FLAVOURS L17
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM PHOTOGRAPHS
BY
AKSHAY MAHAJAN/PENGUIN
Girl interrupted: interrupted: Faleiro accompanied Leela to many places and familiarized herself with Leela’s neighbourhood, Mira Road. The photographs don’t show Leela, but were part of an accompanying project.
MUMBAI MULTIPLEX | SONIA FALEIRO
The ‘bijniss’ of being Leela Exclusive excerpts from the author’s new book about the hard lives that fuelled dance bars before they were closed
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hetty had booked them into a resort called River View (‘A Treat of a Retreat’). It had a swimming pool and a waterfall and offered a buffet of delicacies like pulao and mutton curry, golgappas and fountains of fresh, flavoured lassi. Leela would have been happy to be a tourist, her camera slung around her neck. She had no need, she said, to dance to the loud Bollywood music a DJ in a bandana and shades was spinning, to stand under the waterfall in her new swimsuit and black lace leggings, to mirror the couples entwined in the pool—their love, their lust, a tangible thing it was only natural to want for oneself. She could be happy, in a quiet, regular way, just being with Shetty. ‘If he’d only sat beside me . . .’ Leela sighed. ‘But he was happy with his blue films and beer.’ When Shetty called Leela out on her glum face, she said what she always said when she didn’t want to admit she felt low. ‘I’m expecting my MC,’ she lied. Shetty was disgusted. ‘Now you’re telling me,’ he roared. ‘What were you doing before you couldn’t open your damn mouth? And what should I do now? Make lollipops of your blood and sell them on the road!’ ‘Why are you talking to me like this?’ cried Leela. Then she shut up. Leela was feisty, but she knew Shetty had earned his reputation as a danger admi. He had cracked a bottle on a bar dancer’s head because she had refused to go
with a Chhota Shakeel man. He had then phoned the Chhota Shakeel man to apologize and to ask which lodge he should have the bleeding, wailing girl sent to. ‘It’s okay durrling, not to worry,’ consoled Leela quickly. ‘We can do it, no problem. You won’t even be able to tell.’ Shetty closed his eyes. ‘Fucking randi,’ he murmured. ‘You’re all the same you fucking whores. Lies, lies, nothing but lies.’ ‘How so?’ Leela pouted. ‘Is it my fault?’ ‘How much money did I put on your cell last week?’ Shetty veered off. ‘A thousand,’ admitted Leela in a small voice. ‘Then how come two days later when I asked, “Why aren’t you returning my calls?” why did you say “PS, balance khatam”? Why?’ Shetty leaned forward and gripped Leela’s hand. ‘Leela, tell me why.’ Leela blushed. That was an old trick of hers and she hated to be called out on it. She had a single phone but three SIM cards. Shetty thought she had just the one and as her ‘husband’ had promised to take care of her bills. On the first of every month, he would hand over the amount she asked for. But it must have occurred to him that most months he gave her as much as ten thousand rupees. Either Leela was spending the money ‘talking sexy’ to her customers, or she was spending it on ‘women’s things’—‘abortions and suchlike’. Which was it? Shetty said he didn’t care who
Leela fucked as long as he didn’t hear about it and lose face. Respect was more important to a man than money or power. It irked him though that despite all he did for her—he paid for her rent and phone, he bought her lunches and clothes, he even let Leela sweet-talk him into bringing kebabs for Apsara and hadn’t fled when she chewed his ear off about what a good wife Leela would make—even then, mind you, Leela took men when she felt like it. When Shetty was in a good mood he could laugh off Leela’s popularity, even feel some pride in it—everyone wanted what he had. He would remind himself that he had, after all, never hired a bar dancer he hadn’t test driven, front and back. But when he lost the battle to contain his fiery temper, as now, all he knew was that he was a catch. He was a well-settled family man who owned his own dance bar, made great money and would, any day now, get a designation in the Fight for Rights Bar Owners Association. He deserved better than a woman who would drop her knickers for a five hundred. Unable to articulate his frustration at the collapse of a break he had looked forward to all week, he wanted to lean over and slap Leela hard. He didn’t like beating women, Shetty said. That was no kalass, he was firm. He had slapped his wife once and the memory of that moment made him a smaller man in his
own eyes. But violence towards his bar dancers, even if it was only the implication of violence, was unavoidable. Otherwise they would think him soft and cheat him by meeting customers outside Night Lovers so they wouldn’t come in and the girls wouldn’t have to share their collection with Shetty. Violence then wasn’t about kalass, it was bijniss. And bijniss was the oil on which his life ran with the middle-class predictability and the comforting security he had, as a child, been taught to aspire to and which, as an adult he had attained with no small amount of perseverance. And just at this moment there was something about Leela, his damn bijniss that made Shetty want to cut her down to size. He told me what happened next: He wondered how old Leela was. She had been thirteen when they had met, thirteen when he pursued her, fourteen when she agreed to be with him. She had been fourteen when he started looking around, fifteen when he found another ‘wife’ in another dance bar, sixteen when Leela found out and confronted him. She had been sixteen when he swore to be faithful, sixteen when he broke his promise, sixteen when he started looking around again. He hadn’t kept track since. But she had been thirteen when she had first laughed at his jokes, thirteen when he had wanted her, thirteen when he swore he would never stop mak-
ing her laugh. At thirteen her teeth had been like a string of Hyderabadi pearls fit for the neck of a queen. Shetty smiled in recollection. Leela thought it was because he had forgiven her. ‘Get into your nightie!’ she said to herself. ‘Distract him duffer, quick! Make him forget this MC bijniss!’ Leela returned Shetty’s smile; Shetty’s face closed. Her teeth aren’t what they used to be, he thought. Of course, the TURN TO PAGE L18®