My name is Umrao, Umrao Jaan.It was the time of Wazid Ali Shah of Lucknow, and the English East India Company was ruling over a large part of India ,determined to take over Lucknow. Lucknow at that time was a place of rich sensuousness and expensive luxury, a land of gold,silver,precious jewellery, fine muslin cloths, ittar, paan,and tobacco,where courtesans reigned stationed in their magnificent mansions called kothas. I was sold to one such kothiwali when I was eleven by one of my neighbours. I was brought up to be a skilled courtesan trained to be a singer and dancer. My childhood companions were the kothiwalis daughter Meher, and her son Masud. Meher turned out to be very beautiful, and I looked just plain beside her,but I was a better singer and dancer and wrote my own lyrics.One of my favourite song was the complaint of a girl, pining for her lover who has left her set in raag Todi. The wordings of that song was " Ore Piya tere bin tarase ankhiya/kayse kahnu tujhe ye dukh bhari batya/...Jabse gayo Mori Piya paradesia/nidya nahi ayi,tarape tarape jiya". One rainy evening when Meher was entertaining her customer in her own private room, kothiwali was smoking in her own room, and the rain drenched air was filled with the rich fragrance of her tobacco smoke and flowers with which Meher pinned her air, I was lying alone in the room I shared with Bibi, who was kothiwali's maid and had aged with her, jealous of Meher enjoying the company of her male client,and angry with the whole world, some one stole into the room. The room was dark because I had not lit the lamp that evening. I could not see who it was but a familiar smell betrayed Masud. He did with my body all that I had seen,spying through a chink in the window ,Meher's male customers do to her , and finally entered me. I was deflowered that evening and I did not do anything to resist the man in the dark which I suspected to be Masud.Kothiwali suspected something the next day and soon arranged for a private room of my own and arranged for the ritual after which I became a professional courtesan. Among the many men I entertained I remember Nawab Firoz. He was rich, very handsome and a poet himself. We spent many pleasant evenings and night together listening to the poems that he wrote and me turning them into songs.I still remember a line from his poem which I hum when I am sad "Tere ankhiya bate karti par tu knyo reheti chup."..He stopped coming when he married the girl his mother chose for him. I left the kotha one night with Dilwar, man who often visited me and gifted me with jewelry which even a Queen would die to have, they were so beautiful and expensive. I kept them hidden in the corner of my trunk bundled up in a scarf. Little did I know that these were stolen and Dilwar was a dacoit. I lived with him for a few months in the city of Kanpur, but one day the English police caught him and imprisoned him on the charge of dacoity . I stayed on my own in Kanpur for some time, but one day Masud and Bibi came to me and coaxed me to return to Lucknow. I returned with them to that old kothi and kothiwali and the old life. Then came the Sepoy Mutiny. After that every one in Lucknow was scared and fled from the city to other places specially to Calcutta where the deposed nawab Wazid Ali Shah had built up his own fiefdom at Metiaburz, and sheltering the refugees from the region he had previously owned. I decided to stay in Lucknow in the old kothi where I had lived my childhood and had turned into an accomplished courtesan. One day Masud went missing. He did not return ,and days and months passed . I suspected something and opened my old trunk. The bundle with the precious jewelleries was not there. Years after I got the news that Masud had set up house at Ilahabad,and was living with his wife and children. He had stolen everything from me.
