The Dying Of The Evening Stars III

The third in my series of profiles of former dance bar girls, for Tehelka. Here, first and second. Bawdy, Beautiful, Not Yet Damned. Sassy and streetsmart, Rekha’s flirtatious nature and bar girl charm set her apart in Mumbai’s bustle. On Dadar station’s bustling platform, a crowd gathers to watch a young woman blossoming in the attention of a photographer’s gaze. Rekha Chauhan’s bouncy ponytail is streaked red. A fondness for gold is evident in her six earrings, four bangles, nose ring and chain. Her stone-washed jeans have side slits; a frilly pink blouse is a girly complement to her suede satchel and beige block heels. The immediate effect is of carefree youth. A fresher, being photographed for the college magazine. Through her thickly fringed, almond shaped eyes, purple contact lenses bringing out her golden skin, Chauhan doesn’t see the world as a young woman exulting in adulthood. She has long been an adult, a dance bar girl who has used her body to feed her family of four since the age of 14. Clients have lavished her with notes from Rs 10 to Rs 100 for her sensuous cavorting to the seductive lyrics of Bollywood songs. She has slept with fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. And when she laughs, a glorious, raucous laugh, which dazzles men and cowers women, brightening an already sunny day, it isn’t hard to understand why her rate for a night of sex was Rs 4,000. At the Golden Goose beer bar opposite the station, Chauhan makes herself comfortable with a chilled Pepsi. Although the two floors of the bar are bereft of customers, the air conditioner is on maximum and the air heady with the aroma of fresh flowers. The walls are papered with mirrors; the sofas are an inviting brown felt. Girish Sawant, whose uncle owns the bar, says out of 80 girls, only 10 have chosen to stay on as waitresses after the ban on August 14. There are never more than a handful of customers to serve. Chauhan has dropped in to meet Sawant, an old friend. She teases him mercilessly; sometimes referring to him as her boyfriend, other times insisting he’s a gigolo. Sawant smiles. In the dance bar, Chauhan is in her element. Chauhan was born in a slum in Pathankot to a house cleaner and a clerk. Her father died when she was four, and her mother, now riddled with arthritis, devoted her days to scrubbing floors. At 10, Chauhan joined her mother at work. When she was 11, her only elder sibling died alongside her husband in a bus accident in Vaishnodevi. “We never saw their bodies,” says Chauhan. Her partially blind uncle, mother, and her sister’s children, Shubham and Arti, now aged eight and six respectively, lived with her in a one-room slum dwelling for which they struggled to pay a monthly rent of Rs 150. Then, Chauhan met Renu, a dance bar girl, who returned to the village from Mumbai several times a year, laden with cash and gifts. “No one knew that she worked in a bar,” smiles Chauhan. “They would have beaten her with shoes and thrown her out. But she talked to me woman to woman.” Beguiled by Renu’s tales of easy money, Chauhan planned her escape. Shortly after, on a chilly, pink dawn, after slipping into her cotton work dress and enclosing a Rs 20 note in her small palm, Chauhan readied to explore her options in life. Courtyards were being cleaned and water drawn. The air was filled with the wood smoke from cooking breakfasts. Chauhan ran to the railway station, and after frenetic enquiries boarded a train to Mumbai. In Dadar, a woman feigning concern whisked her off to a slum. “Bachpan se bahut tez hoon mein. Mujhe malum tha ki aurat mein kuch galat hain. Jaise woh chali gayi, mein nau do gyarah ho gayi,” says Chauhan, in her loud, high-pitched voice. (I have been a sharp one from childhood. I knew there was something wrong with the woman. As soon as she left I ran away.) There is no modulation, no pause in her conversation. She is clearly a girl in a hurry. After another ticketless ride on a local, Chauhan reached Valentina’s and fell into Renu’s arms. “I was exhausted and filthy. Renu ordered tea and bhajjiya pav for me. I cried while eating,” she recalls. Renu worked until 6am. Chauhan stood on the staircase, gaping. There were 25 girls gyrating in colourful lehenga-cholis to a room full of customers cradling glasses of whisky in one hand, money in the other. All night, the girls danced, some listlessly, others as though their life depended on it. Chauhan inhaled the stench of alcohol and lust. “I knew something was wrong,” she recalls. “I begged Renu, ‘please let me go home.”’ She replied, “Don’t you want to go home with money? Don’t be scared. Nothing bad happens here.’ She was right. What was the point of returning empty handed? After her shift she took me to her house. It was so nice. Bilkul family jaisa. (Just like family.) There was a TV and an inside latrine. That convinced me. Main sooli pe chadh gayee.” (I put my head in the noose.) Before the ban, Chauhan would send Rs 10,000 to her relatives in Pathankot every month. She spent Rs 2,000 on renting a one-room apartment in Thane. Another Rs 2,000 was spent on clothes — jeans and blouses — and accessories — handbags, high heeled shoes and flimsy gold jewellery. She hates wearing make-up, but won’t step out without her coloured lenses. She won’t spend money on food either, she says, because often after work, which she attended seven days a week from 3pm to 4 am, she was too tired to eat more than a buttered bun dipped in tea. “Most girls,” Chauhan confides, “eat tobacco to keep from feeling hungry. Because you can only dance on an empty stomach. But I never gave into the temptation.” How do you make more money, I ask. “What’s the technique?” “The technique,” she laughs, hoarsely, “is called sleeping with people. But if I do that now I won’t make even Rs 100.” Only 20, Chauhan is single and her career as a dance bar girl was short enough for her to change track. She has the cheery optimism of youth. Still, some trademarks, like stigmata, cannot be erased. Chauhan’s mannerisms, engrained by the wiles of her only profession, will betray her, no matter how far she runs or where she works. She loves the word m********, flirts with every man in the room, from the waiter to the photographer, and must touch the cheeks, arms or thighs of the person she talks to. “Look at you and me,” she says, pinching my thigh. “Is there a difference? If we sat on the train together, do you think people would know I was a dance bar girl? Behind me is a family waiting to be fed. Can people see that and understand how I feel? No, for I look hi-fi, like a tip-top college girl.” For her as with many other young dance bar girls, “hi-fi” embodies every aspiration of their lives. To be hi-fi is to be young, beautiful, sophisticated and rich. To maintain her tenuous links with hi-fi society Chauhan watches girls on trains, sneaks glances at collegians entwined with their boyfriends in dark corners. She wonders why she is considered “bad” and they “good.” She has already made the admission, with a loud laugh and no apologies, that she slept with men for money. To her, having sex for money is noble. She is doing it to support her family. Public displays of affection disgust her. “Is it right to kiss in public?” she asks shrilly. Although Chauhan remains convinced that the ban will be revoked, the reality suggests otherwise. “I saw a pregnant dance bar girl, waiting on the train for customers. And do you know she was going for Rs 50?” She talks of her friend Heena, promised Rs 500 for a night with a customer in a Dadar lodge. The girl hadn’t eaten for two days. Recounts Chauhan, “Before they began, she asked, ‘Seth paise do na’. (Seth, give me money). He said, ‘Ay raand apni aukad dikhayi kya? Pehle shot lagao phir dekhegi paisa’. (You have shown that you are a whore. Give me a shot and we’ll see about the money.) After he finished, he gave her Rs 100. She said, ‘Kya Seth, aapne paanch sau bola tha.’ Usne bola, ‘Ai, ek baar aur shot laga de dehta hoon paanch sau rupya.’ (She said, Seth you had promised Rs 500. He said, give me another shot and I will give you Rs 500.) This was the language he used. A former customer who respected her in the dance bar is treating her like this. Then he beat her.” It isn’t the prostitution that aggravates Chauhan, as much as the fall from grace. The dancers were the axis of the bar world. Their dance and beauty, their clothes, the banter used to beguile men into parting with their money, made them objects of desire. They could refuse proffered phone numbers at will; men would always return hoping for a date outside the bar. Without the image altering effects of strobe lights, bereft of their costumes and the security of the bar, the girls are no longer unattainable. They are hungry, desperate and, in Chauhan’s case, homeless. She has been evicted from her apartment, for not paying three months rent. She now lives with friends in Dombivali and says she will depend on the largesse of others. It won’t be long before the dance bars reopen. Irrespective of the tumult in her world, the 20-year-old from Pathankot will not be stymied. The girl who left studies at 10 is writing her autobiography. “It will have the real truth about me,” she says. At the train station, a drunk pushes into Chauhan as she is being photographed. The petite woman gives him a ferocious glare; her long fingers reach out to smack him. He stares at her, momentarily shocked. But Chauhan never waits to see the consequences of her actions. She is on the train; grinning cheekily, as those she has left behind, marvel at her audacity." Photo credit: Sanjiv Valsan.