Behind the Scenes

Beautiful Thing is a well-researched book on girls who danced at these bars.

As the Information and Broadcasting Ministrys recent restrictions being attempted on the screening of Bigg Boss and Rakhi Ka Insaaf show,politicians have often felt the need to appear puritanical and frown upon things that make modest India uncomfortable but,like peepshows,these are secretly devoured by a wide audience. The banning of dance bars in 2005,by Maharashtras Congress-NCP regime,spearheaded by R.R. Patil (referred to as Fatso in Sonia Faleiros book) was part of such a puritanical drive,to prove,perhaps,that the government was driven by family values.

Beautiful Thing is a well-researched book on girls who danced at these bars. Told primarily through the spunky Leela from Meerut and her friend Priya,it is disturbing in parts and in the details it provides. The author has spent an admirable amount of time with the girls,watching them and the relationships they enter into. The books pace is good,and some interesting academic facts are thrown in. The tone is not overtly sympathetic,demeaning or patronising,except in the way some words are used: business is bijniss,lunch is lanch,booty is beauty and class is kalass. In an effort to go colloquial and provide a flavour of the milieu,a slight whiff of condescension comes in on behalf of the readers too,it would seem,who are assumed to have better pronunciation skills. Other than this,the approach to writing this book is something the author needs to be commended on.

The story of a poor girl being forced to sell her body to feed herself and her family is an old one. But these are real stories,told simply,and that holds your attention. Most of the girls have been brutalised by their relatives either raped or sold by them,and in one case,even raped by a son. The way in which Faleiro follows them in and out of the various phases of their lives makes this book worth going through.

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Dance bars harboured poor migrant girls and turned them into local stars for a night or two,until the ban in 2005 pushed them underground or into selling themselves,or into going to Dubai for brief stays with bhais.

Leela,with her pluck and fearless confrontation of situations,combined with a child-like innocence and longing for a husband and family,is the centrepiece of the tale. She symbolises exploitation and the horror of pushing on and finding peace and love in the instability and the filth that being a helpless girl in the big city involves. Faleiro has also dealt with the danger of sexually transmitted diseases in the lives of these girls.

Expletives come with their Hindi translations,smells and sights are described in great detail,but none of these is meant to titillate. The other big achievement of the book is that it shows how to document human life; it is not a one-stop interview but people tracked over time. Faleiro talks about how she sits in with the bar girls,as the kustomer takes them out for dinner,and conducts a proper interview.

There are nice nuggets,like the evocation of Umrao Jaan,the famed courtesan from Faizabad,and the social complexity of how the profession changed and the way it interfaced with the rest of the world. There is also a brief take (on page 21),which could have been longer,on the evolution of the dance bar from Kanjars,Nats and Kalbeliyas being inducted into the trade at the age of six or seven,their tamasha tradition being used to great effect,to women waiter service and finally to dance bars,which from 24 in 1984 grew to 1,500 in 2005.

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The ban did not improve the lives of the girls. On the contrary,it made their lives worse,and had the unintended consequence of pushing the entertainment at election rallies in Maharashtra,UP and Bihar to an entirely different level,further underlining the hypocrisy of our times.

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