Nautch Boy

In a dimly lit kotha, a sweet-faced, quiet boy dressed in matching pink shorts and top poses shyly for a photograph, holding a vase of plastic white daisies. Around him, powdered and perfumed women twirl and dazzle like silver-screen stars, and he watches them with wide-eyed wonder. Will he ever join their world of glamour, music, and performance? He dreams of becoming a nautch boy, but his courtesan mother, Rekhabai, has other plans—determined to give him a future far from the world she knows. Torn between her ambitions and the rhythm that pulses in his blood, the boy is sent to a boarding school in the hills, where he learns to navigate two contrasting worlds. He dances effortlessly to Hindi film songs, yet can recite Rossetti and Shelley by heart. Nautch Boy is Manish Gaekwad’s poignant account of growing up in a stigmatized environment while receiving a privileged education. As he comes of age, he finds his voice as a reporter, screenwriter, and novelist—eventually trading that vase of fake daisies for vibrant stories of love, loss, and life in the kothas