“Does the courtesan not have a heart?” Chandramukhi as a site of resistance and deviance in 21st-century Devdas narratives

Popularly referred to in postcolonial cinema as the tawaif (courtesan) with the golden heart, Chandramukhi has long been overshadowed by the Devdas archetype of doomed romance. This article complicates ideas of female sexuality and cinematic respectability performed by Chandramukhi to reclaim this figure as a complex site of resistance and deviance in the films Devdas (2002) and Dev.D (2009). Using a postcolonial feminist lens, it traces how deviant female sexuality, colonially constructed as excessive, continues to shape the sex worker in contemporary Indian cinema. Chandramukhi’s incarnation as a lover who resists containment yet remains tied to redemptive tropes is analysed through frameworks of mimicry and narratology. The article critiques the limits imposed on a sex worker’s agency, spatial autonomy, and right to love, arguing that her resistance is often interpreted as performance rather than rupture. It thus reworks the Devdas metaphor to identify feminist negotiations of desire and deviance.