Bar, Bar Dekho....

 Blogdosts, I am off for a week.... wedding in London, and then on to Rome and Florence to say hello to Michelangelo!

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This appeared in Mumbai Mirror...

                                       Bar, Bar Dekho….

Damn! One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t make it to the notorious Deepa Bar at Vile Parle when it was still throbbing. Who knows? I might have run into several familiar faces – ministerlog, MLAs, bureaucrats, municipal corporators, cops… all upright people and model citizens …. the very people who went purple in the face demanding a ban on bar girls swaying seductively to dhinchak Bollywood hits, while these men ogled, gawked, leched and showered notes on them. The point some of our commentators are missing in this sordid saga is the politics behind the ban.  Who were the patrons? Investors? Black mailers? Brokers? Pimps and agents of the dancers? They were mostly local politicians working hand-in-glove with cops and dodgy bar owners. The girls were a shade better off than sex workers, in that, they were supposed to have a choice when it came to bedding their admirers. Perhaps, this was so in theory. But the tragic truth is different. The girls were bullied and bull dozed by the men who ran the show. They had to pay fat commissions to several go betweens. Even their tips had to be distributed across the board. As for the money dancers had to invest in costumes, accessories and make-up, let’s say that took away another hefty chunk of their earnings. And remember, Not every bar girl became a Sweety or Tarannum – better known as the Crorepati Dancer.

I was lucky enough to visit Topaz at the time it was at its hottest. There were approximately ten of us in the group. We were ushered upstairs and led to our tables. The girls looked intensely bored and listless. They refused to make eye contact with our group ( no high rollers here…. just tight fisted honchos) and spent most of their time on the tiny dance floor gazing at their own reflections in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors behind the stage. The other tables were occupied by beer guzzling , pot bellied fellows who could have been 1) small time gangsters 2) big time gangsters 3) dubious neta types. There was one lone chap weeping into his whiskey and trying hard to attract the attention of one particular dancer.The waiter I asked, said the sad sack customer was in love with the girl and came there every evening in the hope she’d fall in love with him , too. This hopeless love of his cost him a lot of money. But who can argue with an aashique?

The Topaz girls were top class and  bore a strong resemblance to Bollywood stars. Their dancing skills were superb, and so was their styling. In fact, most of them were far more attractive than a lot of  successful movie stars. And yet, they were here – gyrating in a garish bar, being hounded and chased by creepos… and finally rendered jobless by a nasty piece of legislation. While the heroines they mimicked (and even surpassed) were up there, earning millions performing the same bump-and-grind routine on screen.Heroines had respectability even as Item Girls! While the Sweetys were forced to struggle night after night, and finally rendered kadka by the very people who exploited them. Some 50 to 60 thousand women lost their livelihood overnight.

The move against Dance Bars had nothing to do with public morality. The decision was a vindictive one.  It had to do with one set of politicians fixing upstart rivals. It was about dividing the spoils of this lucrative business. And playing up to popular sentiments of the time. Political nobodies shot to fame overnight, posing as upholders  of  collective virtue. Ministers who patronized these bars and hired the dancers for private parties, suddenly started to talk like saints determined to clean up a dirty city. They forgot that they had encouraged the dance bar trade in the first place. That some of the girls ‘belonged’ to them and were their mistresses and ‘keeps’. For eight years, the Maharashtra Government tried in vain to hoodwink citizens into believing the biggest problem in the State had to do with a bunch of  beautiful ‘things’ ( thank you, Sonia)  dancing sensuously in darkened bars. Cops armed with hockey sticks became a symbol of official oppression. The girls who could flee and resume abandoned careers did so in Dubai, Singapore, London. The others starved or turned to prostitution. The broke State lost 3000 crores worth of revenue.Now the same squeaky clean ministers have egg all over their faces.The Supreme Court won the war that ought to have been fought by ordinary Mumbaikars. But Mumbai chose silence. And allowed a hockey stick to subdue its spirit. Shame!

Glad those lovely ladies have got their groove back! Can’t wait to go back to Topaz and cheer them on…

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This appeared in Bombay Times....

                                   How I love the word ‘Doobara’…

There are several desi words that I challenge anyone to translate accurately. Think about it. Can ‘Bindaas’ or ‘Jhakaas’ survive transliteration? Try it for yourself - sound effects and all. Try doing the same with ‘Maar dalaa’ as expressed by the matchless Madhuri in ‘Devdas’. What will you say  -  “He killed me?” Yuck! That’s the power of our slang. It conveys far more and is much richer than its Angrezi equivalents. Take a simple word like ‘Doobara’. To start with, it’s musical. And more importantly, it has a certain emotive resonance that defies deconstruction . ‘Doobara’ conveys longing and nostalgia. When someone falls in love ‘doobara’ it carries more weight than ‘pehla, pehla pyaar’. When a man turns around to look at a woman ‘doobara’, it’s a bigger compliment than a one off  stare. And when an absconding lover makes promises of eternal commitment ‘doobara’ – you still fall for it! It’s not just the repeat value of a pleasant experience… it’s not nostalgia alone… and it certainly isn’t habit or familiarity that makes ‘doobara’ so irresistible. The only thing you cannot do ‘doobara’ is die. Which is also why we are so attracted to and fascinated by death.

 Ask yourself – and be completely honest – what is the one thing in your life you’d like to indulge in ‘doobara’.  The answer could surprise / shock you.Most young women I spoke to said they would like to give their first (and most passionate relationship ) a second go. The men were less forthcoming and generally linked their ‘doobara’ moment to some sport or the other (bores!).

Interestingly enough, in the world of bhais and gangsters, there is no such thing called ‘doobara’. And it’s that finality which makes these men so lethally attractive. The bullet has to find it’s mark the first time… or else. The woman has to succumb the first time, or else. The trusted aide has to step aside when asked, or else. Bullets are precious. They cannot be wasted ‘doobara’. If anything, they have more value than the life of the poor moll…

Bollywood has an insatiable appetite for revisiting ‘Bhai-land’. And audiences, too, can’t seem to get enough of that dangerous decade (‘80’s), when the Bhais called the shots in showbiz, literally and figuratively. It’s amazing how eccentrically and erratically the film industry in Mumbai functioned at the time. And how top stars, producers, directors and starlets were compelled to  play ball with shadowy figures, who were often just sinister voices on the phone. Despite daily threats, despite hefty extortions, despite kidnappings and murders, movies got made, and careers flourished. Those untold stories, of mid-night calls, ransom notes, early morning knocks on the door, and  direct orders to comply or face consequences, need to be chronicled. They are menacing enough to fry brains and freeze blood even today. And yet, more than three decades down the line, nobody wants to talk about that sinister era. Such is the fear psychosis. The threats remain omnipresent  and as real as they were back then. Seniors in Bollywood know better than to mess with these goons. One false move and it’s back to ‘goli mari bhejey main.’   It is indeed  a chilling reality even today and one must hand it to gutsy Bollywooders   who are willing to take their chances with the D-Gang by basing movies around their murky lives. They do so knowing  that the hitman’s goli rarely misses its target. It’s a strange sort of  inter-dependency – bone-fide, card holding gangsters feed off the movie industry. And filmwallahs love gangster scripts! Let’s call it a fatal attraction. But remember – life mein bada chance ek hi milta hai. Grab it! Because bullets don’t understand ‘Doobara’.