The strobe lights have been turned off. But that was a good two years ago. Now, Nikita and Kavita seem comfortable in the dim lights as they make their way around tables at a rundown bar in Ghatkopar, a Mumbai suburb. The bulb sways and you catch the loud make-up as Nikita, a waitress at the bar, pours out another peg for a drunk, leering customer. “I don’t like this job, but we have to earn our living,” says the 16-year-old. It is the job Nikita settled for after the Maharashtra government banned dance bars two years ago. The ban, thought to be tactless and insensitive, left an estimated 75,000 bar girls jobless. Some like Nikita and her aunt, 25-year-old Kavita, found jobs as waitresses and many others turned to prostitution. Activist Varsha Kale, who has been fighting for lifting the ban, says 26 bar dancers killed themselves after the ban. The number is misleading, she says, because some of the suicides weren’t recorded. The ban brought their world crashing down. Only a couple of years back, the girls took home a neat pay packet and also a substantial sum by way of tips — Nikita and Kavita talk of the high they got when currency notes were showered on them like confetti. Their job at dance bars meant late nights but it was fun. It meant dressing up, jewellery and some very filmy clothes — the girls lived it up. “Money kept coming in and we were well off,” says Kavita. The girls came home to good food and the younger children at home went to schools. But after the ban, everything changed — no films, no good food; just awful, miserable faces at home. “We used to get lavish tips from customers at the dance bars. But now, we hardly get tips,” says Nikita.Nikita’s mother, Pinky Madiwal, a 32-year-old former bar dancer, fears for her daughter’s safety. “Being a waitress is risky. Our customers at dance bars never misbehaved with us. We usually dance on a special platform or raised dais, at a good distance from the customers.” The catcalls and wolf whistles sometimes brought the house down, but the girls were safe. But it’s difficult being a waitress, says Kavita. “We have to be wary of unruly customers. It can be tough, waiting at a table and putting up with all the verbal and physical advances.” At 32, Pinky is already a grandmother. Her eldest daughter Neelu, 19, also a bar dancer, recently gave birth to a daughter. Pinky’s youngest daughter Neha, 11, is too young to work. “She used to go to school when we were dancing. But after the ban, we pulled her out of school,” says Pinky. “Those days were different. We earned anything between Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 a day. “In dance bars, for the kind of tips we got, the maximum we had to do was disclose our cell phone number. But as waitresses, for a Rs 100 tip, we have to put up with touchy-feely people. I don’t like it,” says Pinky. Nikita chips in. “Customers want to get naughty by giving a measly tip of Rs 10.”The lure of quick money has pushed some of the girls into the flesh trade. “At dance bars, it was entirely up to us if we wanted to go out with a customer. Now girls are forced into it as they don’t have an alternative,” says Pinky. Bar dancers have few alternatives. One of the reasons is that most of them are illiterate and poor. With huge families back home waiting for the girls to bring money, they are desperate enough to take on any job that comes their way. “It’s hard to shake off the stigma. People don’t give us jobs,” says Pinky. So distraught was Pinky that she decided to write a book on the pain and suffering she went through. The 400-page book, written in Hindi, talks about Pinky’s life as a bar girl and the bleak days after the ban. Pinky recalls that the ban was so sudden that they thought it would be a temporary phase and that it wouldn’t last more than a few days. For now, the case is still pending before the Supreme Court after the Bombay High Court lifted the ban last year.
