In the mood for LOVE

HE wasn’t himself tonight. Regulation khaki had traded places with crisp pleated trousers, a prosperous navy shirt, accessorised just so with belt-watch-shoes-cellphone. The man who sat silently through 35 minutes of Mukesh every day was in the mood for conversation. The dim street light couldn’t mask the swagger—my regular taxi driver was just another bar customer tonight.

Thanks to the multiple roles Mukul played—cabbie, regular patron and the neighbourhood cop’s collection man—he was an insider at more than half the dance bars in the city. The perfect guide, I surmised. One who would be able to point out all those Bangladeshi girls who, according to Righteous Ringmaster Patil, had danced their way into this business.

We were driving around with his friend and regular bar companion Raman, a quiet accountant from Nagpur. Worries about spending the night with two strangers, hopping from bar girl to bar girl, were mostly erased when I saw a copy of Taxman’s Income Tax Act and The CA magazine in the back seat of the Zen (Mukul rarely drives up to a dance bar in his taxi). But this isn’t about me. It’s the story of how the city’s underbelly is being slit wide open to feed the Moral Police.

EVERYONE knows him at this hot spot, a stone’s throw from the city’s first real mall. At Rs 45 lakh, New Year’s Eve collections here were second only to Topaz. Like always, he’s drinking Bacardi. The waiter holds a wedge of lime over the glass, pierces it with a stirrer. That’s enough, the taxi driver indicates, and tops his glass with soda.

Raman uses dance bars to network and swing deals, especially with officials from the Income Tax (IT) department. Last year, recounts the prim CA, one of his IT friends raided Topaz at 8 am and found a roomful of cash stacked to the ceiling.

The women wear translucent lehenga-cholis with intricate webs and stars that capture a galaxy of light when they twirl. It’s still early, so they practise their moves, catch up on each other’s lives and fine tune their come-hither looks in the mirror.

Later, even when they begin dancing for the splurgers (who are all above 40), their love affair with the looking glass continues. ‘‘Maine apne liye hotmail address book karvaya hai,’’ says Mukul. The taxi driver sits back, legs spread, and watches carefully over the top of his Bacardi.

THE Bangladeshis certainly aren’t coming here, so we hit the road. Every corner has a bar/restaurant option—I hadn’t realised they were all dance bars. Eight years ago, the action was restricted to a dozen places, now the city is dotted with 700 bars. We drive up to an established place, but Mukul starts, then suddenly steps on the gas. ‘‘I know those cops,’’ he says. ‘‘Let’s go elsewhere.’’

So we head to another one, just a lane away from my favourite pani puri outlet. Enroute we pass Drumbeat, owned by one of Mumbai’s top politicians.

The best girls, says Mukul, are from Agra and Jaipur. He’s involved with someone from Rajasthan, and recently spent nearly Rs 20,000 on her.

Once again, I’m the only woman around. Raman has observed that the men stop throwing money when they see me. So I opt for a beer and smile at them.

Outside the main dance hall, many girls sit on the floor in a cramped room, eating a basic dal-chawal dinner. It’s just another graveyard shift.

The waiters make Rs 300 a night, no salary just tips, get done at 3 am and usually hang around the neighbourhood until the buses and trains start plying at dawn.

Yeh Paisa Bolta Hai from 1989’s Kala Bazaar begins to play. ‘‘I think this is a dig at us,’’ laughs Raman. ‘‘It’s a favourite dance bar song,’’ adds the taxi driver.

The manager, a 49-year-old portly Marwari gent who looks like a cloth merchant, has been in this business for 20 years. He introduces me to two dancers—from Gujarat and Lucknow—who spin practised tales of three children and husbands who abandoned them. Yawn.

AT our next stop, in the same neighbourhood as August Kranti Maidan where Gandhiji launched the Quit India movement, the world suddenly changes. The women are clearly not from Agra or Jaipur. The ghagras don’t sparkle, their bodies are painfully thin, that blue lipstick couldn’t have cost more than 10 rupees. It’s Friday, but nobody’s inclined to go the Big Spender way.

I refuse to use the general restroom, so the waiter takes me past the kitchen up a dingy stairway with a ceiling so low I have to bend over double. Then I’m in the dressing room.

A teenage girl with an angelic face sits alone in a plain, muddy-pink ghaghra. She’s new here, hates dancing for a living but has to support a family. I ask for her story, she just smiles and says what’s the point. ‘‘Will they close the bars?’’ she wants to know.

A girl in maroon walks in abusing. Her choli rings, she whips out the cellphone, asks the caller why he hasn’t showed up in a week, then hangs up.

She looks at me, I smile and Anuja starts off: Kaun kehta hain ki kambakht mulakaat nahin hoti, mulakaat to roz hoti hain, par baat nahin hoti. I tell her I love her and she trips through her stash of poetry on hopeless passion and lonely souls. Even the new girl is smiling now.

Then it’s closing time, the room fills up with chattering, undressing women.

‘‘Why didn’t anyone tell me my bra was showing?’’

‘‘I have to hang up, I have no money on my phone.’’

‘‘See the marks from my tight bra. But can’t help it, I have such small breasts.’’

‘‘Where are you? Why do I hear music?’’

‘‘Hey, you’re wearing Mira’s outfit. Mira, did you lend it to her?’’

And then, the mother of all conversations. Will the bars close?

Suddenly I’m surrounded by agitated women, mostly sole earners, all thrusting their gutka-battered teeth in my face—and they’re flinging numbers my way. Children: 3; today’s wages: Rs 240; age when their father/mother died: 6, 3, 8; family members to support: 8; number of years in the profession: 9.

Suddenly, Bangladesh seems far away, I tell the taxi driver as he drops me home.