Vadodara’s nautch girls call a pricey tune

VADODARA, DECEMBER 30: Teenager Julie drove all those present at the farm house dance party crazy with her sinuous dancing. Bela's every h...

VADODARA, DECEMBER 30: Teenager Julie drove all those present at the farm house dance party crazy with her sinuous dancing. Bela’s every hour is booked till January 1 morning. Lily’s and Seema’s rates have gone up three fold. The nautch girls who dance in musical’ parties are in very short supply in Vadodara. And the heat of the new millennium celebrations is fast reaching flashpoint.

Though everything about such celebrations is being kept secret, detailed talks with the organisers of such programmes — there are about 10 in the city — reveal that the number of dancing girls has shot up like never before. But not enough to meet the skyrocketing demand.

“People are going crazy. They want to celebrate the next couple of days (mainly nights) in a big way. While the rich and influential have already started holding many small dancing parties in the farm houses located around the city, the ones who are shy’ plan to hold simple musical parties with only the best’ dancers on the stage (and not on the floor),” says a teenaged nautch girl from the city’s Haathikhana area.

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A man from the same area who arranges such parties says there are going to be about 100 such dance parties led by nautch girls in the district. Each of the 30 to 40 girls has three or more nights already booked.

Their night begins around 9 pm and continues till dawn. By the end of it all, spirits are high and passions palpable. The music can be recorded numbers or played by live bands; the songs are usually risque, the atmosphere hot’. God save them, says the organiser, and highlights the difficulties in dancing amid revelry.

Bela, who is the said to be the best dancer and thus the most sought after currently, has no dates left for the next five days. She is not available for even Rs 10,000 an hour. Others are available at that price, but are not “very good dancers”, says another organiser who does not want to be named as there is much “cheap” talk associated with the dancing girls of Vadodara.

But one of the main organisers, Dipu Motiyani, is candid. “While there used to be only about a dozen dancing girls in and around the city in the past, many have come up now in preparation for the mega-millennium celebrations. They belong to two groups — the ones who only dance well and those who dance, and make all dance with them on the stage and floor. Their rates were about Rs 1,000 or Rs 2,000 till last month and their programmes mainly included family or marriage parties. None are available today even for Rs 10,000,” he says.

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Kishore Punjabi, another known organiser, says he is trying to bring some girls from other cities. His counterparts from Mumbai and Ahmedabad are also asking him to provide some dancing girls, he says. “Aisa saal jaisa koi saal nahin (this year’s celebrations are unprecedented),” he says.