Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars (21 page)

The shrine was of particular importance to Bombay’s hijras—they felt an affinity towards the benevolent, all-embracing Haji. Hundreds made the annual pilgrimage.

To reach the shrine we had before us a steep climb of several hours. Steps had been carved into the hill, but many were a foot high, and as time swelled, so did my joints and they burned like an open wound. The route was as crowded as a Bombay street and to add to the confusion, everyone was walking, even bounding, at a different pace, forcing stops and detours. Mothers cradled babies, old men riddled with arthritis crawled like crabs and strapping teenagers, copycat CK briefs riding high on their bony hips, outstepped us all, keeping our spirits aloft with their playful jousts and off-colour jokes.

Leela ran ahead, she chatted with the teenagers; at every opportunity they stopped by one of the stalls set up along the path to enjoy a snack of peanuts and papads, lassi and sugarcane juice.

We were only halfway to our destination when the evening melted into a cloudless night. Now the route was lit by the light of mobile phones and in the hands of some experienced pilgrims, with lusty flares that sizzled blue fire.

When the end appeared in sight, it was without warning. Our group was reinvigorated. ‘Haji Malang
jayenge to bahut maza ayega
!’ Masti screamed, emptying out her lungs. When we go to Haji Malang we will have great fun!

We joined the chorus: ‘Maza
ayega
! Bahut, bahut maza
ayega
!’

When we finally reached the pilgrim site, my senses exploded. I had never before seen so many jubilant people, collectively wired to their maximum energy. Thousands of men, women, children and hijras, dressed as though for a wedding, were singing and dancing and blowing on conches and banging on drums that hung from ropes around their neck, producing a sight and sounds so overwhelming all I could do was stare.

The narrow road was flanked by restaurants and shops that sold religious paraphernalia, snacks and sweetmeats, flowers and incense. A man stirred a giant jalebi into shape; his wife fried a puri as wide, as fluffy as a shawl. A young boy stood tall over buckets of red roses, his brother offered chadars of emeraldcoloured silk and their parents invited Masti, Leela and me into their photo studio where we were captured in black and white, laughing with the joy of little children in front of the Eiffel Tower under a giant slice of paper moon.

The site was lined with lodges and the lodge Masti had booked us into comprised several rooms encircling a courtyard. Up a narrow staircase were three more rooms whose flimsiness was confirmed after an energetic hijra in pearls fell through the floor during sex with a little man in striped shorts.

Procuring sex, in fact, appeared as important a goal here as the attainment of spirituality. Or perhaps they amounted to the same thing, for as the night deepened, as the aroma of hash swirled in the air and spirits raised voices, confidence and desire, groups splintered into couples, couples who had hours previously
been strangers, and they felt each other up in corners. Pushing aside the goats tethered there, they arched their backs against the walls of the communal toilets. All around the shrine, up and down the hill, the chill breeze gossiped of copulation.

Leela, Masti and I shared a room, and when we finally fell asleep it was from exhaustion.

I was woken up at around 4 a.m. by a rustling sound and stifled laughter. ‘I’ll bite your cheeks until they fall out,’ Masti whispered hoarsely.

‘I’ll do kiss-kiss until you come-come,’ a man growled in reply.

Leela woke up and when she figured out what was going on she started giggling. She giggled like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, when in fact she had warned me of just this. ‘Never go on holiday alone with Masti,’ she had said. ‘She’ll spend all day and all night having sex with every man who enters the hotil. Then she’ll order room service. It’s very bore!’

I need not, however, have worried about interrupting Masti. Although we were only two feet away, in a room the size of a closet, we were clearly no distraction.

Leela and I fell back asleep, and when we woke up we quietly gathered our things for a bath at the unisex
hamam
we had spied on our way in. We were treading over the sleeping bodies when Leela, in a moment of mischievousness or perhaps it was suspicion, drew back the sheet that covered the faces of Masti and her lover. Masti was shorn of make-up. She was no longer a curious beauty, but a man, just a man, and one with a prominent Adam’s apple. But it was the sight of the boy, holding on to her like he was afraid she would leave without saying goodbye, that made Leela gasp.

Her face turned angry.

‘Bitch,’ she whispered.

‘You bitch!’ she raised her voice.

Masti slept on.

‘Randi!’ Leela hissed, running out of the room.

Nineteen-year-old Abid Khan, said Leela to me when she had calmed down, had been her kustomer—hers!—for over a year now. Oh, he was fascinating, she enthused, as we walked towards the hamam. He was writing a book!

On what? I asked, taken aback.

‘Sex practices,’ she replied. ‘That Masti! She’s a first-class randi more crooked than a jalebi!’ Leela veered off. ‘She doesn’t deserve my friendship.’

But she’s your mother, I said.

‘I have a mother! You’ve met her! She’s not much. But she’s never stuck her dick into one of my kustomers!’

We started laughing and soon we left Abid Khan and Masti behind.

I had a feeling Leela didn’t care about Abid Khan at all, just like she didn’t care about her mother’s ‘simple type’. But I guessed that Abid Khan would become the excuse she needed to distance herself from Masti and the spirit of ayashi she so triumphantly embodied.

After a quick, cold bath we decided to explore the hillside. It proved to be a tough climb and soon I found myself cajoling Leela to change direction; to head downhill instead. Leela smiled at me like I should have known better.

‘Just follow
na
,’ she said. ‘You’ll see such things, things you’ll never forget.’

So we continued on and first we passed a camp of pilgrims in varying stages of awakeness and sleep, dress and undress, and of these hundreds of people, while some bathed from buckets others cooked breakfast on makeshift stoves, while some tended children or animals, yet others were clustered in conversation, the rise and fall of their many dialects electrifying the air. Then I felt the clench, I inhaled the stench of death, for we had come upon the slaughterhouse set up for the pilgrims, and here stood stacks of carcasses, here flowed rivulets of blood. Then we reached the very top of the hill and I saw what Leela had meant.

The view from the very edge took my breath away.

Trees small as a finger, rivers arched like eyebrows, hundreds, no thousands of pools of water, still, colourless and dreamy. And embracing this magical scene, and us, was the sky like I had never seen it before—a vast, wild roar as bold, as blue as the heart of the ocean.

Later that morning, Masti and Abid Khan joined us in the courtyard for a breakfast of tea, paneer pakoras and jalebis. Masti introduced her new friend to us. Abid Khan was very tall and thin and wore tight black jeans. He was shirtless, but compensated for this with a collection of accessories including earrings, silver rings and a watch that hung limply off his right wrist. He had curly black hair that smelt of jasmine and he wore kohl in his eyes.

‘Leelaji!’ he said warmly. Leela responded with a grim smile.

Nothing about Masti’s manner suggested that she knew she had upset Leela. On the contrary, dressed only in boxer shorts, her chest and face bare, Masti was radiant. There was a lightness to her I hadn’t seen before and Abid Khan must have agreed, for he was as eager to snuggle up to her as he had been the previous night.

Abid Khan leaned forward, ‘I’m a researcher. I’m researching sex practices.’

Is that a full-time job? I enquired.

‘Job? What job?’ muttered Leela, ‘His job is
do
number
ka
kaam.’ Smuggling.

Abid Khan ignored her. ‘I sell watermelons,’ he said, with a straight face.

Watermelons?

‘And watches.’

You sell watermelons and watches? That’s an interesting combination.

‘He has his own truck,’ explained Masti, animated. ‘Say the police ask him to open his backside. What will they find?
Watermelons! Juicy-juicy! But if they throw aside the watermelons then what will they find? Watches! Foreign watches! From China and Korea, Taiwan and Sri Lanka—you name it, the world’s finest watches Abid here sells!’

When he was not working the petty smuggling line, driving his truck across Bombay, selling watches he claimed were of solid gold and pure diamonds, Abid Khan pursued his research. He had conducted experiments in ‘rose sex, nose sex, back sex, French sex, Italian sex, female and male sex, hijra sex and three-person sex.’

Very impressive, I said.

Masti sat back, pleased. So did Leela until she caught Masti’s look of pride. Then her smile collapsed into sourness and she got up and walked away.

Do you visit dance bars? I asked, watching Leela’s retreating back.

Abid Khan sat up. ‘Barwalis are devil women I tell you,’ he said vigorously. ‘It’s true what they say, “ladies’ bar
jayega, barbad ho jayega
.”’ If you visit a ladies’ bar, you will be ruined.

How so?

‘Arre, you go there for some fun, am I right? You have drinks, you become high, you become high you become “hawrany”.’

Hawrany?

‘Yes, wanting sex. Hawrany. You don’t know hawrany?’

Uh. Yes?

‘Yes, you know hawrany?’

‘Arre, what hawrany-hawrany?’ grumbled Masti. ‘Leave her alone! Are you yourself hawrany the way you are looking-talking-making eyes at her?’

‘No sveetie, nothing like that! I’m just explaining. See, you become high you become hawrany, am I right? You become hawrany you want sex. You want sex you need a girl, but these bar dancers, oh let me tell you, they are not of flesh and blood, they are entirely of nakhra! In a certain kind of bar, one of them will sit next to you and she will say, “Hello hensum, can
I use your cell?” or “Hey sveetie, how are you?” and naturals you get excited. But the moment you say, “Hello bootiful, want to come to a hotil with me?” she will start to make all sorts of sounds and faces like she’s a movie star and you are asking for an autograph in the middle of her eating time. And her starting rate is so high an Ambani only can fuck her!’

How much would a girl like that ask for?

‘Any amount that enters her head! Sometimes four thousand rupees, sometimes five, and that doesn’t include the fee for the lodge and for all the food she will make you buy her—like she’s a half-starved goat! And not only is she overpriced, she’s much too sharp! Sharp as a drawer full of knives. Arre, what of that bar dancer who took full control of her “husband’s” bar?’

What of her?

‘She became boss! He became sweeper! Sweeper in her dance bar!’

He inched forward. ‘Okay, can I be franks?’

Masti nodded on my behalf. ‘Hahn hahn,
bolo bolo
. She’s my sister, durrling. You can speak openly.’

‘So the other day I get a call from this pimp, a real dirty guy. “Come see my new
maal,
” he says. I said “fine”. I picked up some whisky—why should I lie? His flat in Mira Road was filthy. And inside, sprawled naked on the bed, was a girl of no more than twelve or thirteen. She was marial, like she’d been starved. No gosht on her bones. I couldn’t even look at her she looked so pathetic. I took out my wallet and threw two hundred rupees on her. Then I walked out. So what will this girl do? Sex work, then the dance bar when she’s about fifteen-sixteen. Then Dubai to dance for gangsters and sheikhs. To fuck them. Get HIV from them. That’s how it goes. At the end of her short career what is left of such a girl? Even if you wanted to love her, she wouldn’t let you. Even if you offered her the world—car, clothes, cable TV—she wouldn’t stay with you. She couldn’t; she’s no more human. She’s a ghost.

‘I tell you sometimes I feel sorry for these girls. But then one
of them plays me for a fool and I realize
gayi bhains
paani
mein
, the buffalo has gone into the water. There’s nothing I can do for her, she’s a hopeless case.’