Bye bye?
‘True fact,’ Sharma was saying. ‘Leela may want something else.’
He leaned back and, yawning, stretched his hands above his head. ‘Leela may want something else. But who will permit Leela what she wants?’
{ 7 }
‘Tell me, do you see it?’
Leela reminded me she was going abroad and asked if I would drive her to the airport. She was flying with Priya to Delhi and they would make their onward journey with a friend of Sharma’s, ‘to be safe’. She had no second thoughts, she said. Sharma had been trying to impress me into believing he was a big don. He was no Bada Don. He was a khabru, a cunt, a failed crossing away from being a chamar chor. Leela and Priya had saved his career! She knew the Sharmas of the world. They talked fast and loose. As though anyone could own her—her! Remember, she said gently, a bar dancer’s game is lootna, kustomer ko bewakuf banana. And a kustomer was any man she would meet, don’t take tension.
You’re not going to Night Lovers, I said. In Dubai they may do things differently.
‘Don’t worry,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll be in touch, God promise. Accha, I’ll send you a postcard. I’ll go to Wild Wadi and be mast enough for us both. I’ll go to Jumeirah Beach! I’ll do shopping, so much shopping I’ll do! I’ll eat gold!’
Okay, I said.
Leela shook her head as though to say, ‘Will you never learn?’
She held out her hand. ‘Come here. Look at me.’
I obliged.
Leela had lost weight, she was thinner than when we had first met. But she appeared small too, diminished.
‘Look properly,’ she insisted, standing still.
Leela patted her hair away from her face and flashed me a smile.
What am I looking for? I asked.
‘Fear,’ she said.
‘Tell me, do you see it?’
I didn’t have to think twice.
No, I said. I don’t think I ever have.
Acknowledgements
This is a work of non-fiction, researched and written over a period of five years. To understand the world of the bar dancers I conducted hundreds of interviews across Bombay. Among the people I met with were bar dancers, bar owners, customers, stewards, waiters, sex workers, hijras, brothel madams, gangsters, policemen of all ranks from the then commissioner of police to constables on the street, politicians, lawyers representing both the bar dancers and the bar owners in their lawsuit against the State of Maharashtra, NGO workers, media persons and the families of women working in the bar line. To protect the identity of the people involved, I have, with the exception of public figures, changed all names and identifying characteristics of people and places. While I was present for most of the events described in this book, some dialogue and characters were reconstructed.
I would like to dedicate this book to the people who gave me their time and shared with me their stories. This is for you. Thank you.
I consulted with numerous people during the writing of this book, and in particular I’d like to thank Kamlesh Singh, Deepak Rao, Deepti Priya Mehrotra, Manjit Singh Sethi, Laxminarayan Tripathi, Penny Richards, Ashish Khetan, Sandeep Pendse, Alok Gupta, Vikram Doctor and Veena Gowda. To Ravi Singh and Meru Gokhale—I couldn’t have asked for more involved and painstaking editors; thank you so much. To my early readers Ulrik McKnight, Chiki Sarkar and Amit Varma; to Prabha Desai and her indefatigable staff at the Sanmitra Trust (Goregaon and Malvani), to Nikita Lalwani, Ulla McKnight, Sanjiv Valsan and Negar Akhavi, my deepest thanks. To Shobhaa Dé, this was your idea: Thank you. Gregory David Roberts, thank you for your encouragement and support; it means so much. And to my agent Tracy Bohan at the Wylie Agency, for her enthusiasm and support, all my thanks.
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