps often make it possible to put back those rose-tinted glasses. The notion that we have a Soulmate Somewhere Out There. So many men look like they are seeking genuine, soulful connections. But are they?

As one hits the midlife zone, one finds most men  divorced or separated. Some openly declare they are past their personal Age of Hook Ups. Others flash the SEX POSITIVITY tag…such ‘hipsters’ certainly don’t lie!

So now, let’s keep in mind why dating has become a souless exchange, often devoid of even names being exchanged (remember Sonam Kapoors character in Veere di Wedding, waking up next to a man she slept with…forgetting his name? But of course they were both too drunk to care for such social niceties like checking on names!) People are getting naked physically but certainly not unpacking who they are…not for their own self knowledge, and certainly not for that weird other hunk or Babe they bedded.

Who in today’s far more egalitarian times, information saturated times, disruptive times, materialistic times, has the time or energy or inclination to swear by a partner…for the proverbial saat janams (Hindu wedding prayer) or even till ‘death do you part (Christian and Catholic weddings?)

People are lost in the haze of inflation, digital narcissism (yes Gen Z is also called the Selfie generation!), dealing with meltdowns of business models and old strategies…they have Gen gaps with mom and dad, with the boss too, and they are trying to get past traffic and emotional storms …lafda lafdas…would they even notice if a woman walks by them in a public space, with her best Gaja Gamini swag? Fluttering her value-added Korean eye lashes?

So yes, people are choosing Sex. Souless. Seamless. Zip less.. to borrow Erica Jongs favourite monicker.

This is so different from the quasi- loyal sahib and whore bond, where that sahib remained with his whore…by choice and not edict, until the whore’s own  daughter steals him away!  But it is still not without some kind of soul…some deep knowing, some lyricism, some rhythms of familiarity and fondness.

As for the heart? I think the tawaaifs had much more emotional capital invested in their sahibs. They were brave to throw their hearts into that circus ring, and that was an era where the men, being patriarchs, were raised to think of women as the weaker gender…in need of their patronage. So the men too, invested in those connections out of a certain sense of moral obligation to protect this parallel reality, these parallel demi wives…who understood their more primal needs with far greater astuteness.

Compare that to our day and age. Young women are offering their charms to the highest bidder…especially in showbiz…and those already at the top of their game, see a swarm of boy toys happy to do their bidding. I remember this line describing not just Bollywood’s casting couches, but how the whole industry was lubricated by the currency of our times…money and sex.  “Everybody got paid, got laid if they wanted that too…” (from my novel, Bollywood on the Bend, available on Amazon Kindle)

So you’re looking for love? Master the art of hooking up first. Lock up that sentiment before it locks you up! 

CITY TAWAAIFS…LOVE BITES!

Like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman had her menu down pat, (no kissing, hourly rates), many of today’s independent women also have their agenda down pat.

Some fellas get lucky just buying a woman a Four Seasons dinner. I have scant respect for such trade offs, but I know this to be a common practice especially among young middle class ‘chicks’ in our megapolis’s suburbs.

Other girls play easy to get as soon as they see professional upward mobility. This, in today’s day and age, matters more to them than snagging a rich husband…as one of my mature male friends had shared with me. He was operating from a self-appointed sugar daddy space, hoping to entice a nubile model or actress, 20 something, fair and lovely,  a trophy wife. But wifehood itself didn’t excite any of the hopefuls he liked. “They are not looking for a sugar daddy till they are 35, giving themselves a chance to be rich and famous on their own terms…!”

He was, of course, hugely disappointed!

Meanwhile here was I, midlifing like him, attracting far many more toy boys..young men who I wasn’t seeking to have around! And these nubile paramours have literally put their cards on the table…”No marriage..The institution ain’t working babe…and no emotions please..we are only human!”

So one tries to strip the frosting from the cake…so very unlike Bhansali’s tawaaifs. The modern relating jungle offers no time for poetry, no Gaja Gamini walk of seduction, no chandeliers or mujras…this is a zoo of hormonal exchanges, transacted with no history and certainly no mystery!  Who said we are far more than the sum of our parts!

What happened to the courting of the Divine Feminine? Ours is a culture where even the tawaif was aware of her ability to weave feminine magic …dance, song, poetry, tameez (good manners) and she even wielded soft power, influencing the most powerful minds of the time.  Her clients, the nawabs, were powerful men who often surrendered their logical selves when entering the kotha… and with the added intoxication of perfumes, soft lighting, beauty, social graces, song and dance,  many new ideas were seeded that impacted their day-to-day decisions.

There is this story of a tawaaif who married an English general, and after his passing away, acquired and ran his estate, took care of the administration of his army, slowly masterminding the expansion of her former husbands properties, land and power.

See what I mean? These women had no formal education, but they were shrewd and running a business …even if it was a Heeramandi…where the language of high art, an education in the sola shringaar, and the knowledge of seduction and pleasure…coupled with a hard pragmatism on releasing a tawaaif if she was no longer a favourite…showed an intelligent female tribe…and yes, no denying it’s more vicious side either.

But let’s think back to when our kings had many wives. Those wives eventually learned to be family, and when the men went about their administration, hunts, wars…The women were each other’s truest allies and support systems. Maharani Gayatri Devi had actually felt that the women living in erstwhile extended family were far less prone to depression than the slick, educated, empowered Western woman living by herself in a monogamous marriage and a nuclear family.  Possibly Gayatri Devi had experienced that sense of isolation when holidaying in Europe, living without that prolific sisterhood…with just her husband around…when he was around.

The world as I like to say it, is a different Heeramandi today…but it is a mehfil of transaction. Now let me practice my Gaja Gamini walk for a reel…reel life beats real life for such moves…any day!