The rich world of Indian literature and culture has been constantly enriched by prostitues, courtesans, tawaifs, baijis and call them what you will. In folk lore, in history. In cinema. Across the country. In all Indian languages. They have been a part of our popular culture and many of them have gone on to attain an iconic stature.

When Nabendu Ghosh, the celebrated writer, script writer, film director who has been associated with films like Bandini, Sujata, Devdas, Madhumati and a host of Indian classic films  traverses the streets of  city of Calcutta to tell the stories of women in Mistress of Melodies, (edited by his daughter Ratnottama Sengupta), the stories and the story telling takes on a different dimension.   Chhaya,  Basana, Hasina, Tagar,  Fatima, and Gauhar Jaan, call them courtesans or sex workers, they all take on a character and keep touching you even after you hve finished the book.

With what ease these stories flow, you practically gallop from one word to the next, from one story to the next. The words don’t form stories of romance, there is not the remotest hint at anything pleasant. And yet one reads with such fascination, wanting to devour one story after the other. It was only after I was done reading the whole that the horror of it all slapped me down. Such absolute misery, growing slowly, surely, ceaselessly like a parasitic vine. Slowly this dark growth will cover all the pleasant green and kill it. That’s how this left me feeling. But you don’t feel like this as you race through each story, feeling numb because what you read is just that hard to digest.

A book about women, and the ‘oldest trade in the world’. Prostitution. Something we all still choose to not address with that disgust or pity rousing word.

There is no denying the author is a master storyteller. He puts you in that time and place. He makes you live those lives. And he leaves you with a shudder. And he leaves you with the realisation that a shudder is all you are capable of. There is nothing you will do to stop the flesh trade, you will not even talk about it because it’s uncomfortable.

Muzaffar Ali, a resident of Kotwara, Lucknow, the city of Nawabs and Tawaifs and has made films on Amiran and Noor, has produced a near academic piece in the foreword to the book and makes the characters even more relevant.