Between the Good and the Bad: Reading the Baiji in Reba Muhuri’s Literary Works

This essay studies how the baiji is represented in the life writing and fiction of Reba Muhuri (1930–2011), who was a celebrated singer in India. In her memoir, Thumri O Baiji (1986), Muhuri chronicles the lived circumstances of different baijis whom she had met over the years. Muhuri also wrote a novella, Bitthanbai (1984, published 2015), with a baiji protagonist who trudges through difficult transitions in her life. This essay argues that Muhuri’s representations of the baijis in both her autobiographical and fictional texts, though often appearing as subversive, borrow from patriarchal codes about who is a good, virtuous, and pious performer and who is a bad, immoral one. It also argues that Muhuri posits the “good” baiji as one who only sings and does not dance.