Nautch Boy: A Memoir of My Life in the Kothas

The Last Courtesan was his mother's story. Nautch Boy tells his own.

A sweet-faced, quiet boy dressed in matching pink shorts and a top poses demurely for a photograph in a kotha, holding a flower vase with plastic white daisies in it. Powdered, scented women around him sparkle and pirouette like movie stars on the silver screen. The boy looks at them in awe. Will he be able to join them in this evening of glamour and music? When will he become a nautch boy?

His dream is jinxed by his courtesan mother Rekhabai's ambition to secure his future away from every last thing that ties him to the kotha. But can he silence the music in his veins?

Sent off to a boarding school in the hills, the boy learns to balance the two worlds-he can undulate his hips to popular Hindi songs like his mother but also recite by heart the poems of Rossetti and Shelley.

Nautch Boy is Manish Gaekwad's account of being born and raised in a disrespected environment at odds with his privileged education. He finds his vocation as a reporter, screenwriter and a novelist, and eventually replaces that flower vase of fake white daisies with colourful stories of love, laughter and decay from the kothas.

© 2025 HarperCollins India (Audiobook): 9789369896691

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Audiobook: 1 September 2025