Book Review Title: The Last Courtesan: Writing my mother’s memoir Author: Manish Gaekwad Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 Pages: 185 Writing the biography of one’s mother who was a courtesan is not quite a pleasant task. Manish Gaekwad undertakes that arduous task in this book and does a fairly eminent job with it. ‘Courtesan’ may not be quite the exact translation of ‘tawaif,’ which is what Rekha, Gaekwad’s mother, was. A courtesan is essentially a sex worker whose clients are wealthy men. But a tawaif is primarily an artiste, a singer of ghazals as well as a dancer. Sex is part of that job, no doubt. When a woman sings lines like Apna bana le meri jaan / Haye re main tere qurbaan [Make me yours, my love / I am your sacrifice] to a man, sex becomes a natural climax of the show. Rekha is a tawaif. She tells her own story in this book. The author writes the narrative as if his mother is telling him her life’s story. Towards the end of the narrative, Rekha asse...
We visited Bhoothathankettu last week only. It is one of the three places that we keep visiting, Bhoothathankettu, PaniyeliPoru and Ezhattumugham are those three as all three of them are easy to reach and so similar. Bhoothathankettu, due to its proximity, is like the first real tourist place I visited multiple times during childhood.And that tree is quite the one to catch one's attention, so is the cave and the swing, right? Is the fallen tree also there on the way?
ReplyDeleteYes, the tree is still lying on the way though not obstructing the path.
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