Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars (22 page)

When we returned from Haji Malang, Leela started her breakaway. She would lie to Masti about why she could no longer come by. ‘I’m having my MC,’ she said two weeks running and so Masti suggested she get herself checked at the mobile clinic. ‘Apsara is ill, she needs me.’ At this, Masti screamed with laughter because plump, rosy-cheeked Apsara radiated good health, and even if she were wasting away Masti doubted Leela cared so much she would relinquish her partying for her mother. Finally Masti decided that Leela was snubbing her and she cut her off. Because she never did anything in half measures, she not only erased Leela’s numbers from her phone, but, snatching her chelas’ phones, from their phones as well. She would sniff when someone asked about Leela: ‘Bitch is probably on all fours somewhere!’

Leela heard this and she cried bitterly. But she didn’t want to end up like Ameena, alone even in death. She wanted to change—to make herself worthy of a good man and worthy therefore of marriage, even if all it was was a ‘dance bar marriage’.

When Leela was ready to pick up the results of her HIV test she gave me a missed call. I phoned her right back. ‘Come over,’ she said. I happened to be in the middle of moving house. Can I come tomorrow? I asked.

‘No! Don’t come tomorrow!’

She immediately softened. ‘I’ll call when I’m at the doctor’s. We’ll find out together, okay?’

PART II

September 2005

{ 1 }

‘Now that you’re unemployed, how do you feel?’

W
hat happened afterwards was almost forgotten, because Leela lost her job. Rumours about a possible ban on Bombay’s dance bars had begun to swirl in April 2005. Some bar dancers tried not to concern themselves with it, while others were in denial. Leela knew little, and what she knew she dismissed. In her version of the events that would change her life, ‘a man in a turban appeared on TV and accused some fatso of demanding bribes. When the turban turned down his demand, fatso enforced the ban.’

‘Turban’ was Manjit Singh Sethi, the president of the FRBOA. ‘Fatso’ was R.R. Patil, the deputy chief minister.

‘Of Bombay?’ asked Leela.

Maharashtra, I replied.

‘Turban was always on TV,’ continued Leela. ‘Shouting. Sardars shout a lot! He said Fatso asked him for a bribe in exchange for not shutting down the bars and Fatso said, “Nonsense! No such thing happened.” But he went ahead anyway and announced that he was shutting down the bars because we were bad women—husband thieves! PS said, “Don’t take tension, we Shettys are powerful.” He said Turban was as chalu as any policeman and that Fatso was scared of him. “What of the bribe?” I asked. “We’ll handle it,” he replied. So I thought, “Okay, it’s nothing to me.” Apsara said, “Let’s go back to Meerut.” “Good idea!” I replied, “Go!” But she refused to leave without me. She’s here to stay, I tell you. Curse my luck! Lots
of bar girls went on TV, they went on rallies, they jibber-jabbered about how they would suffer if they lost their jobs. I thought, “They’re hungry for attention—
bhookis
! Let them expose themselves. More kustomers for me!” And every time someone at Night Lovers spoke of the rumours I would bow my head and fold my hands and say, “You are a big person. You know everything. I’m only a simple bar dancer.” Then came June-July and PS kept closing the bar without notice, and on the nights it stayed open the police turned up and PS paid them. One night, I remember so well, he got very angry with them, and with us, and told everyone, “Get out!” So after some
ghus-phus
the police left and we left too, even though I’d tried to talk to PS. But he’d gone inside his office and refused to open the door. And before I knew it, it was August and one day PS called to me. I told you this, remember?’

I nodded. He asked you not to come in for work.

‘First I made a joke,’ said Leela. ‘“Why? Did Twinkle ask you to fire me?” But PS didn’t laugh. He said, “Go to Meerut. Or take a tour; go to Tirupati. And say a prayer for me too. In fact, you should go to Tirupati. Go with your mother and, if you like, take Priya with you. I’ll give you the money.” “But what happened?” I said. How hot he got with me. With me! He said, “Read the paper, Leela!” So that’s how I knew that Fatso hadn’t been joking. He had closed the dance bars. I turned on the TV and when I saw the news I thought, “Oh, I should have gone on a rally, I should have given interviews! Because at least I speak properly—not like some villager!” Then I thought, “No. Better I worked. Better I saved.” And so the days passed, and then someone gave my number to some TV channel and a reporter-type phoned me and said, “Now that you’re unemployed, how do you feel?” “Too good!” I replied and switched off my phone. And then, nothing. Turban got tired of shouting, I suppose?’

Sethi and some others decided to fight the law in court, I said.

‘Court? What court?’

The High Court.

‘High Court!’

‘PS changed,’ sighed Leela. ‘Priya was over all the time. Apsara wouldn’t move out. She said, “How can I abandon you in your time of trouble?” How could she not? My troubles would have halved!

‘And then PS wouldn’t take my calls. So one day I went to see him in Night Lovers. He didn’t even look at me; he looked over my shoulder. “Leela?” he said, like he didn’t know Leela was my name! And then he said, “My Mrs has palpitations.” Just like that. So she had palpitations! What could I do? On top of that he said, “Learn to adjust.” Learn to adjust! How much adjusting can one person do? Am I human or not? No one has adjusted more than me, let me tell you, and I’m not showing off, it’s the truth!’

The Bombay Police (Amendment) Act, 2005, was implemented in August that year. It banned dance performances in eating houses, permit rooms or beer bars—all synonyms for dance bars—that were rated three stars or less. In other words, while dancing was banned in bars like Night Lovers and Rassbery, it was permitted to continue in high-end luxury hotels. The bill had been introduced by R.R. Patil, at the time the deputy chief minister and home minister of Maharashtra, and it extended to the entire state. Patil had never before spoken up or against dance bars, but in April that year he initiated a campaign of vociferous denunciation, calling them ‘dens of criminals’ and ‘pickup points’ for ‘prostitutes’ that were ‘likely to deprave the public morality’.

Patil’s emphasis on morality led many, including the press, to conclude that he was using the idea of social cleansing the way some politicians used war: as a diversion from the downturn in every area of public life. More than half of Bombay’s population, then nearly eighteen million, lived in slums. According to
a report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., a third of this number had no access to clean drinking water. Two million had no toilet.

These figures were real to me: I lived near the beach, and every morning dozens of men and boys walked over from wherever they lived to defecate on the sand. Women came out at night.

There was nothing democratic about these figures. At this same time, Bombay was home to India’s largest number of dollar millionaires. It was benefiting from an economic boom of 8 per cent and drawing comparisons with New York, Moscow and Shanghai.

The truth was that despite Bombay’s sporadic experiments with intolerance it has traditionally enjoyed a cosmopolitan and animated nightlife. As early as the 1800s the French traveller Louis Rousselet noted with delight how ‘the refreshment rooms in the city’s taverns [were] thronged with Europeans and Malays, with Arabs and Chinese’, and how ‘far into the night the songs resounded’. City historian Sir Dinshaw Wacha wrote that the district contained ‘a large number of low-class taverns’, which he deemed as ‘quite unfit for the reception of ladies’ and ‘populated by newly joined cadets’. In the 1900s, cabarets were en vogue and in the mid-1960s, the dancer Joyce Lee, alias Temiko the Tomato, was adored and is still spoken of among the older set, for in performing ‘she left her breasts open to view’. It was during this time that Kamatipura flourished with brothels. Its sex workers were French and Polish, Russian and Austrian and they had come to the city by ship, and it was ships too that brought their customers—sailors who paid a few annas for their pleasure.

It was the liberalism and the politics of the 1960s that eased Prohibition and created what was known as the permit era. The policy change had been encouraged by Chief Minister V.P. Naik, a modern, forward-thinking, pipe-smoking Congressman who enjoyed the rifle range. The government revenue earned through
liquor sales was doubly important because Maharashtra was dotted with sugarcane distilleries which provided molasses, the primary base for the manufacture of rum. Naik assuaged his more conservative colleagues by pointing out that the permit era would also curtail crime, ending the brewing, transport and sale of illicit liquor for illegal bars.

And yet, in 2005, despite the highly public resistance from the unions of bar owners and bar dancers, the liberal media and social activists, the bill that would ban dancing in bars received unanimous political support, across party lines. Less than a year later, however, it was repealed by the High Court on the grounds that it violated the dancers’ right to equality and their freedom to practise an occupation or profession. The court condemned the government’s discriminatory behaviour and directed the commissioner of police to investigate allegations that representatives of Patil had demanded a bribe from Sethi and the FRBOA. The state government appealed the judgment in the Supreme Court and the Court decided to stay the operation of dance bars until it delivered its verdict. When this book went to press, no decision had been made.

And so dance bars either shut down or fired their bar dancers and stayed open. Or they transferred their leases, resurfacing as banks, yoga centres or restaurants. Some dance bars chose to violate the ban and were able to do so because they paid the police five times more hafta than they had before. The estimated 75,000 bar dancers affected by the ban were largely uneducated and unskilled and had no work experience but the experience of the dance bar. The majority had to seek employment elsewhere.

The state government didn’t consider it its duty to compensate these women. Having initially promised to provide them with alternative employment, Patil backtracked, claiming that more than 75 per cent were illegal migrants from Bangladesh. The claim was debunked by an independent probe. Patil then suggested the women find work as ‘home guards’ or under the
Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). If they didn’t, he insinuated, it was because they lacked the will to do honest work for standardized pay. Home guards are volunteer assistants to the police and are paid minimum wage, which was then set at seventy-five rupees per workday. The EGS is manual labour, primarily construction, and also paid minimum wage.

The law targeted not just the women who danced but the licence holder of the space where the dance was being held. So although Shetty fired all of his bar dancers, including Leela, he was still open to threats and harassment from the police. Even women employed as waiters or as singers in the orchestra were arrested for ‘participating in obscene activities’. So were their customers. Shetty thought it simplest to shut down. He didn’t wish to appear to the police who were suddenly everywhere that he was above the law. What was more, he knew that once the attention of the public, and the press, died down, things would revert to normal. They always did.

Shetty hadn’t thought twice about parting ways with Leela. The end, he insisted, had been some time coming. The trip to Lonavla had been a farewell gift. He thought she would have guessed, she was so smart.

Leela hadn’t guessed, far from it, but she was quick to recover from this latest setback. Shetty had left her the way she would have left him in similar circumstances. With lies, without regret. She accepted his decision the way she did everything else destiny threw her way.

Jyotishji had said it would be kathin, hadn’t he?

{ 2 }

‘Everyone drinks! Everyone beats!’

P
riya’s newest acquisition was called Tinkoo. He was her pimp. They had known each other a while; he was distantly related to the manager of Rassbery and was always hanging around. When Rassbery shut down, Tinkoo was adrift. He hoped to start a bijniss, preferably dalali. The girls he knew weren’t interested. They weren’t sure what they were going to do—wait out the Court’s decision, return to their villages, or get into dhanda—but whatever it was, they had better options than untried, untested Tinkoo.

Priya thought so too, until she phoned her best customers. They taunted her: ‘Pehle
nahin aayi thi, ab aana padega
free
mein
.’ You wouldn’t have us before, but now you must, for free. So she decided to work alone, on the street. She was successful and then one evening she was not. That was the evening ‘something’ happened. After that, she reconsidered her decision. Tinkoo had been calling and she had shrugged off his calls. He was a boy, her age. And he was ‘soft’, good-natured. That wasn’t an undesirable quality in itself, but it wasn’t much use in their line of work.