“If music be the food of love…”: Rasa, Gustation and a Bengali Courtesan’s Scrapbook
- Date & time
- –
- Speaker
- Prarthana PurkayasthaRoyal Holloway University of London
- Location
- King's Building, Strand Campus, London
- Organisation
- King's College London
Topics
About this talk
Indubala Dasi (1899-1984) was a Gramophone Company star in India, training in music as the only pupil of the renowned courtesan, Gauhar Jan (1873-1930). She was a recording artist, an actress on film and stage and a lifelong supporter of the rights of sex workers in Calcutta's red-light district. This paper traces the lives of Indubala, her mother Rajbala and their many courtesan colleagues through the contents of her surviving scrapbook. It examines a multi-page party menu from the scrapbook to reflect on rasa, taste and sexuality via Bengali courtesan women's gustatory experiences in colonial India. The words amod (pleasure) and alladi (indulgence) – found in invitation cards inside the scrapbook – propose coalitional moves, affective states that conjure an organised, inner-world resistance that Bengali courtesans, actresses and dancers practiced during an era of anti-colonial nationalism and anti-dance bans.
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