THE ATTIC
36 REGAL BUILDINGS
NEW DELHI
TEL: 23746050

friday 3rd august
7 pm ‘Akkarmashi’ - ‘The Bastard’ a solo performance in Hindi by Lokesh Jain


Based on the autobiography of Sharan Kumar Limbale, the Dalit writer from Mahahrashtra, this is a first-person account of his struggle against poverty, deprivation, discrimination and violence. It captures the dehumanizing impact of caste oppression in Hindu society. A powerful narrative touching story of an illegitimate child, born out of an unconventional and socially immoral relationship. The writer tries to establish his identity by questioning the entire social system which perpetuates oppression and discrimination.

The autobiography with a beautiful interplay of emotions and reality, of self-struggle, traumatic contradictions, anti establishment terrorized psyche and social uncertainty is portrayed by Lokesh Jain to bring out the suppressed anger, inferiority complex and anguish of the illegitimate child in the context of the present social set up and caste system.

Lokesh Jain is a theatre artist with 17 years of intensive experience with diverse theatre forms having completed an advanced diploma course in acting under Ebrahim Alkazi. He has worked on scripting, designing and directing plays. His solo pieces have been showcased in NSD’s National theatre festival. He is a founder member and creative director of ‘Jamghat’ an organization of and for street children.

saturday 4th august
7 pm "The Kothas of Lucknow": courtesans from the time of Wajid Ali Shah to the time of Mayawati - a talk & recreation by Veena Oldenburg


‘The dancing and singing girls’ of Lucknow in the mid 1800’s were the largest tax payers in the city of Lucknow. They owned property - houses, orchards, manufacturing and retail establishments and even in the 1970’s and 80’s were still powerful. alluring, independent, bold and even wild. In conversations with Veena these extraordinary women unveiled the secrets of the kotha, sharing with her their clandestine, devious, and intimate ploys for survival and economic independence, challenging the very ‘respectability’ of society’s central pillar—marriage. Like the Geishas of Japan, they could speak keenly about contemporary politics, the law, and had connections among the local power elite and were equally well informed about the history of their city. However in their proven involvement in the siege of Lucknow and the rising against colonial rule in 1857, these women, though patently non-combatants, were penalized for their clandestine instigation of and pecuniary assistance to the rebels. The British had deliberately muddied the truth about their kothas in order to denigrate nawabi culture, and to gobble up Awadh.

Their decline was irreversible both in British India and specially with the inherited Victorian morality of independent India. Their salons for instruction in etiquette, the art of conversation, appreciation of Urdu poetry, and even the finer points of love-making disappeared. They had been the recognized preservers and performers of the high culture of the court and actively shaped the developments in Hindustani music and Kathak dance styles. Their style of entertainment was widely imitated in other Indian court cities, and their more recent influence on the Hindi films is all too patent. The popularity of Indian films rests chiefly on the songs and dances in them. The very notion of the romantic musical owes its inspiration to the style of entertainment at the kotha, and several tawa’ifs and their daughters, including Jaddan Bai and her later famous daughter Nargis, found work in Bombay in the budding film industry.

Veena Talwar Oldenburg grew up ‘tramping around in the alleys of Lucknow trying to capture the ineffable essence of this multi-layered city.’ She is the author of the book ‘Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow’ in Contesting Power’. She tries to recreate this evening, not only with words of which she is a master but with music, a little kathak, some poetry, lot’s of imagination, the atmosphere and the mood of a bygone era. The audience is encouraged to come in Lakhnavi chikan kurtas, dupattas and any traces of Awadhi culture that they can get.

"My bio is simple - Native of Lucknow, Professor of History at City University of New York. Taught at Columbia U and Sarah Lawrence. And books - the Making of Colonial Lucknow, Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime. Now an anthology on Lucknow "Shaame-e-Awadh". Will be in bookstores within weeks. Work in progress: "The Making of the Oriental Debauch: Musings on the Politics of Decadence in the age of Empire building."