Sonia Faleiro

This is the first in a series of profiles of former dance bar girls, which I'm writing for Tehelka. For those who read my earlier story on the suicides of Bilkish Sahu and Meena Ramu T., Lata's name will be familiar. She's Bilkish' best friend. The interview took place two days after Bilkish died, in a slum in Dahisar.

The Circus Girl Lost In A Dance Bar

"The rains have come to suburban Dahisar. It is not a pretty sight. The Ekta Nagar Cooperative Housing Society is a sewer of broken toys and rotting plastic bags. Forlorn one-room houses bob on this river of filth. But nothing seems to perturb Lata Raghavan Nair. Not the wet, not the cold, not the claustrophobia of her tiny home. Until a male photographer enters her door. Suddenly, the chatter stops, Nair grabs a towel and avoiding his eye, covers her slim shoulders. Kajal is coursing down her face; her lips are bruised with too many applications of hard lipstick. Her toenails, with its chipped blood-red polish, are submerged in the watery floor. The mattress is bloated; the shiny new television is silent.

Lata Raghavan Nair is a bar girl out of work in Mumbai. Her story is not about a dream gone sour. It’s about a dream that never took off. At 11, Nair was cooking and cleaning for her family of 10 in a village in Tellicherry, Kerala. Little surprise then, when the Big Top came by, she begged her parents to let her join them. “Join the circus!” screams Nair, imitating her mother. “Over my dead body!” She adds wryly, “Of course she didn’t want me to leave. If I did, she’d have to do some work.”

Nair knew she was uncared for. Baby girls, she’d been told, were a burden from birth to marriage, when a dowry of Rs 2 lakh was the norm. After she threatened to commit suicide, her parents reluctantly allowed her to leave. She became a trapeze artiste, travelling across the state in a bus, until she fell in love with a musician, got pregnant, became a wife and shortly thereafter was abandoned. She was 15. “I returned home with Bablu because he was retarded and I needed support bringing him up,” she says.

On her return, Nair realised her 14-year-old sister Shalini had been forced to take her place as the head of the workforce. On Shalini’s insistence, the girls stole their sister-in-law’s gold chain to buy train tickets to Mumbai. Once there, they spent days begging before a woman who organised girls for dance bars accosted them. “It was unreal,” recalls Nair. “The dark bar, all the girls jostling one another, trying to dance in the confusion.”

Nair looks you in the face. There is no self-pity as she evokes her reflection in the mirrors over those years. Dark cheeks pancaked white, thin lips plumped to absurd proportions with cheerful lipstick. And in the dressing room where the dancers relaxed between songs, Bablu toddling about, rummaging through plastic make-up boxes, playing amidst piles of sequinned saris and gaudy ghagra cholis. He sits beside her now, a listless 17-year-old vulnerable to fits, staring blankly into the distance as his mother talks.

In two months, Shalini’s luck changed. The bar owner, an unctuous man prone to safari shirts and tight blue jeans, asked her to marry him. They returned to Kerala and hosted a wedding to which everyone in the village was invited. Everyone but Lata and Bablu.

“She was younger than me,” says Nair wistfully. “And beautiful. Her luck was different. They didn’t invite me, and I didn’t ask.” Alone again, Nair worked all night at the bar and slept all day. She took Bablu everywhere.

Nair’s years of industry have acquired a kind of economy, plaintive or triumphal depending which way you look at it. From having place to call home, 17 years later, she now lives in one room for which she pays Rs 700 a month. In addition to this, she pays Rs 150 for water, Rs 300 for cable, Rs 300 for electricity. At 32, her wealth comprises of a few stainless steel utensils, a bloated mattress, four sets of clothing, two pairs of sandals, two bags, one TV set, three suitcases, a handful of idols, a mirror and a plastic drum, which serves as a water container and a seat. Her jewellery is a set of gold earrings and a gold watch, which no longer tells the time.

It has been a tough couple of weeks for Nair — even by the unforgiving calipers of her life. Apsara Bar, where she worked her 12-hour shifts has been shut down. A few nights earlier, her closest friend, a bar girl named Bilkish Sahu — Pinky to her clients — allegedly hanged herself. It was Nair who had persuaded Pinky to move from Dongri to Dahisar with her one-year-old son Suraj and husband, Raj Kishore Sahu, a drunk suffering from tb. They shared a common wall, meals, and life. Before the ban, the women left everyday at 12 pm and returned at 12 am. Always together, always hand in hand. Nair, confident and brash, her easy laughter nudging Pinky along. Nair suspects her friend was murdered by her sick husband.

Since the death, Nair hasn’t entered her home. Her days are a bleak carousel: trips to the police station; union meetings; and hours of waiting outside Apsara, which now opens irregularly. Her nights a borrowed reprieve: along with Bablu, she pleads for a sliver of space from a neighbour.

“Aren’t you scared?” she asks now, shivering. “This is the first time I’ve entered my room after Pinky died. I feel as though she’s still here. At other times I miss her so much, it makes me feel like I should kill myself too.”

But the spirit of the 11-year old circus girl is difficult to extinguish. It flips the conversation nimbly to the joys of Nair’s life. On good days, she says, she used to earn up to Rs 1,000 a night in tips — even when she switched to plain waitressing seven years ago. That’s Rs 30,000 a month she has nothing to show for. “All gone,” she says merrily. “I like eating well. Chicken, mutton and fish. I used to cook good food every day. Much better than Pinky. She was poor. We’d eat together, me, Bablu, Pinky, Suraj; even her husband would eat with us sometimes. If I was too tired too cook I’d order from a restaurant. Chinese and kebabs.”

Spending obviously equates self-esteem for Nair. She and Bablu often buy balcony tickets and watch Hindi films together, munching popcorn. Apart from this, she spends money on tobacco. On beers, which she drinks alone, after work. And on Bablu’s medicines — Rs 300 a month, not including doctor’s visits. Once, she used to spend on his schooling, but no more. “No one will have him,” she says. “He’s too old. Someone has to stay with me,” she adds, a poignant afterthought.

Despite her generosities, Nair had saved Rs 40,000 over the years. Her retirement money, she says; because after all, how long can you serve whisky and beguile customers with flattering conversation? She approached her boss, Bobby Seth for advice. “Don’t trust private banks,” he warned. “Come with me, I’ll open an account for you in the State Bank of India.” When they reached the bank, Bobby asked her to run an errand, which she dutifully did. They were outside the bar; she was no longer answerable to him. But Nair hurried, nevertheless. When she returned, Bobby said a policeman had harassed him. He claimed he bribed him with her money.

Nair can no longer pretend. Tears course down her cheeks. Gone is the zestful raconteur, the ham artist imitating mother, the grieving friend. In its place is plain despair. “That was my life’s savings. I’ll never see it again.”

This is the worst it’s ever been. Since the ban, Nair often gets tips of no more than Rs 10. The bar owner feels no obligation to make up the deficit. “There are 50 girls crowding around two or three men because all the regulars are too scared of the raids to visit us anymore,” she says disgusted. “How will anyone make any money?” She haunts Bobby Seth’s house. “But no matter what time I go or call, he’s always sleeping. He keeps saying, ‘Come back later.’ But there’s no money to pay the rent now. And no work either.”

And so here is the sum of Lata Raghavan Nair’s life. She came to Mumbai on her sister’s insistence, but was left behind to cull an existence in a slum, while her sister returned to Kerala to be a homemaker. Men are blind to the little circus artist. They only see an aging bar girl. “They ask for things,” she says, waving her hands dismissively. “What’s the point of telling you what? I hardly pay attention. I had a part to play. I would tease them into buying me whisky and beer and biryani. It would go on their tab, which made the boss happy. Then I would pretend to pour some RC (Royal Challenge whisky) in my glass, but actually I would be drinking water all evening!”

She cannot return home because of her reputation. Though her uncle who owns fours dance bars in Mumbai is considered the family’s big success. At work she is constantly surrounded by dozens of girls in a similar situation — each dancing her heart out or serving alcohol and snacks until their feet ache with weariness. But she has just one friend. And now that friend is dead.

And so Nair sits in her room, surrounded by the debris of her life, staring at the shiny television set she can no longer afford to watch because electricity costs money she doesn’t have. Watching her, it appears at moments that she cannot breathe, that thoughts will not form. All around — as the rain falls, neighbours bustle, washing clothes, cooking meals, tending to infants, screaming across the narrow ribbon of corridor that denies all privacy — there is life. But Nair’s world is still.

“It’s the acting,” says Nair, her eyes narrowing. “You need it to survive.” Survive. That’s what she’ll do now that the customers are gone, her best friend is gone and she doesn’t know how her next meal will come."

Labels: Profiles

Top journalism.

Sonia - the time out column that never was, Mumait khan and now this ...you're giving suketu mehta a run for his money...
Look forward to reading lots more

Great writing

What comes through is the raw emotion, pain and despair of another human being. Your writing reflects a genuine empathy for the dispossessed so rare in Indian media and its readers. Simple, unselfconscious, self effacing, unpretentious writing that allows the real story to make an impact. More stories please and who knows may be you can change the world. Keep trying.

Superb writing. Raw, powerful, and very moving.

You have outstanding professional courage and tremendous talent.

hey, is there anyway she will take help financially?

brilliant journalism notwithstanding, this woman needs help..

sad:-(

Sonia-
Is there any kind of organized help planned for these bar girls.. Your story really struck a chord.. Is there anyway your readers can help this person?

Priya

Sonia-- I discovered your blog today; excellent and evocative writing.

This made me very very sad. And I find it fucking disgusting that people are commenting on how good the story was, and how you are giving suketu mehta (who the fuck is he ?) "a run for his money", instead of empathizing with these women.
I hate this world, and the people that inhabit it.

I read the third post first... this one was even more sad... maybe cos she has no other way to go and the retarded child. DAMN the politicians....

Hi! Simply moving! The write-up indeed struck a chord! And am sure I am not the only one. I sincerely hope that this article has hit a mainstream publication so the luckier or the blessed lot may read it and actually take some proactive steps! We, the so called rising educated and privileged citizens of India are so engrossed in ourselves that there is this general apathy towards everything except acquiring wealth! While doing my masters, I used to work for this NGO caring for abadoned animals! Wonder why I failed to see the misery of fellow human beings who could have used some help however small it may be!

Hey Sonia,

Great article! All the best :-)

Hey Sonia,

Great article. Keep up the good work :-)

Discovered your blog by chance. Your brilliant writing skill makes one re-live the entire situation piece by piece. Kudos to it! Would defenitely come for more

This is an incredibly touching true story ! It has nearly brought tears to my eyes... Sonia I would like to make a very small contribution to this lady, this is not a publicity stunt...please advise on any way I can send my contribution across.