The Courtesans of Karim Street Quotes

“Stillness fell upon them, as weighty as a promise. The two of them walked in silence, along the still,

moonlit landscape, and through the drowsing trees.”
― Debotri Dhar, The Courtesans of Karim Street

“A courtesan would receive years of training in literature, etiquette, dance and music before she was

allowed to make her first public appearance. Courtesans have played quite a huge role in enriching

our country’s traditions in music and art, you know. And sexuality – that too was considered an art,

an ancient art…”

What did it mean for the courtesans to have to make themselves available to the colonizer? To lay

their bodies open to sex, to medical inspection, to laws? And all this to keep the military virile and

marching towards the expansion of Empire! What happened to the women afterwards, that’s what I

want to know! In fact, I don’t think it was very different from slavery in America – Black women

eroticized, abused, discarded. No, the real story must have been far, far worse. Before the British,

after the British.”
― Debotri Dhar, The Courtesans of Karim Street

“Delhi. The ruins of an old city, markets, monuments, broken mansions, the zigzag of roads, the still

sad times of music past. And rising up from it, her mother, wind in her hair, laughing like a witch.”
― Debotri Dhar, The Courtesans of Karim Street

“Today, unlocking the room and stepping into its dusty embrace, it struck her – the bareness, the

cobwebs in the corners, the dark squares on the walls where the maps had once hung, the

intricately designed tiles disappeared in filth, the urn-less, roseless emptiness, the laughter that

once was. Sighs everywhere, and echoes, the papery trail of ants through the ancient wood, the still,

suspended sheets of dust, and through it all, those memories, still alive, still alive.”
― Debotri Dhar, The Courtesans of Karim Street

“A modern world, with so many choices for women, yet still very much a man’s world, with little

place for compassion or community or flowery skirts. No, it was a world of business suits and

lawsuits, of committees and careful conversations.”
― Debotri Dhar, The Courtesans of Karim Street