Raise the bar, please

t is past three in the afternoon but for roommates Shefali and Gita, the morning has just begun. With their third roommate visiting with folks in Kolkata, both these transgenders (TGs) in their late 20s have the Dharavi chawl house to themselves. “If Shona was here by now there’d be agarbatti smoke all over after her loud puja,” laughs Gita. She puts on the TV. Images of a bar-girl swirling in a spangled ghagra come on.

“That is what is wrong with you mediawallahs. Why can’t you go to the small kholis in the slums and show how the people who dance at these bars live?” asks Shefali, who grabs the remote out of Gita’s hand and switching off the TV. “You want to show us dancing like this and being showered with money? That’s not our reality.” The smoke from Shefali’s cigarette does not seem to bother Rekha and Madonna who continue to smile beatifically from the posters on the wall.

Both these TGs used to dance at bars between Dahisar and Borivli and are bitter about what the post-2005 crackdown and the 2006 shut-down did to them. So how have they survived since? “You call this survival? We used to live in a flat and now we have a kholi. Even to afford a home in a halfway-decent chawl like this we have to resort to sex-work at the highway.”
While TGs and cross-dressers were on the lowest rung of the pecking order, they were the ones who were worst-hit by the dance bar ban.
dna attended an evening meeting on HIV awareness of TGs, cross-dressers and hijras at the Humsafar Trust, Kalina where talk quickly veered to the SC verdict declaring the Maharashtra government dance-bar shut-down illegal. “Despite this ruling, RR (Patil) saying he will not allow dance bars to re-open. We hope they do. It will bring respite to many like me who were pushed into a hellish life of sex-work,” said TG Urmi Jadhav, 35, a leader  amidst the community. “While at work, on good days we would make Rs2,500-3,000 in collections at the bar at Borivli I used to dance at,” she said proudly showing off her photographs. “The whole world knows that we TGs can give any woman a run for her money when it comes to dancing.”

Urmi’s eyes lit up when talking about the past. “The Annas (managers at the dance-bars) would think we were lucky for dhanda and ensure that of the 15-20 girls at least one or two were TG or cross dressers. We would even be shifted from one bar to another if the girls were fewer and the clients more. Despite cramped make-up rooms where we dressed up before going to dance, the fear of the police raids and the tiring routine which ended with homedrops only at 4 or 5 am, it was atleast one platform where we were not treated like freaks,” she pointed out. “Dancing in front of all those people in abandon used to make me feel whole and happy.”

A founder of Humsafar Trust, Ashok RowKavi too asked, “Unlike others who want funds and schemes, all they want is a chance to regain their lives and dignity as human beings.” According to him nearly 20% of the over 22,000 bar dancers in the nearly 1500 dance bars across the state were TGs and cross dressers. He recounts a fight at the Grant Road’s Topaz Bar that he was witness to between rivals out trying to woo a TG dancer.
But it wasn’t always nice. Kavi remembers attending distress calls from cross-dressers who faced violence from male clients when they realised that the woman they had taken back to a room for sex was actually a man. “There was a case of a cross-dresser who was attacked with a blade and his face covered with bruises.”
Kavi accuses RR Patil of double standards. “If he has the guts let him show the same aggression in coming out against cheer leaders at the cricket matches. There he knows he will be cut to size given his leader Sharad Pawar’s own cricket connection. Bar dancers seem like the most easy targets for a man who has a shameful record with both terrorism and crime.”

Lakshmi Tripathi, one of the most prominent voices of the TG community who is party to the petition against the shutdown feels the SC verdict brings hope to the community. “I used to dance at the Dhuru bar in Ulhasnagar till 1999. I know how desperate circumstances can be for TGs especially when they have to support old parents or fund siblings’ education. Why snatch their last hope?”