Frances Pritchett’s site about Umrao Jan Ada explores the Urdu novel that inspired the famed Umrao Jaan film in depth. It includes a full English translation of the novel side-by-side with the Urdu original, links to glossaries explaining Urdu words in English, links to scholarship about the novel, and a lovely collection of photographs and illustrations of nautch girls.
Tag: nautch girl
Chander, Krishan. “A Prostitute’s Letter: To Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Qai-e-Azam Jinnah.” Translated by Haris Qadeer. River of Flesh and Other Stories: The Prostituted Woman in Indian Short Fiction, edited by Ruchira Gupta. Speaking Tiger Publishing, 2016, pp 184-190.
Abstract: This epistolary short story is written from the point of view of an unnamed sex worker and describes the plight of two girls, one Hindu and the other Muslim, both traumatized by the deaths of their families and placed into sex work following the partition of India and Pakistan.
Manto, Saadat Hasan. “A Girl from Delhi.” Mottled Dawn: Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition. Translated by Khalid Hasan, Penguin Random House India, 2011, pp 94-100.
Abstract: This short story follows Nasim Ahktar, a Muslim Nautch girl in Delhi, and her move to Pakistan after the partition of India.