Review of The dancing girls of Lahore: Selling love and saving dreams in Pakistan's ancient pleasure district

Abstract

Careful to not reproduce polemic constructions of a lost "golden age" being replaced by a contemporary system devoid of cultural and economic meanings, Brown does a very good job connecting the forces that combine to reshape traditional forms of prostitution in this setting, including the loss of official forms of patronage, the rise of other kinds of entertainment (i.e., cinema, Internet pornography, and foreign dancing tours), and the reconfiguration of global market economies, that of the Persian Gulf in particular.

Review of The dancing girls of Lahore: Selling love and saving dreams in Pakistan's ancient pleasure district by Louise Brown, London, Harper Perennial, 2009.

Treena Orchard

The Dancing Girls of Lahore by Louise Brown provides a richly detailed and insightful account of the lives of several Pakistani kanjar (traditional caste of entertainers, including prostitutes) women as they shift under the weight of new socio-economic and political conditions that are restructuring the traditional system of prostitution that has been their life blood for centuries. Positioned as a documentation of the change and the disappearance of an era, this book does infinitely more as it operates almost like a dual biography of Heera Mandi (the Diamond Market) and the key players living there who invited Brown into their lives. Taken from her diary and recorded over the course of four years, the chapters unfold according to the seasons of her fieldwork and in many ways trace the arc of the life cycle of not only the newly emerging system of prostitution and the neighborhoods in which it takes place, but also the lives of the different women, men, and children who make up the world of the Diamond Market. The many topical vignettes that are featured in the chapters provide the reader with insight into the diverse and complicated personal and geographic terrains within Heera Mandi as well as some of the humorous and often colorful slices of life that make up daily living within the walls of Lahore's ancient pleasure district.

The pages of this book introduce readers to women of all sorts, men of all sorts (including the khusras, transgendered prostitutes), the small group of local men who are addicted to licit and illicit substances, Tariq the sweeper, the newly arrived Bangladeshi villagers, Iqubal the painter, and the lively and fastidiously followed festivals and religious activities that punctuate the Muslim calendar. However, it is Maha who takes center stage and Brown documents, with much feeling, close observation, and emotional engagement, the challenges she faces as she tries to support her family through a system of prostitution that is increasingly being controlled by factors beyond her control. A strong yet also complex and vulnerable woman, Maha's many struggles, with financial survival, the sorrows and jealousy in her relationship with her "husband", addiction, and the very constraining nature of her life as an aging prostitute in a system with diminished value, encapsulate and speak to the role of modernity in reconfiguring kanjar realities and social status. Careful to not reproduce polemic constructions of a lost "golden age" being replaced by a contemporary system devoid of cultural and economic meanings, Brown does a very good job connecting the forces that combine to reshape traditional forms of prostitution in this setting, including the loss of official forms of patronage, the rise of other kinds of entertainment (i.e., cinema, Internet pornography, and foreign dancing tours), and the reconfiguration of global market economies, that of the Persian Gulf in particular.

A sociologist, Brown provides us with a rich, descriptive account of fundamental aspects of society, social institutions, and social relationships within Heera Mandi, and it is the culturally contextualized presentation of gender that stands out as an especially effective vehicle through which the lives of her participants and friends can be best understood. She opens with a discussion of the forms of prostitution and temple and/or religious servitude that pre-date (and in some places still exist) the contemporary kanjar system(s), including the Hindu-based devadasi tradition, nautch or dancing girls, and the tawaif or courtesan. At the heart of these phenomena, and what binds the hard but very meaningful lives of women in the Diamond Market together today, is the management of gender, sexuality, class or caste, and the inequities embedded within largely male-dominated societies which in many critical ways become embodied through the reproduction of generations of women and girls who will always be prostitutes. Importantly, this is something that the author struggles with. Reflecting upon one of Maha's daughter's entry into the trade she says, "...Nena is thrilled-and I'm confused. I thought I was coming to Heera Mandi to document a terrible trade, and yet Nena is seemingly not being dragged into prostitution: at 14 she's embracing her family's business with enthusiasm" (pg. 214). Her admission speaks to the contested position that prostitution, and the painfully unequal workings of gender in this context, continue to occupy and signify, even within the mind of a woman who understands these issues well. It also speaks to the limited opportunities afforded to girls and women within this social group, most of whom experience multiple, competing feelings and motivations about prostitution and what they have little choice but to continue to do in order to support their families.

In her closing portrait of Maha, Brown reflects with much wonderment upon her friend's unending belief in and pursuit of love, something that she sees as unrealistic because, in this setting, where women are "playthings" (pg. 285), love can never last. However, throughout the book she demonstrates that women are infinitely more than playthings, making this description appear somewhat inappropriate, as is her depiction of love never lasting in this particular community because the author herself has experienced this and readily discusses her own divorce. There are other examples where the author expresses disdain for some of the practices and beliefs circulating in Heera Mandi, including referring to Maha's belief in black magic as "idiocy" (pg. 225) and the "stupid myth" of describing defloration as an opening of virgins upon entry into the trade (pg. 228). Although isolated and very minor slips, the neo-colonial judgments within these descriptors point to cross-cultural understandings that, perhaps given the emotive and political complexity of what she examines, do not necessarily always converge.