Mistress of Melodies

Nabendu Ghosh

My Rating : 5/5 stars

I must admit that I have a fixation with everything Bengali. I owe it to Rabindra Sangeet, which I came across during my teenage years in Guwahati, and Hrishikesh da's movies, some of which are still my all time favourites. So when I got the opportunity to read translated stories by Nabendu Ghosh, I was more than delighted.

I traversed the streets of Calcutta with the master as he unveiled a world less known. I marveled at the ingenuity of his prudent writing which portrayed a stunning picture of the palpable course of lives of each character.

These are stories of courtesans, who were once so revered that they set the hallmark of etiquette in society, and are also stories of women engaged in prostitution. With his sensitive and sublime writing, the author emphatically brings our focus to the lives engaged in the profession, their struggles and their hopes.

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Review

Mistress of Melodies: Stories of Courtesans and Prostituted Women is acollection of six stories by Nabendu Ghosh in translation. It includes three translations by the editor Ratnottama Sengupta (Market Price, Dregs and Song of a Sarangi) and one each by Padmaja Punde (It Happened One Night) and Mitali Chakravarty (Anchor). The titular story was originally written in English by the author for a screenplay.

In the editorial note, Ratnottama Sengupta reflects upon the origin of the word prostitute from Latin word “prostitus” and asserts that its interpretation as “to expose publicly” or as “thing that is standing” does not have the abusive association usually identified with it. She refers to Rudyard Kipling’s short story, ‘On the City Wall’, for the denigrating connotation that the phrase “oldest profession”, a euphemism for the word prostitute, acquired later.   

Treated as courtesans, as connoisseurs of arts, the women engaged in this oldest profession enjoyed high social standing in Mughal and Pre-Mughal era. Immensely trained in the fields of classical singing and dancing, their mannerism set a hallmark of etiquettes in society. It was only with the arrival of British that their institution gradually collapsed. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 rang the death knell for courtesans’ art. With their wealth seized and places plundered, they were punished for their involvement in the rebellion. The coming of British crown further brought Victorian ideas of morality and women chastity, thereby pushing the courtesans to the lowest rungs of society.

 
I reviewed the book for Borderless Journal. Here is the link to complete review:

https://borderlessjournal.com/2020/12/14/mistress-of-melodies/