This must be one of the most gripping memoirs ever translated from an Indian language. And not since Umrao Jan Ada, Mirza Rusva's 19th century Urdu novel, has any book so brought to life the world of elite tawaifs, the courtesans and singers who adorned the durbars of maharajas. As a singer, especially through her radio and gramophone recordings, Malka Pukhraj became one of the most loved voices of India and Pakistan. As an author, she shows no less talent in captivating the readers with her story.

SONG SUNG TRUE: A MEMOIR By Malka Pukhraj Translated By Saleem Kidwai Kali for Women Price: Rs 400 Pages: 376

Her book is dedicated to the most important men in her life-Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir and her husband. But her story begins before she met either of them. Writing when she was over 80, her childhood and the poor household of her village outside Jammu seem to have raced before her eyes. Here Pukhraj lived with her mother, a tough and untrusting woman with great ambitions for her daughter.

Gradually, the truth of Pukhraj's situation, the reasons for her mother's hardness towards her, begins to dawn although the author never states them. Her mother must have tried to make a success as a singing girl in Jammu and failed. In the process she became the second wife of Pukhraj's father, a Pathan who drank heavily and ran a chain of gambling dens and for whom she displayed nothing but contempt. But it was to him that she took three-year-old Pukhraj when she needed to educate her. Pukhraj was trained by an eccentric assortment of teachers to sing, pronounce Urdu correctly and dance. This is one of the most entertaining parts of the book, as Pukhraj presents us with a most unusual slice of life, where she even bullies her wayward father into letting her keep his earnings from the gambling den. By the age of nine, rather dark and dumpy, she was a child prodigy and in demand as a singer. Then her life and that of her entire family, whom she supported for years, was transformed. She performed for the royal durbar of Jammu.

SONG OF MYSELF: Pukhraj delights as an author as well

Maharaja Hari Singh, the last ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, indulged this tiny member of his entourage. She was very attached to him-for many years she sang for him, accompanied him to Kashmir and Lahore and on one of his hunting expeditions she went disguised as a male attendant. She learnt to keep the etiquette of the court and be wary of sycophants and intrigues. In order to save herself from allegations of trying to poison the Maharaja after Hindu-Muslim riots in the kingdom, she resigned and became a fashionable singing girl in Lahore.

Saleem Kidwai, who has done a wonderful job of preserving the idiomatic vigour of the original, has skilfully edited Pukhraj's account of her time in Lahore, which she wrote in one uninterrupted paragraph. There, surrounded by men who swore undying love for her, she played the role of the stony-hearted beloved of Urdu poetry to the hilt.

But it is the adventures of Pukhraj's early days, with her masterly ability to recreate a lost world, that make this book so memorable. In that world Malka Pukhraj was, as her name suggests, the queen.

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