We all have come across the 3 words “Red Light Area”, either in the form of: “Diamond market”, “Hera Mandi” or “Shahi Mohalla”. A single thought associated with all these terms in modern times is mostly prositituiton and sex working. However, what is to be taken in account is that this very place located in the heart of old Lahore was and always had been one of the most influential and significant streets in the entirety of the era of the Mughals which dated back to the 15oo’s and with the progress of time and the passing of centuries the true essence of the Hera Mandi has deteriorated over time.
The term “Shahi” itself can be seen as an Urdu association with the Mughals. In that very era the Shahi Mohalla was the ideal representation of the Mughal culture and their courtship. It was a hub for learning the most delicate and much appreciated skills which were in the form of dance, singing or playing instruments. All of these were taught by the best and highly respected teachers who in return produced great apprentices’, a majority of them belonging to the elites of the society such as the Nawabs. These courtesans or “tawafis” had some power and prestige due to their access to the elite class and some of them came to be known as “authorities on culture.” Some noble families would send their sons so they could learn etiquettes (Tehzeeb) and the art of conversation. However, with the entrance of the British in India The Shahi Mohalla soon significantly turned into a “prostitute street” and the distinction between mujra and prostitution was blurred. Along with a lot of transgender performers who too performed mujra, a music genre which historically reconstructed an aesthetic culture of sixteenth to nineteenth-century South Asia in which heightened musical and dance entertainment afforded a medium for exchange between one woman and many men — what ethnomusicologist Regula Qureshi calls, “an asymmetry of power that is tempered with gentility”. However, keeping in mind the modern times The Diamond market is just a subtle reflection of its former image A majority of music shops and dancers have seen a consecutive decline in business with the emerging media and other industries which has caused a significant impact on their incomes. Furthermore, the old tradition of dancers being accompanied by musicians and learning delicate yet hard to master dances has all been replaced with shops offering music CDs and with the access of easy provocative Bollywood dances available on YouTube due to which the dancers also no longer saw any need of dance gurus /teachers or musicians accompanying them on their performances. “They take USB or sometimes they don’t even need that, they have songs in their cellphones ,they plug a cable and play the music,” laments Soan Ali, one of the music shop owners whose family has been in Shahi Mohalla for generations.
Moreover, the traditional prostitutes who belonged to centuries old “kanjr” tribes are being replaced and experience insults along with declining incomes. “People used to respect the prostitutes of Hera Mandi, we were called artists,” she says — but all has changed over the last decade. “Now we don’t have any honor.” Reema like Ali, has her family living in Hera mandi for generations now. She being a prostitute whose own mother and grandmother were also prostitutes contributing to the generation old line of women of the sub-continent who danced and pleased men in the market. She holds all of the girls without her family background accountable for her losses by taking up a profession where they do not know how to please people the way she does. She says this because these other girls, who are just a click away from a skype call and other websites are in a deeply conservative Muslim country, Pakistan, where sexual intercourse outside marriage is criminalized and prostituton is banned.
However, what adds to it is the fact that with one dance being conducted at least a hundred or two people involved including the flower boy, musicians, dancers. Not only that but the older musicians and dancers who had done things the traditional way now feel cheapened with the new generation. Jugnu part of the older music and dance cultures says “We were taught by great musicians, and every sur and taal of their tabla was studied,” she says. “We moved according to these beats. We earned with our feet. Today these dou-numberies [copycats] are doing vulgar dances.” She further says, “Today men — who are our market — do not want art. They do not wish to woo the women here in the grand old tradition,” says Jugnu. “Today all they look for is instant sexual gratification, and that is what has resulted in a desolate Heera Mandi. [Our clients] used to come only to be in our company, to see an art being performed live.”
Heera Maandi itself may have remained the same .With the same generations of families living there trying to maintain their livelihoods it in the form of sex working, dancing, singing ,or playing music .But what has actually changed and detoriated over the course of time is the perception of society and its meaning. What was once considering aspiring and was incredibly appreciated and admired as a work of art is now considered crude and vulgar.
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