Female flanerie in Indian Cinematic Space

Abstract

The flaneur is a figure of perception and an embodiment of liberation in the metropolis - an uninhibited spectator of the city, seeking the pleasures of its indulgent atmospheres and basking in the vibrancy of its unfolding urban life. However, this simple, cognitive engagement with the urban realm is reserved for male authorship, where the basic human requirements of time, space and leisure are gendered. The male flaneur defies the scrutiny of the public gaze, unperturbed by the fears of assault and societal convention while enjoying the luxuries of idleness in the midst of a bustling street. On the contrary, the female flaneur is obscured, her space and time in the city compromised at the behest of patriarchal constructs. Where is her space in the city? How does she reclaim her ownership of the urban scape?
Moved by the question of female flanerie in the metropolis, this essay delves into the idiosyncratic realm of the kotha - a spatial typology that emerged in the Indian subcontinent during the Mughal rule around the 16th Century. The kotha was similar to a salon, where women (known as tawaifs or salon ladies) adept in the arts of dance and music, would perform for elite and royal male patrons. Being a dedicated space of performance embedded in the city’s fabric, the kotha oscillated between the public and private realms, never fully belonging to either. Through the changing socio-political condition of India across its colonial, post colonial and contemporary eras, the kotha, just like the metropolis, has undergone a shift in identity and spatial expression - thereby mirroring the condition of the female flaneur, now embodied by the tawaif. Interestingly, the kotha has time and again been a subject of interest in South Asian visual media culture, particularly represented through its cinematic space.
Therefore, tapping into my own fascination for South Asian cinema and drawing on the spatio-corporeal realm of the kotha as a specific case, this paper seeks to unearth the greater question of women’s space in the city - their modalities of expression, their reclamation of citizenship and above all, their personification of the flaneur - a figure of perception and an embodiment of liberation in the metropolis.