Dancing in the dark

Kajol, who lived on the upscale Altamount Road, had never seen life in the raw. The actress, on the threshold of peak popularity, disguised herself as a boy — cap, loose shirt and baggy trousers — to explore the city’s red light area topped by Grant Road’s always jampacked Topaz bar. Once there, she was recognised by a strikingly attractive transvestite dancer. The title song of Baazigar came on, and the bar’s prime attraction performed for the unexpected guest in simulated slow motion, complete with hips moving at snail-speed and her golden wig tossed as if it had been edited for a shampoo commercial. Kajol wasn’t embarrassed. Quietly she remarked, “We get lakhs for doing this. These girls go back home with a few hundreds, night after night.” Before she was mobbed — Yeh Dillagi was showing at the Novelty cinema next door — we took to our heels. The scene returns today. The dancers will be back, to earn their hundreds. A few were reported to have made lakhs and crores. One became a chunky chapter in Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Lost and Found. Another was fictionalised powerfully by Tabu in Chandni Bar. As for the fate of thousands of others — following the enforced closure of beer dance bars, that was left to the imagination, or was occasionally reported in stories following police raids on clandestine pubs. “Four women and 30 clients arrested”, screamed headlines, only lately about a police swoop-down on the unfortunately named Lucky Bar. Now, the seven-year hitch is over. A thousand Chandni bar-like establishments need no longer be as bland as the idlis, tandoori cubes and assorted snacks they had to limit themselves to. Rightaway, beer and whisky-rum-vodka serving restaurants — featuring an array of Bollywood jhatka-inspired dancing girls — in Mumbai can re-open their pleasure gates. According to modest estimates, 75,000 young women had been rendered jobless by their ban, piloted by Maharashtra’s home minister R.R. Patil, compelling its movers and shakers to either subsist in abject poverty or to join the ranks of the HIV-endangered flesh trade, exclusively. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Bombay high court’s verdict to scrap the state government ban couldn’t have come a day sooner. In the recent environment of moral policing by the police, exemplified by top cop Vasant Dhoble’s alarming crusade on the city’s night life, the reversal of misfortune for the “beer bar girls” does indicate that here’s a remedial measure which could reduce the cheesier phenomenon of escort services, subterranean strip-tease joints, “friendship clubs” operated by codenames like Sweety, and massage parlours which offer the hilariously named “hand shake”. These have become as common as grocery stores, particularly in the fast-developing suburbs. Quite curiously, even leading newspapers which usually filter content, have no qualms about printing classified ads such as, “Dream Escorts by decent Hi-Fi Female Staff. All Mumbai any time, any place ” or “Azz Service Full relax by B’ful model 3, 5, 7-star ” phone numbers and contact person attached. Incidentally, these two ads are tame by comparison to quite a few which promise more tantalising encounters. And, of course, some specify that same-gender escorts are no problems either. C’est la vie, actually, every city has its sexual demographics. Mumbai has been designed down the millenniums by hypocritical rules and regulations. Take Falkland Road stretch of the infamous cages, flanked by stray licensed brothels lit up by red light bulbs. The illegal outnumb the legitimate — what sense did that make I say “did” only because the cages are being fast acquired by real estate developers, driving their madames and inmates to the city’s satellite townships. The relocation isn’t without its side-effects, since many have been left behind to fend for themselves, especially elderly women with adolescent children, now coerced into begging and petty crime. Tuesday’s Supreme Court judgment on the lifting of the bar ban is accompanied by caveats. Body exposure or wearing tight and provocative clothes, will not be permitted. Spectators will not be allowed to “shower money” on the dancers, and the dance floor will be fenced with a railing at the minimum distance of 10x12 feet from the closest seats. Now who is to check the wide spectrum of the beer barholics taking in after-office-hours white-collar workers, as well as the rougher crowd, many of whom were once said to belong to the underworld In any case, half a cure is way more realistic than complete prevention. From the traditional kotha culture of mujras to beer bars and then escort services, the city like all metropolises has evolved its sexual identity. Needless to emphasise, life has consistently imitated Bollywood’s flight into fiction. The iconic Pakeezah and Umrao Jaan are dream-like visions of the chaste kotha girl. Chandni Bar, despite its overstatement, morphing its heroine into a widow with political clout, did mirror the city’s answer to the boom in American pole-dances. And a behind-the-scenes look at massage parlours could be evidenced in Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl in Yellow Boots to a degree. The story of escort services and “friendship clubs”, however, remain unarticulated. Too hot to handle perhaps. After the seven-year clamp, it’s not as if there will be any let-up in the lives of the former or future beer bar dance girls. As Kajol said, “They merely earn hundreds, night after night.” And that will never change, come or go enlightened judgments.

The writer is a journalist, film critic and film director