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Sonia Faleiro is an award-winning reporter and the author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars (published by Hamish Hamilton — an imprint of Penguin), which was launched in New Delhi sometime back. Excerpts from an interview: Why did you get drawn to the world of dance bars? Dance bars represented everything I love and loathe about Mumbai. Young women faced with the bleakest future — in sex work, or marriage to a man their father owed money to — found economic independence and the dignity that accompanies it, in a dance bar. At the same time, this independence was short-lived — many women were considered old in their late twenties and shunted out. And although the girls were the source of the money and glamour that enabled the success of the ‘line’ (as it was referred to), they didn’t control it. Men — bar owners, politicians, cops, and gangsters — controlled both the bars and the women. I was attracted to these grim dualities and particularly to the tough survivors on whose backs the line flourished. Were you ever at any risk? I did most of my research at night, because that’s when the bars were at their busiest. And I’d travel to the distant suburbs, not just because Leela, the subject of Beautiful Thing, lived there, but because I found the clientele to be varied and, therefore, more colourful. Given that the dance bar was almost exclusively a playground for men, and that alcohol was considered the best accompaniment to watching the girls dance, I did find myself in situations that threatened to get out of hand. But they never did, because people knew I was with Leela, and because she had honoured me with her respect, they did so, too. You’ve said that you made friends with some of the dancers. Did their stories upset you? How did you sustain the friendship? It’s only natural to develop a friendship with people you spend a great deal of time with. And I did feel that my relationship with some of the women I interviewed, including Leela, was a friendship. At the same time, I was a reporter writing about their lives and it was important for me to maintain my objectivity. Was I sympathetic and deeply moved by what they told me? Did I wish I could have changed their life for the better? Absolutely. Did I let it affect what I wrote? I hope not. Ultimately though, my access to these women was conditional to my acceptance by Leela and a part of it. Once my relationship with Leela came to its natural conclusion, so did all the other relationships. Did the bar girls and owners realise that you were researching a book and now that the book is published, any reactions from those quarters? They were aware that I was writing a book, and Leela had read a part of an early draft. What is the role of the underworld in the existence of these Mumbai dance bars? The relationship between dance bars and the gangs that would go on to become a part of the underworld developed from the needs of Prohibition. When Prohibition was relaxed in the 1960s and ‘permit rooms’ became popular, the owners of these places began to face demands from the gangs that had grown powerful from bootlegging. If they didn’t pay up, they were attacked. When ‘permit rooms’ were converted into dance bars and proved to be a success, the gangs wanted to own the dance bars in part or full. Dance bars were also where gangsters would meet, spend money, start relationships, and recruit young men to work for them. Over time, bar dancers became an important source of information for the police, who would recruit and pay them for information on gangs. It is said that there is a thin line between dance bars and rackets of all hues. Comment. No business in Mumbai, whether a chaat stall or a five-star hotel, can run without involvement in a ‘racket.’ Businesses may want to stay honest but they cannot because they’re regularly called upon to pay off people with power whether politicians or the police. Those who cannot pay perform favours. Those who cannot or will not do either find themselves out of business. That is the nature of business in Mumbai, perhaps India. Dance bars attracted greater scrutiny than most for two reasons: first, many were owned or co-owned by politicians, cops and the underworld. Second, their business was the business of women, and anything in India that involves young women becomes a subject for discussion and possibly condemnation by the moral police. If the dance bars were involved in any rackets it was because of the active encouragement or involvement of people with political power. What is the behind-the-scenes reality of the lives of these young dancers? It’s very different from the public presumption of a life full of glamour and easy money. It was a hard life, a tough life, and few women came out of it unscathed. Bar owners encouraged an addiction to alcohol to keep the women pliable, customers professed their love only to rob them of their earnings, their family would profit off them but have nothing to do with them once they retired because they were deemed fallen women, and when their children realised how they made money they despised them. Worst of all, the assumption that they were no better than prostitutes destroyed any chance they might have had of leaving the line through marriage. Those who couldn’t leave the line ended up in brothels or on the street. As a writer, was it exhausting for you to have researched and written this book? Well, it took me five years, three of which were spent in research, so the answer is yes! It was exhausting, but also exhilarating. The dance bar is a complex, hierarchical world with distinct rules and its own spin on Bambaiya talk; it’s mesmerising but also deeply troubling. It was a privilege to be part of this world and it changed me and the focus of my writing career significantly. Will your next book be a sequel to this one? I’m writing another Mumbai book, also narrative non-fiction. But it’s going to be completely different from Beautiful Thing.
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