Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars (30 page)

‘No problem, darling,’ Sharma patted her. ‘We don’t have to go. Let me tell you something; I have never before said “yes” to a girl without doing a thorough check-up on her. I met Priya and I said to myself, “Sharma, face it, your darling has a good way of speaking, she has a
mast
figure, why not give her a chance?” Then Priya said, “Not without my sister,” and so I agreed to let Leela come along even though we had never before met. I have no regrets, mind you. But usually what happens is this—an agent approaches me, he introduces me to his girl, here, in this same restaurant, in the daytime so I know what I’m buying. I look at
her figure. If she gets a call I listen in. After all, how a girl speaks to a kustomer, what she says to get him to visit her dance bar is most important. Sometimes I’m not 100 per cent sure, so I visit the girl in her dance bar. This was before, mind you. I would watch how she danced, the quality of kustomer that was drawn to her, how much money he would throw at her. If I didn’t think she was top-class, foreign-class, I myself would throw five hundred rupees at her and walk out. Otherwise, I would give her fifteen thousand, same as I’m going to give you girls, so that she could pay her expenses and wouldn’t come crying to me in two days’ time saying, “I have to pay this bill”, “Oh, my mummy she is so ill.” So here I am doing fast-track for you, but if you are uncomfortable with my generous nature, no problem. Coffee? Cake-slice? At least have a milkshake,
na
?’

‘Amitji has been in bijniss for twenty years,’ Priya snapped.

Leela nodded appreciatively, ‘And doesn’t he look it? He looks like the big man he is.’

‘No problem,’ Sharma smiled, petting Priya. ‘No problem, darling. Maybe I was hasty-pushy. Just because I’m honest I assume the best in others. But not everyone is like me. So many girls I’ve tried to help have turned out to be fully ganda, total besharam. They run off with my goodwill advance, even leaving behind their passports. What do they care? Each of them has five-six passports. After all, if the bhai
log
can get five-six, why not the behen
log
?’

‘We have full faith in you,’ insisted Priya. ‘Anyway, we have no passports, so there’s no question of leaving anything behind.’

‘And we have no family,’ Leela piped in.

‘And no friends,’ she added for good measure. ‘Even if we wanted to, where would we go, you tell?’

Sharma’s eyes gleamed. ‘I’m sure you have family. You must have friends.’

‘No,’ Leela said firmly. ‘Only the people at this table.’

‘We would never run away,’ Priya said. ‘We are orphans, in God’s hands. And in your hands too.’

Sharma smiled. ‘Order something
na
? My treat I told, order anything you want. Sharma is best host is what you should be thinking at all times.’

He turned to me, suddenly genial. What did I matter? I was the ugly sister to his Cinderellas.

‘Too bad we had to meet in daytime, because of bijniss,’ he said, all friendly. ‘Nighttime is when we bhai
log
have our fun. Just this week we had dinner inside the National Park. You know the National Park? You know how they say, “No make fire!” “No shoot animals!” But do we care? We have our setting! We made a fire, we roasted a whole goat, a few big-big multi-colourful birds. We got full drunk! A daru maker had passed by with his drum, you see. What did we do? Same as always! We pulled him to the fire. Poor fellow passed
peshab
, so hard he was begging for his life. We threw him to a side. “We don’t want your peshab,” I said. “But your daru? That we’ll gladly drink!”’

Priya preened, ‘I
told
you he’s a big man!’

Sharma pretended to demur, ‘No, no, darling, I am only a small fellow. The great one is God. No one is greater than God, remember that.’

‘God is great,’ agreed Leela.

‘Amitji, you are too modest,’ Priya said. ‘Tell them everything. They are my sisters.’

Leela nodded persuasively, ‘It’s not often we get to meet men like you, Amitji. Usually, it’s tapori
log
. There are only small people in our little world.’

Sharma grinned. ‘Well . . .’

‘Please tell no.’

Sharma turned to me. ‘You know me.’

Definitely not, I said.

‘What if I said the name Abu Salem?’

Abu Salem was the notorious gangster whose girlfriend Priya’s customer had insisted I looked like. He had started in Bombay in the 1980s as a taxi driver, but was soon gun-running for
Dawood. At the time of his arrest later that year, he was implicated in over sixty cases of murder, as well as in dozens of cases of extortion and kidnapping.

Please don’t say you’re siblings, I thought.

‘What if I said I’m
that
Amit Sharma? The Amit Sharma who was, you know,’ Sharma wiggled his right hand, ‘Salem’s right-hand man?’

Leela bounced. ‘I know you, I know you! You’re that Amit Sharma?’

Sharma nodded, pleased. ‘The same.’

I hadn’t heard of him and was quite sure Leela hadn’t either. But I stayed quiet. Priya’s boyfriend was a gangster! Gangsters carried guns!

‘Ah, now you’ve made me nostalgic,’ said Sharma. ‘Those were the days I tell you, our days in Dubai. Salem loved women. Organizers would visit his mansion with a photo album of bar dancers they were planning to bring over. Salem would carefully go through each and every album. How the organizers would rattle in their shoes! “Bhai, they’re beautiful right? Bhai, worth it no?” Salem would almost always nod and the organizers would exhale with relief. If he liked a girl, he would want to make sure she made it to Dubai. So he would ask, “Theek
hai
?
Ya ek-do
peti
doon
?” Are you okay for money, or should I give you a couple of lakhs? The day before the troupe began work, Salem would drop by for a preview. The bar was locked behind him. He got the best seat, of course. The girls would take to the floor, their eyes trained on him. For effect, I would sometimes hand him a cell and urge him to take the call. With a motion of his hand he would make the music stop and bark loudly into the phone: “Pump his body with bullets! I want him to die like a dog on the road. Then call for an ambulance. And run it over his body!” How impressed those girls would get! How big their eyes would become! If Salem wanted one of them, I would phone
the bar the next day and order the manager to release her. I would pick her up before the evening’s show and drop her off at Sharjah, the guest house Salem rented for meetings. A few hours later, after the girl had given him whatever made him happy, he would call me over and say to me, “Amit, take her to Ashok Jeweller’s and buy her whatever she wants.” When the girl’s attention was diverted, he would motion with his fingers—one for one
tola
, two for two tolas of gold—the value of the gift he wished to give.’

‘What a generous man!’ exclaimed Leela.

‘If he liked you,’ Sharma conceded. ‘If you upset him, mind it, there was no saying what he would do. I remember clearly how one organizer upset him terribly. He refused to let Salem have one of his girls, the fool! The organizer placed the blame on someone else: “Gurubhai,” he lied, “I
want
to send her to you, but her agent threatened to ruin me if I did.” A few days later, that agent, Tipu was his name, I still remember, he was walking towards his home in Kandivali when someone came up behind him and slit his throat with a razor blade. Blood everywhere, I heard, flowing like the Ganga! What an impact it had! For a month organizers were terrified to enter Dubai. How bijniss suffered! Come to think of it, these things were fairly common then.’

Murder? I said.

‘Arre! But why say no to begin with? Didn’t Salem pay for what he took? Did anyone ever leave his bed without a gift? Always a gold ornament, a handycam, a watch. He was so generous! Of course, he didn’t like the talkers. Or the thieves. If a girl kept on about her mummy who was sick or her brother pestering her to buy him jeans-pant from Dubai, he would get fed up. Or if he noticed that a girl had stolen one of the perfumes from his bathroom cabinet, he would say to me, “Arre Amit, make sure I don’t see her face again.”’

‘So the less we speak the better?’ Leela said, as though taking notes.

‘I’ll give you a tip,’ Sharma replied. ‘And I won’t charge for it. You’re going to Dubai to earn money, are you not?’

The girls nodded.

‘So why talk? Hahn, talk on the phone in such a way that a man goes mad in his desire to see you, even if it is only to watch you dance from a distance of twenty feet. But once you have him in your control, for God’s sake, keep quiet!’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Leela. ‘No problem.’

‘Trust me,’ said Sharma. ‘I know what I’m talking. Do you know how I got into this bijniss? Let me tell you. I spent my childhood running in and out of jail. I was such a harami, I had no choice but to approach a Company man. “Bhai, find some use for me,” I pleaded. And he did. First I was a doorman at a dance bar and then one night I was made the lookout during a robbery. After that, I became Dawood’s muscle man. I swallowed my pride even though I came from a good family, even though I had some school learning. Whatever the job, however much the maar-peet, I said, all the bhais started this way. Haji Mastan was a coolie. Abu Salem a driver. Once I had proved myself, Salem chose me as his top man. And I remained his top man, even after he left Dawood. That’s when we went upstairs to Dubai, to start afresh. I remember those days like it was yesterday. How did we eat? Salem would put in twenty dirhams, his wife Sameera would put in ten and the rest of us would pitch in a few dirhams each, whatever we could. What days those were, what adventures we had! My ears were so close to the ground I could hear the sewer gushing!’

So why are you out here while Salem is on the run? I said.

‘Because he’s a brave man,’ Priya snapped.

Sharma shrugged, ‘I’m a
khabru
.’ A snitch.

‘So what! You’re a brave khabru. If it wasn’t for you how your poor wife would suffer! And your daughter? The little angel would cry herself to sleep every single night!’

‘True, I did it for them,’ Sharma said soberly. ‘For their honour, I admit. I couldn’t ask my wife to spend the next ten years of
her life bringing me dal-chawal in jail, could I? And what option did I have? The police caught me at Delhi airport as I was leaving for Dubai and they said to me either I go with them or I go to jail. Which would I prefer? “Fine,” I said. So here I am, waiting to speak out against my boss. In the murder of Pradeep Jain, the builder who was killed in 1995, in the murder of Ajit Dewan. He was the secretary of that actress, Manisha Koirala—know her? What have I got to lose when Salem finds out? Only my life.’

‘Don’t lose your life,’ Leela giggled nervously.

‘Not before you send us to Dubai,’ said Priya with a coy smile.

‘No one can kill me,’ Sharma boasted. ‘See this.’ Rolling up his sleeve, he pointed to a deep scar on his right arm. It was perhaps eight or nine inches long and ran from his elbow to his wrist. ‘They came to my house to murder me. To my house! No respect! Guess my response? Of course, I stabbed all three of them, and whose fault was it that one died?’

‘Amitji went to jail,’ Priya said with awe.

‘Priya understands me,’ Sharma acknowledged, with another tap on her shoulder. ‘Why just her? There’s a natural bond between bar dancers and bhai
log
. Who else will help them?’

‘They are the best!’ Priya agreed.

‘Kasam
se
!’ Leela nodded, happily.

‘Soniaji,’ Sharma leaned in. ‘I know you’re worried. I can see it in your face. So let me tell you how we work. Then you decide for yourself, okay?’

‘But there’s nothing left to decide,’ Priya cried.

Sharma hushed her. ‘Let me talk. And let me be honest . . . Now let’s say there’s a bar girl. Let’s call her Sonia. Sonia has a devoted kustomer. He comes to the bar every night. He takes her phone number. He likes her, she pretends to like him. Soon she knows everything about him.
Do
numberwala, paisawala, smuggler. One day she takes him into her confidence and says, “Look, the money you throw on me only goes to the boss. If
you really love me send this money to my parents instead.” So the kustomer does just that. Through hawala.’

Hawala was an illegal, informal system of laundering money into foreign currencies.

‘Now instead of coming to the bar he talks to Sonia on her cell. One day passes, two days pass, where’s Sonia’s kustomer? Why isn’t she making money for me? So I get her roommate to listen in on her conversations. Remember this: the organizer is boss. Girls are on their toes at the chance to get close to him. So the girl gladly listens in. Soon she comes to me and whispers, “Sonia still talks to that fellow.” I call my bhai
log
. I find out that several hawalas were sent to Bombay in Sonia’s name. That’s it, game over. I take her phone card. Her kustomer goes crazy trying to talk to her. Finally, he comes to the bar. Sonia tells him what happened. He crawls over to me. “Bhai, give her phone card back,” he begs. “Let her talk to me bhai, and I’ll keep coming to the bar, God swear.” I ignore him. He comes back the next evening and spends money. The evening after that, he spends more money. A few more evenings pass, Sonia’s friend keeps sinking money into the bar. At that point, I let Sonia have her phone card back. She has learnt her lesson. From now on, she will cut that man’s throat from one corner to the next until he has bled all his money into the bar. If after this Sonia is a good girl, if she makes me at least five lakh rupees, then when she has ten days left before she has to go back to Bombay, I make her free. You want to go to kustomer’s flat? Go. You want me to send a guard with you? Done. Kustomer gave you a gold chain and earrings and you say, “Bhai, please let me keep this, please, please don’t take it away from me,” no problem. You made me money, now I will let you make money. Otherwise, stay locked up for those ten days and learn your lesson.’