by AMNA IQBAL
‘Heeramandi: The Diamond Market’, a tale of love, revenge, power, partition and acute psychosis
Once upon a time in a land not too far off there was a young boy who grew up in abject squalor and devastating poverty. Both his parents personally betrayed him by failing to succeed in Bollywood. His father lost all their money in a production venture, obviously took to drinking and eventually died. His mother, an aspiring actress never progressed beyond the aspirational part and took to keeping house, sometimes even sewing clothes to provide for her flesh and blood as her first act of heroism.
The little boy soon realised that his story thus far was so ordinary that it doesn’t even need names. The horror of his common denomination became the fuel that propelled him away from a Dickinson novel. He packed his emotional baggage, promised to always romance the ruins of his mother’s CPTSD, and vowed to avenge his father’s melancholy. He decided to decide his own destiny and become a Wikipedia entry, come what may.
And thus Sanjay Leela Bhansali, previously known as The Boy, unveiled a 14-year-long passion project. His directorial debut for a web series on Netflix dropped its first look sometime last month. Or the week before. Or perhaps in 2016. I wasn’t sure since it looks exactly like the many films he makes as a very successful filmmaker with an entire Wikipedia stub to his credit. The fine print, however, reveals it’s a directorial debut on a streaming network, some of the women behind their nose rings are old and one of them is Sonakshi Sinha. They all claim to be actresses, and since they play the roles of sex workers, in Lahore, which is in Pakistan, they all wear mehendi. Like all the time.
Before the time of our lords
The Tawaif, which later became a courtesan was the Mughal version of a Devdasi, the Temple beholden. During medieval Mughal rule, they were upgraded to gatekeepers of arts and cultural authority. Think Anna Wintour meets Bene Gesserit before Dune begins. Under the patronage of an empire untethered to colonialism, courtesans were powerhouses of the literary arts, musical traditions, dance forms, poetry, and cultural etiquette.
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