Jabber Jockey: When a woman visits a dance bar

A very cerebrally-inclined aunt once told me that a child comes into this world head-first and hence that is the part we should use most. I, however believe in being feet-happy just as much. To me there is no better form of relaxation and appreciation of self other than dancing. It is the one thing that puts us in the league of apsaras even if we live our routine lives as ayaahs.

In 2005, a judgement shutting the business of dance bars brought many apsaras to their knees and to fill their stomachs they had to resort to the business of the flesh. A few ended their lives. Somewhere in the middle of all this I visited these now-villified dance bars. One was for a radio project where I was secretly informed that mujraas still happen in the gullies of Mumbai.

In the infamous lanes of the city, my team and I came before a partly ramshackled building. In a tiny little room they managed to fit in a tabla player, a harmonium player and another instrument that reminded me of the sarangi. And then they trooped in, the ladies. 

How decked up they were. Young ones, mature ones, Kohl-eyed ones, some chewing betel leaves, all clad in saris and fat brass-coloured ghungroos ringing to 'salaam-e-ishq' and 'dil cheez kya hai', the expected songs such settings. They told us their stories between glances and dances, most home-makers who would rush back to their husbands and kids on the last local after the patrons had thrown enough ten-rupee notes up into their ceiling fans, as was the custom. One could tell they lived hard lives but they were the ranis of the night and they knew it.

As we gazed at them in part wonder and fear, one of them pulled me up to dance! "What me? No, no!" I feebly protested. I was up like lightning though and was moving to Kajrare before I knew it, in my jeans and tee not half as glamorous as these Raat Ranis. "Kamar achcha hila leti ho", one of them teased. I laughed out loud. It wasn't a mujra house anymore. It was just a group of women dancing in a ten by ten room to bond and share stories. It was quite an experience!

A few years later we were taken to a more 'upmarket dance bar' to experience what the modern day dance bar had become post the shutdown. Heavy-security laden doors, a cash desk where the shaukeen Mister Moneybags converted big notes into tenors, plush seating, a live orchestra and of course, the apsaras. These were beautiful, seductive women, in expensive saris that could hook you with their gaze and a glimpse of their belly-button from a mile away. You would never mistake them for the ones that went home by train.

Rumour had it that one of them was a multi-millionaire and that she raked in a few lakhs every night!She wouldn't trade this life even with a top film starlet! They only moved from side to side and looked very happy, maybe flattered even, to see a bunch of women watching them. We were invited to dance here as well.

The seductresses seemed to suddenly turned into a giggling group of college girls on the dance floor!

Another other-world experience ended,one that was tainted with stories of bankrupt homes and husbands-lost to these maligned dance goddesses. So I asked Varsha Kale the president of the bar girls association what she would say to people who say these women corrupt our men and morals.

"Ask them where their husbands were for these past 8 years," she said.They still went out  and perhaps to worse places. The need is to examine ourselves and lives instead of putting the blame elsewhere. It would also help if we treat 'our men not as babes in the woods but as adults who should be able to make a decision and not let an experience become an addiction. Even better, next time insist on going along. Women can go and watch women dance too, you know? So that settles it then. I'm going with my man in tow the next time. I refuse to not be in charge of my life and blame it on a woman who dances, to make a living.

It's 2013 and the Supreme Court has instructed that the dance bars can come back. Somewhere Mr Patil is sharpening his moralistic claws to prevent this from happening. Somewhere lusty Mr Moneybags rejoices, somewhere the owner of a dance-bar turned snooker-den offers a puja and somewhere  a bar bala hopes as she polishes the beads of her ghungroos that its sound never again evokes in her feelings of shame and fear.