Musing on a poetu2019s love life Shunashir Sen shunashir. sen@ mid- day. com If we were to ask you to name a few contemporary Hindi poets, chances are youu2019d come up with Javed Akhtar, Gulzar and Prasoon Joshi. But take a second to wonder why that is. The straightforward reason is that Bollywood has provided these personalities with a vehicle that has driven their words to every corner of the country, and they thus have mass appeal. But that of course wasnu2019t the case in the mid- 19th century. So poets back then had to employ a different medium to enter the popular imagination u2014 courtesans, who would sing their verses in the form of ghazals that the public would lap up with glee.

And yet, those same courtesans have been unkindly dismissed as u201c tawaifsu201d and u201c baijisu201d in the annals of history. Their morals have been questioned.