Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars (25 page)

‘Jokes,’ sneered Apsara. ‘Is this the time for jokes?’

Priya mused, ‘A kustomer was crazy for my attention. Finally he said, “Do you want to hear a good joke?” “No,” I replied. “Why so?” he said. “Don’t you like to laugh?”’

‘I do like to laugh,’ she told Apsara firmly. ‘How I wish I had listened when kustomer had wanted to make me laugh.’

Priya gave up attempting to run a separate household. She moved in with Leela and Apsara, bringing with her complaints, clothes and a chatai. I assumed she had skipped out on her rent because she warned me to say ‘Priya
gayi
gaon’ to anyone who came asking.

A few weeks later, I had a missed call. When I called back it was Paanwala Shyam who answered, for he also manned a PCO booth beside his paan stall below Leela’s flat. When I asked who it was, he replied, ‘Leela
ki
mummy.’

‘Such a selfish girl,’ Apsara started off. ‘Just like my mother-in-law, no concern for others. Here I am; I’ve come all the way from Meerut having left behind my husband and sons, only because she begged, “Please give me company, mummy, I’ll take care of you, God promise. I’ll give you whatever you want to eat.” And now without any notice she has left! Did she once ask herself—what people will say? How will mummy cope?’

What do you mean? I asked. Is Leela missing?

‘I have varicose veins so big-big purple like baingan. I can’t even walk. Where am I supposed to go looking for this girl, the burden, the burden that she is! Oh, it’s true what they say! Boys love mummy most. They worship their mummy like a devi. But girls like Leela! No husband, no children, no shame. She has made me fall in the eyes of God!’

Does Priya know where she went?

‘And all day, all time, stories; “Manohar did this, Manohar did that.”
Badnami
! Manohar was so pious man, every weekend he would wash dishes at our gurdwara. And she says the police
did ganda kaam with her. What ganda kaam? They were my mister’s closest friends! Why, come Diwali time, inspector sahib would send such a big box of burfi! I haven’t eaten mithai in God knows how many months! I’ve forgotten what meetha tastes like!

Oh, even small-small joys have been snatched from me! Why? Why, God, what sins did I commit in my past life? Why stuff my mouth with this most bitter taste of misfortune?’

Apsara, what about Priya? And Tinkoo?

‘You’re a very smart girl! Yes, you’re right. That little slut has run off with Tinkoo.’ She started to wail, ‘My girl has run off with a pimp! Have you heard? Everyone, listen, listen: my girl has run off with a dalal! Hey bhagwan, bhagwan
bachao
, a dalal has kidnapped my angel.’

I phoned Priya. Tinkoo answered for her because Priya was ‘too much busy’.

Doing what? I wondered, exasperated. She was no longer in rickshaw bijniss.

‘Leela is all right,’ Tinkoo said to me. ‘Not to worry.’

So where is she?

‘In lodge bijniss,’ he said casually. I imagined him flicking.

What’s lodge bijniss?

‘Lodge-bijniss-means-lodge-bijniss,’ Tinkoo replied, sounding taken aback. ‘Why to worry?’

Because she’s missing, I said.

‘Missing? No, not missing at all. She’s in lodge bijniss I just told,
na
?’

I raised my voice. Tinkoo, what do you mean by lodge bijniss?

‘Be calm, Soniaji,’ he sighed. ‘No need for party-like excitement. See if you want, you come to Mira Road. I’ll show you what is lodge bijniss, I’ll show you to Leela, I’ll show you nothing to worry. Happy? Tension free?’

I wondered if Tinkoo knew what he was talking about. Leela had never liked him and he seemed to me an unlikely confidant. But he was the only one of her small circle who had offered to
help me find her and for this kindness I was grateful. So I took him up on his offer and we agreed to meet.

The following evening, I stood outside Mira Road station, my cellphone in hand, to make sure I wouldn’t miss Tinkoo. I needn’t have worried. He liked to make an entrance.

Tinkoo zoomed up on a black motorcycle with an adrenaline-pumped roar and an explosion of exhaust fumes. His leather pants, half-open white shirt, tail flapping in the wind, and black hairband mirrored the current trend among young Bollywood actors, completing the picture he wished to present. Before he could put forward the suggestion I knew was on his lips, I quickly cut in. I’ll follow you in an auto, I said, hoping he would take my rebuff as my attempt not to inconvenience him. But of course he knew it for what it was and offering me a mocking smile Tinkoo revved up and zipped off, zigzagging between taxis and trucks, almost running down a cyclist transporting baby parrots in individual cages.

Bombay is crammed with lodges and driving by in an auto-rickshaw I passed more than half a dozen. A lodge is most often a decrepit building, licked clean of paint and riddled with scars, scribbles and paan stains; stinking of urine. Sometimes known as a ‘chadar
badal
’, change the sheet, for only the top sheet was ever changed before a room was rented out again, a lodge was always named after a desirable quality: Happy Lodge, Lucky Lodge, Sweet Sleep Lodge. It charged scarcely a fee, because it offered no services and insisted on no rules. A sex worker I knew was drugged by a customer and when she regained consciousness found that she had been robbed of her wallet and cellphone. Another girl, I was told by her sister, had her tongue and nipples sliced off. Her customer removed the drawstring from her salwar and tied it around her neck, strangling her to death.

So the news that Leela had started working from a lodge signalled to me that she was desperate—willing to put her life
in danger to make ends meet. As we passed one seedy lodge after another, my worry found traction and grew.

At our destination, I followed Tinkoo up long flights of stairs; the walls on either side so narrow, they appeared to want to close in on us. On the third floor, in a low-ceilinged room sat an elderly man on a plastic garden chair before a plastic garden table, his face all but hidden by a baseball cap. He did not look up from his newspaper when he asked, ‘How much time?’

He did not look up, Tinkoo later said, because he was God-fearing and doing this because he had to, but he was so ashamed, he told his family he worked as a peon in a shoe factory, and he was so ashamed, he had sworn never to look customers in the eye.

‘We’ve come for someone; Leela is her name,’ Tinkoo said. ‘She has a booking in Room 7.’

‘Three hundred and fifty,’ replied the man, his eyes still averted. ‘Booking, no booking.’

I handed over the money.

Tinkoo laughed, ‘Don’t spend it on girls, uncle. Save some for your daughter’s school fees!’

Tinkoo led the way up another flight of stairs and then through a poky, ill-lit corridor. In a corner was a vending machine manned by a boy humming along to music on his cellphone.

Walking up to a door marked ‘7’ in white paint, Tinkoo rapped twice.

‘Leela,’ he called out, ‘Tinkoo bhai here.’

‘Leela?’ he raised his voice, ‘Tinkoo bhai. And Soniaji is with me.’

Confronted with silence Tinkoo tried the handle of the door. It opened easily, revealing a semi-dark room that cloyed with rum. Tinkoo’s shoes crunched down on shards of glass. The bed was undone.

‘She’s not here,’ he shrugged. ‘And some
bevda
,’ he sniffed, ‘will not find his way home.’

What made you think she would be here? I asked.

‘She’s been renting this room for some time. You didn’t know?’ He bared his teeth. ‘I thought you were sisters.’

For how long? I asked.

‘A few weeks. I don’t know exact. Life had become difficult for her, you know that. She wanted to earn enough to leave, to go someplace she could make money in peace; that also you know. Dubai probably she had in mind—all these girls have the same dream, it’s no secret! It used to be “Bombay meri jaan”. Now it’s “Dubai meri jaan”! She would bring kustomers back here.’

A pair of jeans I recognized as Leela’s hung from the back of a chair. Had she moved in?

Tinkoo nodded. ‘Cigrit?’

I shook my head.

‘You know that Apsaraji,’ he continued, lighting himself a collapsed bit of Gold Flake. ‘She could drive anyone crazy. Leela thinks Apsara stole from her. Otherwise, she said, where it went so quickly? How they fought! Like WWF wrestlers! If only I could have thrown some kachhas on them and pushed them into an
akhada
, what riches I would have made!’

I peeped into the bathroom. It was filthy. It stank of urine. A part of the floor had peeled back to reveal a layer of cement, chipped and cracked.

Tinkoo called out, ‘Take a look at this.’

He pointed to the tube light above the bed. ‘That’s where they place the camera,’ he said. ‘For films. What films? Not
Heer Ranjha
! It points direct on bed, see. There should be another one, on top of the window, for a panoramic view. Sometimes the girls know what’s going on and they go along with it. What choice do they have? They say, “If you give me a cut, then okay.” But mostly it’s done quietly. Someone hires the room for a half hour, he sets up his camera; when he returns to the room a week later he’s set. He has enough maal for ten films. He makes a thousand DVDs, sells them for fifty rupees outside the station. If he’s feeling generous he later puts it on the Internet for
everyone to enjoy free
mein
. It’s a booming bijniss I tell you. In fact, I’m considering it myself.’

Maybe she’s out with a customer, I said.

Tinkoo shrugged. ‘It doesn’t seem to me that this room has been used for some days. What kustomer can afford a woman for so long? No. She probably couldn’t pay her last bill and so she must have run, see how she left her clothes behind? So fast she must have run! By the way, you should know this, I’m on Yahoo. You know Yahoo? So for me getting into this bijniss won’t be a problem. Because I have an email, as I said. All I need is someone to invest in me, to believe in me. A few thousand, if someone has, that would be okay. Why a few thousand? Even if one thousand someone has, anyone, doesn’t have to be a friend of mine, can be a friend of a friend of mine, say a friend of Leela’s . . . Now if a friend of Leela’s were to offer me a thousand rupees towards my bijniss that would be okay with me.’

We left the lodge and I hailed another auto-rickshaw, following Tinkoo as he drove to Night Lovers. The board outside indicated that it was still closed and the red-bearded security guard who had, until so recently, impressed me with his fierce demeanour, now sat back on a chair with his legs propped against the gate, his expression one of boredom.

‘Sahib gaon
gaye
,’ he said.

We returned to Leela’s street. It was the start of the evening and her neighbours had thrown open their windows and cracked open their doors to welcome the cool air. On the broken concrete children made do: teenagers played cricket, boys tossed around a football, girls raced about on identical pink bicycles, the littlest ones stuck together, chattering of tea parties, kitty parties, their weddings. Their collective shouts and open laughter mingled with the evening’s smells—peanuts roasting on a charcoal fire, a half-dozen buffaloes harrumphing towards their
tabela
, depositing loads of grassy manure on their way.