It wasn't just dancers who were affected by the 2005 ban,
people whose lives revolved around them suffered too
There were several people who lost their earnings since 2005 after the Maharashtra home minister RR Patil enforced a ban on dance bars across the state. It wasn’t just the bar dancers but hawkers who would sell them fancy clothes and cosmetics also lost their source of income and returned to their native place. But now after the apex court order, they have started returning to Mumbai hoping to get jobs again.
Kokila Waghela, 58, brought up five children with the money she made from selling fancy dresses and special sarees designed for dancers and cosmetics in the several bars in Andheri.
“My younger son, Arun was one when my husband Manav left me around 20 years ago. Initially I sold clothes and cosmetics door to door but I did not earn much. One day I approached to bar owners of LP bar located in Andheri (east) to sell cosmetics and clothes to dancers. He also gave me other contacts of several other bars in the Andheri area,” said Waghela. She recalls receiving financial support from the dancers and bar owners when her younger daughter needed treatment fro typhoid. “They are god for me. I took the dress materials and sari from the shops on credit and after selling them to dancers, I would pay the shopkeepers. I earned Rs 300 to 400 every day,” said Waghela.
That money has helped her marry off her three daughters and get her younger son to complete his education till class 11. After dance bar closed in 2005, she lost her source of income and had to return to her native place in Surendra Nagar in Gujarat. “But when I saw on television four days ago that dance bar will again open in Mumbai, I immediately came to Mumbai and met bar owners. Mai matarani se prarthana karti hoon ki dance bar chaloo ho jaye jisase hame rozi roti mile (I am praying to the goddess to help us and get the dance bars to open again so we get our jobs back,” said Waghela’s elder daughter Jaya, 33, who returned with her mother to Mumbai. They now live in a 10x10 shanty in Shashtri nagar, Santa Cruz (west).
It was a similar situation for Venkatesh who now works at an orchestra bar in Andheri. “Our lives just collapsed after the ban. What I earned through tips at the bar supported my children’s English medium education. We would earn around 1,000 rupees tips every day. Once the bar shut down I was forced to move back to the village. After I returned, I worked on odd jobs for a year before getting the job of a waiter at this orchestra bar,” he says. Venkatsh’s children now study in a Marathi medium school and the family are living a hand to mouth existence.
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