As a reporter, Sonia Faleiro walked the extra mile to tell the "unseen" stories of people we find so convenient to forget or dismiss as freaks.
She trawled the margins to churn out award-winning reports on Vidarbha farmers, transgenders, bar dancers and domestic servants.
Faleiro wrote of the "invisible", like Kalpana, a child domestic worker in Mumbai who dreams of becoming "visible" and a nurse some day.
She also told us the secret stories of in-your-face hijras and starlets. In her report, a Mumait Khan wasn't just an "item girl": The story took you right through the smells and sounds of Shabnam bakery, behind which the actress lived.
Now, in an exceptional piece of reportage, Faleiro brings her rare sensitivity and attention to detail to Beautiful Thing, her latest book which tracks the life of a Mumbai bar girl and brings alive a section of Mumbai that's so often stereotyped in our films.
Beautiful Thing Leela is at her prime when the story begins: A sassy, street-smart 19-year-old who believes that a bar dancer's game is "lootna....kustomer ko bewakuf banana (To rob, to fool a customer)". She is the highest-paid nautch girl in Night Lovers, the bar where she works, and considers herself "married" to the married owner of her bar.
But Leela's world comes crashing down after Maharashtra slaps a ban on dance bars in 2005.
Sonia tracked the Leela story for months - interviewing dancers, cops, waiters, bar owners, brothel madams and Leela's own family, friends and lover - to bring out a book that is as riveting, as it is shocking and saddening.
In an interview with Sify.com, Sonia Faleiro revisits her journey with Leela and speaks of the lost dance bars of Mumbai, our prejudices, and her views on the legalization of prostitution.
Beautiful Thing was meant to be a magazine feature. What drove you to pursue the story further?
Initially, I was intrigued by the whole culture of the dance bars. They epitomized the best and the worst of Bombay. Best because thousands of girls, who would have had to enter sex work, live with violence or perhaps even starve to death, were welcomed to the dance bar. They became economically independent and were able to support themselves and their families.
This is really what we love Bombay for because it is a city that allows women its independence.
On the other hand, the dance bars also epitomize everything that's wrong with Bombay. The marginalization, the degradation...And the fact that even though the dance bar business flourished on the backs of the girls, it was the men who were in control.
Because this culture epitomized the heart and soul of Bombay, I wanted to write about it.
After I saw a TV report on dance bars in January 2005, my interest peaked and I sought meetings with bar dancers. A bar owner in south Bombay introduced me to some bar girls, and Leela was one of them.
I told Leela that I wanted to write about her, and that would require me to be part of not just her work life, but everything else as well.
Leela was one of the several people I was interested in profiling at that time in different lines of work. At that time, I wrote about sub-cultures and the marginalized people of Bombay - That was my beat essentially.
When the ban was implemented in 2005, the devastation was so quick and it was so complete that even I couldn't wrap my head around it. This despite having seen this world, and having seen what it could do to people.
And so I felt this was something I had to write about in full. So instead of a few reports or an essay, Leela's story became a book.
For how long did you track Leela?
For about nine months. From January to September 2005.
There's a sentence in your book: "I called her; She missed-called me". How did Leela react to having you around while she was at home, at work and even at a party? Was it difficult for you to gain her's and bar owner Manohar Shetty's trust?
It is very clear from the narrative of this book that I pursued Leela because I wanted to write about her.
Somebody like Leela had nothing to gain by giving an interview. What does it matter to her if her name appears in a paper or a magazine or a book? The concept of being interviewed was not really a part of her world - It was something irrelevant to her.
I think what made the difference is that I was very honest about what I wanted - to write about her life. She figured out very quickly that I was non-judgemental. And we had an instant rapport.
Was she curious about me? No.
I think she felt it was best not to know too much about what privileges lay outside her world.
In her world, Leela was a somebody. She was young and beautiful and she was having a relationship with the owner of the bar in which she worked. And she felt, at least at that time, that she had to be happy with that.
When you read the book, you realize Leela had many ambitions. She has many hopes and dreams. So, it wasn't that she was unaware of the possibilities.
But under that particular circumstance of our relationship, I think that Leela thought that it was best for her not to know too much about my world. I don't think she meant to be rude at all.
Was it easy to see Leela as just another subject? Or was there some degree of emotional involvement?
There's always emotional involvement. Because a disparity between a reporter and a subject - when the subject comes from a community like this - does jar.
Leela dealt with it by refusing to ask me about myself. Frankly, I completely understand that and I can respect the decision that she made. But for me, there were many times when I felt absolutely helpless. And I came home feeling drained of hope.
I didn't understand what I could do. I didn't understand, on some occasions, what was happening. But it's very important to remember that I wrote this book in a very considered fashion.
To my mind, people like me have too much to say in these matters. And people like Leela, who actually live these experiences, never get a chance to talk.
So, I had decided that it didn't matter what I thought; What mattered was what Leela thought of it. So, in the entire book, it's Leela's thoughts, Leela's conversations, it's about her. And that was a considered decision.
Did your obvious class differences with the people you were profiling get in the way of your story?
Many things are obvious - The way you dress, what you look like; But do they get in the way of the story? Only if you allow them. A reporter has to think very carefully about the role she wants to play in the story.
I decided to be absent in this story; And I made a conscious decision to try and be as invisible as possible. I would turn up and not expect to be treated like a guest. I would sit in a corner. I would leave when I was asked to. Turn up when I was asked to.
Did you ever feel your life was in danger?
Never; And that's not a compliment to me, it's a compliment to a couple of things.
Firstly, the city of Bombay, which frankly, is the only city in India in which this book could be written. The story required a woman to go out at night to distant suburbs, to hang around in dance bars, to meet members of the hijra community, to meet those who live in impoverished areas.
Secondly, once Leela honored me with her trust, it was like a protective force. No one messed with that.
The film Chandni Bar seemed to sum up the bar girl's life as just one tragedy after another. But you write of Leela asking you to compare her life against her mother's, not against yours. Was it tempting to portray her as tragic?
That is a compliment to Leela. She is portrayed as she was. As reporters, we tend to categorize people in very specific ways, and we refuse to see who they are in their wholeness, in their fullness.
So, therefore for us, the poor are tragic, bar dancers are beautiful but marginalized - various versions of an Umrao Jaan figure. Now, these are all very relevant points. Nobody is debating that poverty is inherently tragic, or that the poor are marginalized.
But all people, irrespective of which side of the street they grow up on, are after a certain age, complete people with full lives. And it's important for writers to capture every important aspect of their lives. Not just the tragedy, which is an obvious aspect, but the joy, the humanity, the humour, the love. Not to see these aspects of their life is to deny them their humanity.
I see Chandni Bar as a legitimate story: The real tragedy is that the life of the bar dancer as shown in the movie is a completely possible scenario.
The dancers you profile are either children of bar dancers or have a history of sexual abuse. Have you ever met anyone who became a bar dancer simply because she wanted to?
In the first chapter of Leela, I talk about the different ways in which girls enter the line. Certainly, one reason is purely for money because the family has fallen on hard times.
The closest that I've come to what you're saying would be a young woman - 15 or 16 - who's had some education, but has no skills. Seeing an option between cleaning a house and earning Rs 2,000 a month; or going to a dance bar and earning Rs 2,000 a day, she might choose the dance bar. And perhaps keep it a secret from her family.
Why do we have a ban on bar dancers but not on sex workers? Do you think prostitution must be legalized?
The laws on prostitution are confusing: Even if you're a sex worker, you can't be arrested until it has been proven that you economically benefitted from sex work.
This means that the brothel madams should be the first to be locked up, not the sex workers themselves.
Even if prostitution is legalized, will that stop the sexual assaults and violence that is directed against the bar dancer or the sex worker - often from the police who are meant to protect not just "good women" but all women? I don't know and I don't think so.
It'll lessen the burden because the cops can't threaten to put them in jail. But the abuse will stop only when the police are trained to accept and respect the work these women are doing.
To my mind, the ban was an attempt by one politician to go from a local figure to a national one. And he succeeded. Nobody knew who this person was back them- Am not bothering to mention his name because he frankly does not deserve the publicity.
Once the idea of the ban was circulated, suddenly the image of the dance bar and the image of this person was circulated nationwide. It was just a political and professionally-motivated move.
You write of a little religious ritual at the dance bar before work for the night begins. "Bhagwan ka naam lo aur kaam shuru karo (Take God's name and start work)," Shetty tells his girls. This might sound a little contradictory to those who equate religion with prudery. What were these little things that you were most surprised by while researching this book?
The ritual was not a surprise. Our concept of morality is frankly a disgrace. The most immoral amongst us are interested in the morality of others. So to somehow believe that a bar dancer cannot repose her faith in god or that she would be bitter because of her circumstances are completely untrue.
There have been some profoundly religious dancers - Most Indians are, so why would they be any different?
What surprised me? That the women bring customers, the women make money, the women are the soul of the dance bar, and yet the men at the dance bars are at the top of the food chain because they control the women.
The manipulation and the brutality of some dance bar owners was well known to me. And yet these owners would go out of their way to be gentlemanly. They would pull a chair, would order kuch thanda. And most amusing of all was that they would talk to me in great detail about their wives and children.
They knew, I knew that they were sleeping with someone in the bar line. These little disguises surprised me....
But why should we single out the men in the dance bars? Most of us are experts in the art of subterfuge in some way. That's human.
I was also surprised by the way that women having come from situations of poverty chose not to save money. They didn't attempt to understand how to save money. One of the reasons was that they often gave away all their money to their families.
But there was no sense that they needed to save money just in case something happened tomorrow. There was a certain reckless abandonment in their attitude towards money that I found very scary.
Perhaps it came from their need to live in the moment. It also came from their instinct of self-preservation and because they were in constant fear of what may happen. Instead of saying that "something will happen and I must save", the thought was "Something will happen, but I cannot think about it right now”. It was too momentous for them to deal with in the immediate.
First published in Sify.com on January 2012
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