KARACHI: Once upon a time, in a land not far away, there was a little boy who grew up in terrible misery and devastating poverty. Both his parents personally betrayed him by not making it to Bollywood. His father lost all his money in a production company, apparently started drinking, and eventually died. Her mother, an aspiring actress, never grew beyond her ambition. As her first heroic act, she took care of the home and sometimes even sewed clothes to support her flesh-and-blood needs.
The little boy soon realized that his story was so common that it didn’t even need names. The terror of his communal denomination became the fuel that kept him from writing a Dickinson novel. He packed up his emotional baggage, vowed to continue loving the ruins of his mother’s CPTSD, and vowed to avenge his father’s melancholy. He decided to take control of his destiny and become an entry on Wikipedia, no matter what.
This is how Sanjay Leela Bhansali, formerly known as The Boy, revealed a 14-year-old passion project. His directorial debut for the Netflix web series premiered last month. Or the week before. Or maybe 2016. I wasn’t sure because it sounds exactly like the many films he makes as a successful filmmaker with an entire Wikipedia section under his belt. However, the fine print reveals that this is a streaming network debut, some of the women behind the nose rings are old, and one of them is Sonakshi Sinha. They all claim to be actresses, and since they are playing the role of sex workers, they all wear mehendi in Lahore, Pakistan. As always.
Before the time of our lords
The tawaif, who later became a courtesan, was the Mughal version of the devadasi, the temple debtor. During medieval Mughal rule, they were promoted as guardians of artistic and cultural authority. Imagine Anna Wintour meeting Bene Gesserit before Dune begins. Under the auspices of an empire independent of colonialism, courtesans were the promoters of literary arts, musical traditions, dance forms, poetry, and cultural etiquette.
These women existed outside the norms of marriage contracts and were largely free in their choice of sexual partners. The households they ruled were a mix of women who sold and plundered for their talent or were outsiders because they wanted to. Sex was not part of their profession; their livelihood came from their patrons and the various forms of associations in which they were involved. Unlike the royal harems, they led an active public life and were entitled to inheritance rights, especially the Devdasis. Respectability was not part of their agenda, so they continued to pose a threat to women of noble birth and good values, but that did not stop them from occasionally marrying and becoming royal mistresses or dowager queens. Their livelihood largely depended on their customs, but to ensure sustainability, they were given exclusive power in Lucknow, Oudh, Benares, Uttar Pradesh, and Calcutta, to name a few, but Lahore has never been on the list of high-profile careers. for an aspiring courtesan.
Heeramandi, Diamond Markets, and Heera Lal Singh
Heeramandi is named after a Sikh minister, Hira Lal Singh, appointed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was part of an extensive network spread across the walled city ostensibly devoted to courtesan culture. However, at that point, British rule had decided to culturally adapt the Indian subcontinent to its borders, rather than understand the nuanced social mores of a subcontinent with a diversity that would put anyone to shame.
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It was unthinkable that women could exist as human beings and rule states, command armies, and participate in political decisions without a man saying no. Furthermore, impressionable young British officers began to fall in love with these strangely liberated creatures. So, there was a ban on houses with a bad reputation and an import of European women bought and sold, much to the outrage of white feminists and brown men who did not know how to deal with the sudden plague of prostitutes who took care of an uncivilized European sex worker. At the time, it was only natural that sex work on Tawaif would be included as a popular motif and, of course, banned. Heera Lal Singh followed suit and adapted the semi-brothels into a lucrative stock market for women that was naturally close to the geography of Lahore. So, there is no secret sea route through which blood diamonds are smuggled to Lahore, but an undiscovered fake pax that overlooks Heera Lal’s contribution to human trafficking.
The Last First Impression
Sanjay Leela Bhansali is a big believer in first impressions. He never tries to make another one. His imagination remains superior to the entire lived history of the subcontinent. Therefore, an early protohistoric princess in an abandoned Rajput fort will look exactly like a sex worker in the heart of Partition Lahore. A woman from Punjab, probably proud, will decorate an entire village with fabrics from the Central Indian tradition, without the lace and kurta typical of the region in question.
Nose rings will remain a brutal concoction that exists only in Bhansali’s mind and now serves as a bridal mask against COVID. Or expressions. Nothing makes sense when you pay attention to a Lahore where posters say ‘inqilab zindabad’ in Hindi, old Lahore expands to North American proportions, the architecture is resplendent with bubbling fountains, and suddenly everyone on the street is wearing the same colors. The outfit is worn for no apparent reason. And it’s just a few minutes of a web series. The dialogues of his Muslim characters were so shocking that at one point there was muscle loss. I have no plans to watch the web series, so it’s a nightmare what an entire season of Bhansali dialogues will look like.
Courtesans have not existed at any time in recorded history. He draws loosely from various interpretations of pop culture and Instagram Reels but mainly sticks to the visual template of his imagination. “I find research very boring. As a filmmaker, I don’t set out to make a documentary where I do anything specific. I want my impressions, impressions of a child, impressions of adults, impressions of heartbroken lovers,” Bhansali once said. “I want to say such things and receive state awards for my lasting contribution to cinema.”
Bhansali, Bollywood, and Bharat
Manisha Koirala, Ranveer Singh’s wife in ‘Padmavat’, Deepika’s sister-in-law in ‘Ram Leela’, Sonakshi Sinha, and a debutante half-shadow, half-actress are the five actresses who come together in this stressful visual circus. Without research, he made no effort to make anyone appear different from him. So, you see that the five Indian women do not even try to give the impression that they live in a different era, but occasionally want to emphasize their Muslim identity through the strange greeting that only exists in Bollywood and which gives the impression that Adaab was made in China. Once the vertigo is brought on by a slew of twirling dancers, a plethora of fountains, and the entire Pantone library before your eyes, the title becomes “Heeramandi: The Diamond Market.” It is an epic story of love, revenge, passion, power, division, and increasingly sought-after political words against all things Indian. Heeramandi is a debilitating reminder of how hopelessly isolated Bollywood has become. Bhansali targeted a series of B-list or lost celebrities and ensured that a coffin was safely closed, Bollywood-style.
Heeramandi will be released sometime this year as a stereotype-perpetuating web series.