Home > Work > The Courtesans of Karim Street
1 " Today, unlocking the room and stepping into its dusty embrace, it struck her – the bareness, the cobwebs in the corners, the dark squares on the walls where the maps had once hung, the intricately designed tiles disappeared in filth, the urn-less, roseless emptiness, the laughter that once was. Sighs everywhere, and echoes, the papery trail of ants through the ancient wood, the still, suspended sheets of dust, and through it all, those memories, still alive, still alive. "
― , The Courtesans of Karim Street
2 " A courtesan would receive years of training in literature, etiquette, dance and music before she was allowed to make her first public appearance. Courtesans have played quite a huge role in enriching our country’s traditions in music and art, you know. And sexuality – that too was considered an art, an ancient art…”What did it mean for the courtesans to have to make themselves available to the colonizer? To lay their bodies open to sex, to medical inspection, to laws? And all this to keep the military virile and marching towards the expansion of Empire! What happened to the women afterwards, that’s what I want to know! In fact, I don’t think it was very different from slavery in America – Black women eroticized, abused, discarded. No, the real story must have been far, far worse. Before the British, after the British. "
3 " Delhi. The ruins of an old city, markets, monuments, broken mansions, the zigzag of roads, the stillsad times of music past. And rising up from it, her mother, wind in her hair, laughing like a witch. "
4 " Stillness fell upon them, as weighty as a promise. The two of them walked in silence, along the still,moonlit landscape, and through the drowsing trees. "
5 " A modern world, with so many choices for women, yet still very much a man’s world, with littleplace for compassion or community or flowery skirts. No, it was a world of business suits and lawsuits, of committees and careful conversations. "