The surrealistic world of psychedelic lights, shimmering mirrors, genuflecting waiters and mind-numbing alcohol has suddenly crumbled into nothingness overnight. With the Maharashtra government banning dance bars in the state, the seductively swaying bar girls have been willy-nilly pushed into the darkness. Awadeesh Vyas takes a look at a nocturnal profession that was forced to fold up

A peculiar situation has arisen in some of the banks in Mumbai. The ten-rupee note that was much in demand here, till a few months ago, suddenly has few takers. These are banks in the vicinity of the erstwhile dance bars of the city where sozzled, besotted men showered dancing apsaras with this convenient promissory piece of paper. Ever since the government of Maharashtra banned dancing in these hubs of revelry, the once sought-after ten-rupee note has lost its nocturnal import and lies languishing in the cash counters, unwanted.

Also unwanted today are the twinkle-toed divas who had lured the moneyed pleasure-seekers into these bars. With the state’s deputy chief minister and home minister, R R Patil, playing spoilsport, an estimated 75,000 bar girls find themselves in a limbo. Jobless and disoriented. Once the cynosure of uncontrolled adulation, the girls are left with only memories.

Those were the glorious days when they created magic with their seductive sway, dancing to sizzling numbers from Hindi films. With an enticing ‘You are my Sonia’, they could make the pot-bellied income tax official or the bulbous-nosed underworld don feel he was Adonis personified. In their surrealistic world of psychedelic lights, shimmering mirrors, genuflecting waiters and mind-numbing alcohol, the curvaceous dance girls ruled supreme, twirling customers around their beringed fingers. With an impish smile, a toss of her tresses, a swirl of the skirt or a tantalising glimpse of a gyrating waist, a bar girl could make an inebriated man lay the world at her feet. As long as he showered her with notes she willingly deluded him into believing he was the only man she danced for. Ironically, foolishly, on the strength of his ten-rupee notes, the drunken sod believed it was he who was calling the shots. A make-belief world in which, both, the seductress and the seduced, happily lived out their illusions….

For instance, Sushma, an attractive 32-year-old, who danced in Falcon Bar in the red-light district of Mumbai, migrated here from Agra. But it wasn’t long before a rich businessman from Ahmedabad fell prey to her charms, made her more than financially comfortable, and even fathered two children – a daughter who is in the tenth standard and a son in the ninth. The children live in Agra with Sushma’s elder sister but Sushma flies down twice a month to meet them. A convenient arrangement that suits everybody.

Awadeesh Vyas is chief sub-editor, Navbharat Times, Mumbai.

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