India, Sept. 13 -- I recently complained to a friend that Indian writing in English often uses a voice curated for the Western reader, overexplaining or exoticising local phrases and idiosyncrasies. It can be tiresome to see sindoor turn into "red vermillion" or a samosa described as a "pastry with a potato filling". How refreshing, then, to chance upon a wholly cinematic book full of phrases such as "jee ghabrana" (to feel anxious) and "Krismas ka prasad" for the cake distributed at Christmas. Each phrase captures a specific quirk so rooted in its context that anyone raised in Hindi-speaking India would be reminded of an uncle, aunt or other rishtedaar. This was the first thing that struck me as I began reading Manish Gaekwad's straight-from-the-heart sequel, Nautch Boy: A Memoir of My Life in the Kothas, to his earlier book, The Last Courtesan. The view Gaekwad conjures (with commendable candour) of his childhood in Bundook Gully, Kolkata, and his boyhood in the boarding schools of Kurseong and Darjeeling, is wonderfully textured. At its heart, Nautch Boy is the story of a queer boy growing up in a man's world, but surrounded by women. These aren't just any women, but those of Bowbazaar Kotha in Bundook Gully, where his mother, Rekhabai, was a courtesan. The title Nautch Boy, however, is a slight hook if one is expecting the literal male equivalent of "nautch girl", a boy dancing for male onlookers. Rather, it is a metaphor for several interconnected allusions: growing up in a kotha, a space coded as feminine, erotic, and taboo, as a boy at home with the ambient music and dance but discomfited by his inner femininity; his time at boarding school, where he is labelled a "sissy" even as boys dally with him for their pubescent pleasures; and ultimately his journey - born in, and moulded by, hardship - into manhood and self-acceptance, thanks not in small part to his single mother's sacrifices. In the backdrop, there is "the silvery sounds of payal, the soapy smell of freshly shampooed hair with shikakai and amla, the rustle of shimmering silk fabrics and powdery lashes", and the hum of Mere Haathon Mein Nau Nau Choodiyan Hain. The tale is cinematically vivid, often evoking the half-imagined sets of Devdas and Mughl-e-Azam; fitting, since the writer is also a scriptwriter. The book begins with a stark unveiling: Gaekwad's mother thought of killing him in her womb. As the narrative unfolds, she becomes his saviour, fleeing to Bombay for his protection, only to return to Bowbazaar. This sets the stage for a journey at whose heart lies the mother-son relationship, not always rosy, often complicated. Still, the mother's fierce protectiveness of her son radiates. Growing up in the kotha, he watches her navigate a man's world as she "dances to survive". She does everything to shield him from the seedier goings-on around them. Despite lacking formal education, she is determined to give him the best. He is labelled naazuk (delicate), but she raises him with an iron hand, thrashing him for coming second or third in class: anything less than first is unacceptable. They spend winter vacations visiting temples and mosques, perhaps, as Gaekwad notes with a mix of tenderness and humour, as a detox tour for herself. We come to see a formidable woman who does the best she can. While this mother-son relationship is the book's anchor, it is Gaekwad's experiences at school and college that shimmer. Searingly honest, this section is a graphic account of growing up queer. It relives pain that stays close to the bone, in a way few others have done, particularly in showing us how more-effeminate boys are exploited by others who can easily "pass" in a heteronormative world. In one poignant scene, Gaekwad imagines himself married to a boy named Vaibhav. But when they're "caught", others use it as a licence to abuse him. Through these painful formative experiences, life always circles back to the kotha, his mother, their songs and struggles. The music and the film actors strewn along the narrative aren't throwaway references; they are lifelines connecting mother and son. Sridevi, Meena Kumari, Sonu Nigam and Shah Rukh Khan all play their parts; indeed, each animates the duo's imagination. As he enters adulthood, English education creates a gulf between him and his family. Living in a slum, he makes desi liquor, but when the police raid, his cousins are hauled away while he is spared, a sign of his changed social status. He works as a telemarketer, reads Plato and Freud, and searches for his path. His mother, once central, slowly recedes as education and work take him to new pastures. Seventeen years later, Gaekwad returns home. His mother now lives alone in a crumbling building, her smile worn down by gutkha, time and solitude. The mujra trade has vanished. Yet she endures. In a wrenching moment, she recalls her child marriage while watching Bandit Queen, tears brimming as Phoolan Devi resists her husband's violence. The roles reverse: Gaekwad is the caregiver, torn between duty and exhaustion, in a segment that echoes the emotional knots of Jerry Pinto's Em and the Big Hoom. But even now, the theme of queerness permeates. "Woh galat raste peh chala gaya hai," the mother says of someone gay. "As if he took a bend in the road that led to a ditch," Gaekwad wryly observes. He sees that in much of the country, men must still be "macho". "The in-betweeners, the queers, need to either belong to the weaker section, such as hijras, or correct themselves." And so he doesn't explicitly come out to her, perhaps to preserve her hope that he might still "settle down". Nautch Boy is a significant contribution to Indian queer literature because it confronts not only sex, desire and bodily indignity but also poverty and class and their potent intersections....