The second, third, and fourth floors of the kotha were the domain of the tawaifs. The air in those rooms was infused with fragrances created exclusively for them.

What is a tawaif if not a whore? A tawaif, sisters, is a courtesan. She is well versed in the arts of conversation and seduction. She is schooled in music and dance, particularly the mujra. She sings ghazals and plays instruments. Her intellect is formidable and her beauty so divine that the moneyed nawabs paid fortunes to partake of it.

Not for her a dingy, dark room in a row of dingy, dark rooms on the first floor at the back of the kotha. She has a scented boudoir, decorated in silk and satin. Men seek pleasure from her; they do not simply satiate their lusts. Grace, elegance, and choice: a tawaif has them all.

I grew up learning to keep my eyes cast down lest I be the recipient of unsavory notice from my mother’s clients. I never left the kotha; I wasn’t allowed to. Girl children are tender morsels to those whose hunting grounds are the city’s pavements. There were other children in the kotha—some were even my friends—but our first loyalty was to our mothers, and our mothers were often embroiled in complicated feuds with each other. Though the kotha was always full of people, I sometimes went days without speaking to a single person.

My mother’s face had been disfigured by a childhood illness, which made her dream of being a tawaif precisely that: a dream. Still, the sisterhood in the kotha was not exclusive, and the women would have enfolded her within its arms had my mother been a nicer person. She wasn’t, though. She wasn’t nice at all. So, she was reviled around the kotha, and the only reason the Malkin, the owner of the kotha, tolerated my mother was because she liked me.

I grew up on scraps of attention thrown my way by the various whores on the first floor. The second, third, and fourth levels of the kotha were forbidden to us children unless we were sent on errands. My mother mostly kept me in that windowless room that served as home, apart from the time she worked. Those hours, from five in the afternoon to two in the morning, I was left to my own devices. When I was young, my mother paid a kitchen maid to take care of me, but after I turned five, I was deemed old enough to look after myself.