The woman, fakirs and pucca sahibs couldn't resist

Fakirs, nawabs, pundits, even pucca sahibs couldn't resist Begum Akhtar's charm, if not her voice. Begum Akhtar: love's own voice tracks the tempestuous life of one of India's original singing divas

A few days before she passed away, Begum Akhtar left her personal belongings (including a diary that had names of her closest friends), with the son of an old friend. He was a devotee called Saleem Kidwai, a history professor at Delhi University who helped author S Kalidas, once art editor with India Today, explore the world of the tawaif who rose to become one of India's most prolific singers specialising in Ghazal, Dadra and Thumri.



Begum Akhtar: Love's Own Voice traces Akhtaribai's life that started in Faizabad near Ayodhya, home also to Mirza Hadi Ruswa's heroine Umrao Jaan, following her to the streets of Mumbai where she acted in movies like Mehboob Khan's Roti, to her kotha in the Cheena Bazaar area of Lucknow. Replete with black and white photographs, the book weaves anecdotes that her admirers and close friends share, painting a picture of the singer who was at once naughty, generous, talented and depressed.

Akhtaribai wasn't a classic beauty, but her charm made her irresistibly attractive. Close friend Sheila Dhar tells the story of Nawab Raza Ali Khan of Rampur's fascination for the Begum. "There was this seven-stringed necklace of Basra pearls in the Rampur collection. And from the seventh string of this necklace, hung a big diamond pendent. The nawab used to say that if there is anything more lustrous than the diamond, it's the smile of Akhtari." Despite her illustrious admirers, she married lawyer Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi. Marriage brought along claustrophobic confinement behind the purdah. And for a wife, music was haraam. Begum Sayeeda Raza, who helped Akhtari marry Abbasi, said, "She did miss singing, but more than that she missed the whiskey. But within the first years of the marriage, she had started drinking and meeting people at her mother's home, and I must say that Ishtiaq bhai bore it all very stoically..."