Beautiful Thing Page 8

  Leela cut herself over Shetty because Shetty was married and would never leave his wife. Priya cut herself over Raj for, although he was single, he took her love for granted, regularly stealing money from her secret spot, under her parrot Chinki-tota’s food bowl. Every time he did so Priya cut herself in frustration.

  These were the men they hoped would marry them.

  ‘Do you know any bar dancers who are married?’ Leela asked. She was hoping to explain, but she was also asking with hope. ‘Properly married, the way you and your boyfriend will one day marry.’

  No, I admitted. I knew women like Leela, who were in relationships with married men. Or others who had a live-in boyfriend they claimed they hadn’t got around to marrying.

  ‘Exactly,’ sighed Leela. ‘Men sleep with us. They give us money. They even take us to hotils. But the moment we talk of a proper marriage, your kind of marriage, they run away.’

  ‘And it’s not because we’re used goods,’ said Priya firmly. ‘Is there a single girl in this day and age who can remain a virgin until she marries? It’s because of our reputation. Men hear of it and want us only for sex and for money.’

  Bar dancers did ‘marry’ though, as Priya and Raj had. Marriage to a bar dancer meant that she and her lover lived together in what they agreed was harmony. The bar dancer would refer to her lover as her husband. He would introduce her to his friends as their bhabi. Bhabi would fast on Karva Chauth; she wouldn’t eat until she had spied the moon through her dupatta.

  But a husband such as this was often no more loyal than a casual lover. At any time he would discard his ‘wife’ for the same reasons he had claimed to want her. For her beauty and her availability.

  Then there was the sort of man known in the code language of the dance bar, in English, as a ‘professional lover’. He pretended to fall in love with a bar dancer and after she reciprocated, beat her, cheated on her, stole her money and eventually ran away with whatever he could carry. He was such an experienced scamster, try as they might few bar dancers could elude a professional lover.

  But even when a man wanted to legally marry a bar dancer and in return asked only that she give up the line, even then, Leela was quick to inform me, the marriage wouldn’t work. ‘Such a man, what can he offer me?’ she said, glumly. ‘Okay, he’s decent, he has a good heart. But for sure he’s a simple-type who earns five thousand rupees a month, an amount he expects will buy me happiness. But how can it? Even if I tried to I couldn’t stop myself from wanting things, more things, bootiful things. Eventually I will return to the bar. And the moment I do so, the man I married will leave me.’

  And yet, knowing all of this, and not wanting to be deceived or abandoned, even then, neither Leela nor Priya would stay single.

  A man would protect them from other men. ‘Kustomers follow single girls home,’ said Leela. ‘And if she doesn’t let them in they threaten to tell the police, even her neighbours, what she is.’

  A man would protect them from themselves. You could never, ever, said Priya, underestimate what a relief it was to have someone waiting for you when you returned from the dance bar.

  ‘To be held,’ she said, ‘even in the arms of a thief, is worth something.’

  Most importantly, love was the only legitimate way out of the dance bar.

  Falling in love and legally marrying one’s beloved would absolve Leela and Priya of the loss of their virginity and of their sexual affairs. Marriage equalled redemption and would introduce them into respectable society. If she stayed single, Leela said, she would always remain in the eyes of the world a barwali. Years after she retired, she would be an object of suspicious derision.

  Leela and Priya wanted to be rescued through romantic love, even though they had chosen bar dancing for the independence it allowed them to enjoy; independence, in particular, from men. This was one of the great contradictions of the line and of bar dancers themselves.

  And so love was the constant in every conversation, an audience to every silence. Thoughts of love filled the emptiness of Priya’s evenings with Leela when the sun began its descent into the salt flats and with its vivid colours faded Priya and Leela’s ability to lie to one another. The idea of love was a comfort when Leela suspected Priya was thinking of where her life was headed, and she worried that hers was going the same place because unlike ‘good girls’ no ‘decent’ man would have her.

  Above all, the cutting was an expression of the girls’ fear of what would happen to them if they didn’t marry. If they didn’t marry, they would have to work. And if they couldn’t find a job outside the line they would have to remain in it. But not as bar dancers—soon they would be considered old—as madams.

  Dalali, pimping, was the natural next step because no one was better equipped to sell women, it was believed, than one who had been sold, or who had sold herself. And no one was exempt.

  Not the kaali-billis—the dark-skinned girls pejoratively referred to as black cats. Not the Bengalis who were ‘dirty’ or the ‘Telugus and Madrasis’ who had ‘paise ka lalach’—coveted money. Not even the optimists who tried to make do by embroidering kerchiefs their children would sell on the local trains, five in five different colours for ten rupees, or the ones who married with little or no discernment, believing that marriage alone was enough, even if it was to the sort of man of whom it could be said with frank acceptance of one’s fate, ‘sometimes he works and sometimes he does not,’ and ‘one day at work, ten days at home.’ And if one was in a nudging-winking sort of mood: ‘My mister didn’t go to work today. He drank too much deshi at our wedding.’

  ‘Oh, congratulations, when did you marry?’

  ‘Ten years ago!’

  Bar dancers like Leela and Priya hoped for a different destiny. A hensum man from a ‘good bijniss family’ would enter the bar, stop in his tracks in love with her and proclaim: ‘Your past is past!’ He would stretch his arms to show his love—this wide, okay wider, all right baba, as wide as the shores of Chowpatty beach! He would marry her in a temple and take her with him to bahar gaon, someplace special like ‘Yurope’ or Lundun. There she would eat fully well and nine months later promptly bear the first of many sons she would name not after her father who was inevitably a haramzada, bastard, but after her husband, who so far was not. Or, entranced by her beauty, that two-minute twirl she’d mastered, a famous Bollywood director would insist she star in his next film. He would promise in his angrezi accent, his new Mercedes SUV ki kasam, that the title would bear her name: Priya Ki Aayegi Baraat.

  I wondered what the friends were doing to ensure the happy ending they wanted and deserved. How did they plan to make love happen?

  ‘But love is destiny!’ exclaimed Priya, taken aback. ‘How can you predict when you will fall in love?’ She turned to Leela with a disdainful shrug. ‘Timepass!’

  She turned back to me. ‘You should just sit tight and wait for it to happen. Keep your mind fit with other things. Go shopping. See a good “fillum”. Soak your hair with Parachute and sit in the sun. Accha, do you know Leela’s paanwala is a part-time with the D Company? Oh and he has a white “pomerian”, Laloo P. Yadav! Laloo sits in his lap and eats meetha paan all day long, can you imagine it! If nothing, he will keep you entertained.’

  I have a boyfriend, I said.

  ‘Really!’ Priya said. ‘Is he hensum?’

  Very, I said of the man I would marry.

  She assessed me.

  Was I the sort of girl who could rig herself a setting? Sure I was hi-fi. Smartish in my jeans and silver watch. Skinny. But was I even wearing the right sort of bra? The pointy-paddy type that should draw attention down there?

  She leaned forward to investigate.

  And was that Vaseline on my lips?

  Vaseline!

  Priya sat back, flummoxed. Stepping out of the house with Vaseline only, imagine it! Let me tell you something, men want better than real life.

  She decided to settle the question. ‘Are you carrying a foto of him?�
�� she asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Not even on your phone?’

  I shrugged.

  That settled it for Priya. A bored expression washed over her face. She ran her little pink tongue over those magnificent pearls searching for cavities that couldn’t possibly exist.

  Turning to Leela, she changed the subject.

  { 7 }

  ‘I too love you, janu!’

  To take her mind off Raj, Priya became exclusive with one of her customers—a forty-five-year-old wine shop proprietor who lived in Mira Road with his wife, son, motorbike and an Alsatian he called Tiger.

  Since Priya was a ‘booty above average’, explained Leela to me, she could enjoy dozens of lunches and dinners and was entitled to significant presents before it would be considered appropriate for the customer to introduce the possibility of sex with her into their conversations.

  Sure enough, Priya reported that her customer was a generous man. Early on he’d slipped her a plastic packet, inside which was a bundle of one hundred rupee notes tied with string. ‘He had no hesitation,’ recounted Priya. ‘Ration, kapda, shopping; whatever I wanted he said I could have. I had only to ask.’

  I asked Priya if she would introduce me. Although I’d met a couple of Leela’s customers and seen others outside Night Lovers, she always brushed off my attempts to speak to them at length. This was bijniss, she said, best not to get involved. I thought Leela meant it was her business and I should stay out of that part of her life. But I soon wondered if her reluctance stemmed from the fact that she didn’t wish to spend any more time with customers than was necessary, or lucrative.

  Leela’s disdain for her customers was clear to them. When I attempted small talk, these men, often middle-aged, and seemingly educated and employed, would answer politely enough. But as soon as Leela joined the conversation, they lost all confidence. One got so nervous he began to answer my questions in monosyllables of ‘Ji’. Yes.

  As in, how long have you known Leela?

  ‘Ji.’

  How often do you come here?

  ‘Ji.’

  Although Leela exercised every nakhra she had acquired through experience and copied from films, she dropped all pretences once she was sure a customer had fallen for her. Then it was for him to pursue her, for him to keep her happy. And if he didn’t, well then, someone else would. Someone would always be willing to pay for Leela’s attention, Leela said. To give her money even if it was money only for a smile.

  ‘They think I dance for them,’ she would say. ‘But really, they dance for me.’

  Leela was immovable on the subject and so I thought I would try my luck with Priya.

  To my great surprise, she acquiesced. ‘Why not?’ she shrugged. ‘Come eat with us at Pure Wedge. But don’t you bring your notebook-pencil. Kustomer comes from a good family.’

  The manager of Pure Vegetarian didn’t recognize me. He had, after all, been in a drunken stupor when we first met. He nodded briefly as I walked past him towards Priya, who was seated, strategically, under the air conditioning.

  Priya’s customer reminded me of a kindly uncle—he was short, fat and worried-looking. He wore glasses with old-fashioned, round frames and from his neck hung a gold pendant in the shape of an ‘Om’.

  I could imagine what was going through his mind—did all booties come with as much baggage as Priya? She must talk incessantly about herself, I thought with a smile. About Leela, and, mercilessly, about Raj. She had taken that first gift of money as indication that the customer’s wallet was bottomless and I imagined she inserted a demand for a gift or a shopping treat into every conversation. If the customer demurred, she would caress his face and murmur, ‘Janu, you know at night I dream only of you.’

  His resistance would melt quickly.

  By now even I knew Priya’s lines and I would sometimes wonder how any man could fall for them—they were so clearly filched from the Bollywood films she favoured. But these admittedly disloyal thoughts evaporated when I saw her. Then I understood what Rumi had warned of, when he spoke of the intoxicating power of beauty.

  Priya’s customer stood up; he brought his hands together in a polite namaste.

  ‘My friend,’ said Priya with a smirk.

  ‘My kustomer,’ she said to me, jabbing in his direction.

  To thank Priya for doing me this favour I had worn make-up. And whatever little jewellery I possessed. This pleased Priya, who was a natural aesthete, and she took me by my hand and made me sit beside her. ‘You’re looking smart,’ she said, kindly.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the customer politely. ‘Just like Abu Salem’s girl.’

  Abu Salem was one of the underworld’s most dreaded gangsters. His girlfriend, Monica Bedi, had been a B-grade actress before she gave up her career to live with him. Later that year they would be extradited from Portugal and jailed.

  ‘Like you know Abu Salem,’ Priya sneered. ‘Or Monica! What do you know of Monica Bedi? As if you know anyone!’

  ‘Nothing,’ agreed the customer hastily. ‘No one. It’s just you said Soniaji was looking smart-si, no? I agree!’

  ‘And the best comparison you could come up with was Monica Bedi? Are you trying to make insult of my friend?’

  ‘No! No! It’s just that . . .’ the customer sat back with a thump. He began to nod his head like a helpless pendulum, ‘Chalega, hahn,’ he surrendered, lapsing into silence.

  I’m not offended, I said. I’m sure Monica is lovely.

  ‘Loverly-shoverly,’ grumbled Priya. ‘She was in fillums; do you at least know that? What a chance she had yaar! And she gave it up to run off with a don. A donkey has more shit than that whore has brains! And what for did she do it all? The next time she’ll be in a fillum it will be a fillum on how she ended in lock-up!’

  A waiter with a creased shirt-front sidled up to us. Plucking a pen from behind his ear, he began to tap it impatiently against the grubby little notepad in his hand.

  Priya didn’t bother with the menu. ‘One jeera rice,’ she commanded. ‘One black dal. And palak paneer. Also raita. And naan, three piece hahn. And one sweet corn, hot-hot.’ She looked from her customer to me. ‘And you two, what will you two have?’

  At least Priya and her customer had one thing in common. They loved food. Priya wasn’t joking when she said her preferred fare was ‘wedge, non-wedge, Chinese, Mughlai, Punjabi and fish’. When the food arrived, the customer served himself first, tucked his elbows firmly into the table, and dived in. Neither he nor Priya spoke for the next twenty minutes.

  I’m interested in the lives of bar dancers, I finally said.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded the customer. ‘Priyaji told to me.’

  I don’t get a chance to speak with many customers.

  ‘Most are illiterate!’

  That’s why I wanted to meet you. Priya told me how articulate you are.

  The customer goggled.

  Priya shovelled rice into her mouth.

  How did you meet? I asked.

  ‘In Rassbery,’ replied the customer.

  ‘In Rassbery!’ Priya’s head shot up. ‘Is that all you can say?’

  ‘In Rassbery, last Saturday of two months ago, it was evening time around 9 p.m. You were wearing a pink lehenga-choli with a ribbon in your hair and kajal in your eyes and you did a solo to Mere hathon mein nau nau chudiyan hain for which I’d made a special request, and when I asked your name you said, “Aishwarya,” and when I said, “so bootiful you are,” and gave you five hundred rupees, you smiled at me.’

  ‘And then?’ said Priya, pleased.

  ‘Then I held out more money and when you took it from me I said, “Is your name Aishwarya because you look like Aishwarya Rai?” And you laughed and, oh, how happy that made me!’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I stayed and stayed, and I stayed until your manager sahib came up to me and said, “Sirji, why not return tomorrow? If we stay open a minute longer the ‘polis’ will knock for hafta.” So I lef
t. But I returned the next day, 3 p.m. sharp. I said to myself, I own my own “vine” shop right here on Mira Road and I have leased two more in Thane district. I work like a Bihari! Am I not entitled to some relaxation? So, no shop. I wore a new shirt, I rubbed some of my son’s hair cream on my head, I sprayed perfume under my arms and yes, Priya, I came to you.’

  ‘And again manager “aksed” you to leave because you were the last one sitting,’ crowed Priya.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted the customer. ‘I watched you from 3 p.m. until 3 a.m. I watched you even after you stopped dancing and I watched as you walked out of the door. Tell me, did you like me?’

  ‘Huh!’ Priya tossed her head. ‘Like I’m hungry for love!’

  ‘Did you like me?’

  ‘What makes you aks that? Did I let you touch my finger? Not even when you gave me money did I let you touch an inch of me.’

  ‘So? So, Priya?’

  There was something determined about the customer’s expression.

  Priya held his gaze for a couple of seconds and then, without blinking, showed her talent. Wiping her hand on a napkin, she reached across the table and began to caress the customer’s face. ‘Janu,’ she cooed. ‘Would I be sitting here if I didn’t love you? Would I be sitting here if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life eating from the same plate as you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Janu, are you trying to tear my heart into small-small pieces?’

  The customer waggled his hand. ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Chalo fine!’ Priya pushed her plate away. It was almost empty. ‘Since you doubt my love I have no reason to sit here. Come Sonia, come let’s go from here. Might as well throw myself into a well! Should I do that? No response! Okay, done! No, wait! See this knife? Watch me slit my throat with it! After all, what use do I have of a life in which I’m not loved?’

  She grabbed the knife in one hand, and my hand in the other, and made a great rustling show of getting up. Reluctantly, I followed.

  ‘No!’

  ‘No what?’