cabaret girls

There were cabaret shows and girls dancing in clubs all over Mumbai at that time.... a freind of a freind of a freind had a night club and I went several nights to the club, had some of the girls come out to lunch, and learnt about their lives.............. always liked meeting people who were living lives differently, it brought new possibilities, new perspectives, new directions..........

                The life and times of the cabaret artiste

The lights dim, the strobe starts swirling so that bands of light s hit you every so often; there is a roll of drums, and a soft sexy voice that tells you that the floor show is on.

The Oriental dance--- she enters in a jet black flowing gown, long hair loose over her bare shoulders, necklaces jangling around her bare neck. She sways to ‘Tequila’ and after a couple of minutes walks to a table, shakes hands with each of the customers, giving each a smile and a hello. The first round is over.

The music gets louder, the drums faster and she returns to the stage and begins frantically moving to the music. Then the gown comes off, to reveal a much sequined bikini--- the drums beat faster and she starts her pelvic movements, thrusting her hips first in this direction and then in the other; then she’s down on the floor on her back, then on her stomach then on her side, the sequins come off revealing an even more brief bikini, more thrusting in various directions, then she’s up wrapping herself, blowing kisses to everyone and then she’s off.

At Meghraj in Bombay, tables are spread around at which about 25 mainly middle aged men drink, smoke and stare at the dancers. It’s relaxed here, there’s lots of space, and it’s possible to combine eating, drinking and watching the floor shows. The drums roll again, and its Jeanie with the fire dance.

She enters in a bikini, always sequined so that it shines and the tassel toss and turn in every direction. In her hands is a plate with five candles. She dances, twirling the plate around her body under the arms, under her legs.  .  .  She just missed her skin there.  .  .  till the climax, when with what seems to be a look of pain, she dramatically tosses her head back, pushes her body forward, and tilts the plate, so you can see the melted wax pour down her bare body that glistens with perspiration.

She moves around, meets everyone, a smile here, a smoke there, a hello. Than back on stage. Sticks have been brought out with cotton dipped in patrol wrapped around the ends. She burns them, huge flames shoot out. She takes the flaming sticks and guides them over her legs, over her body, ever so gracefully but you can see the flames touching her body everywhere. She sits down, puts it on her tongue; for an instant her tongue is on fire; she bends again and both sticks come to her mouth and she puts off the flames in her mouth.     

It really happens that way. I saw it. And she hasn’t put anything on her body.

The next act is ‘Temptation’, a duet. It consists of two people feeling each other’s bodies so gently, so sinuously, you could feel the movements on yourself. And then began the various poses of love making--- at least 15 of them she twisted and turned all over, so did he. On the floor, lying down, standing upside down, --- if you’ve seen love making manuals or the Kamasutra you’ve seen this.

Yet its different seeing it on stage, where two people are actually acting out the poses. It’s a show, a kind of play ---acting, and there’s no actual sexual intercourse, but the simulated motions are all there.

Floor shows differ in each place --- each place each month has a new show, new faces, and new dances. Everything depends on the skill of the dancers, and the variety offered. There are various types of dances --- the snake dance where the dancers dances with an 18 foot python; the bottle dance the candle dance, the Egyptian dance, the Hawaiian, the lesbian show. But most often it is the blues, or pain disco.  

The girls--- Jarina, Reshma, Lola, Tanuja, Laila, Nitu, Jeanie, Priya --- behind the costumes, behind the makeup, behind the perpetual smiles, what are they like?  They come from all over--- small towns, big cities, --- from all types of backgrounds some are educated, BA’s MA’s --- others just after 6 years of schooling. They are Anglo Indians, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. Many are devoutly religious.

She stands there, on the terrace, silhouetted against the dark night, a glistening, sweating, gorgeous body, clad in a sequin bikini, face white with lots of make up to show up in the night club light, eyes black with mascara and glistening with eye shadow, drinking down in one long gulp of ice cold beer. She bends over, so that her partner can scrape off the wax still on her body from the fire dance. “Why do you burn your beautiful body?” I ask. She gives a husky laugh, takes a smoke, a swallow of beer.

“Hi darling,” she says “have a beer.” It’s always darling, honey, love, all the time. “Tell me why do you all look down on us cabaret girls? See these men? They’ve worked all day at the office, maybe they’ve had a fight, they are tense, and they just want to relax, forget about it all. We are just trying to make you all happy--- so why do you look down on us.

“Love making, sex is an art, honey. Sure most of our dances have to do with sex, various ways of making of making love. Making love is an art. Women can learn something from us; love, like how to make their men happy. I tell you most of the marriages go to the dogs because of sex”.

One of the girls has been widowed since she was 22. She trained as a nurse, and worked as one for several years. She has two children in boarding school. She works nine months in the year. For the three months when the kids come home she is with them all the time.

Another girl is the eldest in the family of seven children. Her father is too sick to work, “Sure they I dance. My boyfriend drops me here and picks me up each day. My earnings keep the family fed and children going to school”. Another whose husband is a doctor left her for someone else. She has a child in boarding school. She started dancing to support her child and herself. I like dancing it’s a job like any other. Dancing is my job”.                                       

Over and over again they tell me. “We are artists. We are workers. If a film star does a cabaret on film’ she’s a star’ she’s somebody. If we do it on stage, people say we are cheap. The hypocrites.”

                                          WE DON’T LIKE TO SWOW OFF ………

“The reputation of cabaret dancers has gone down because of the demand for strips now. Many girls who are cabaret artists, don’t know the skill of dancing, all they do is dance disco and strip. So the dance form suffers,” says another girl indignantly.

A trained artiste may have learnt from another artiste for a year, and can do a variety of dances.  She changes her style.  But an untrained one cannot,.  “What do I feel like when I dance?” said one of the girls.  “I just forget all my own problems, I think about dancing, and being happy.

All of us have a drink before we dance. It gives us the courage to go on stage, to dance with so little on.  We don’t really like to show off our bodies, but it’s our job.”

“Actually I want to dance for films.  I have done some, and some stage shows.  But that’s not regular.  So I dance cabaret in between.” 

Life is tough for cabaret artistes.  They get a job usually for a month, since a place needs new faces, new shows to attract the audience.  So each month she has to look for another place to dance.  “It’s dance, dance, every night.  No holidays.  We dance even when we have our periods.  No dance, no money for that day.  It’s routine and dull to have to dance, the same dance every night.  Our life isn’t easy.”

Many of the girls have to go other cities or towns to get work each month – Delhi, Bangalore and small towns.  Cabaret has started everywhere.  Each month before their current contract runs out, they write to the floor-show place; the word the word gets around, each girls tells the other one, here is where I worked last, this is what it was like; she then sends, her bio-data and photographs.  Many have agents, always male, who find them work for a cut, which is usually up to Rs. 200-300 a booking.  Same say agents buy girls and own them and then force them to dance.

“It’s lonely travelling like this.  You think we have a glamorous life but I tell you I’m bored.  I’ve been here for 15 days.  I haven’t been out of the hotel room, except onto the dance floor.  Where could I go?  I don’t know a soul here.  I don’t go out with customers and who feels like going out alone?

“Many people think we cabaret girls are loose, cheap, that we are prostituting ourselves.  That’s not true – for us it is an art, a job.  Maybe some girls do go around with customers – that’s up to individual women.  Every night a guy asks me, meet me outside – I tell him wrong number.”

The pay at first sounds good.  New artistes get from Rs. 1,200 a month with dinner and sometimes transport.  The senior artistes get from between Rs. 1,800 and Rs. 2,500.  If they are from out of town board and lodging are thrown in.  But it’s really not so much.  Make-up can cost about Rs. 200 each month and if the hotel doesn’t provide drinks, the girls buy their own.  Costumes cost a lot, for some dances up to Rs. 1,000.  And there’s the constant tension of looking for another job each month.  There is no sick leave, no leave at all in fact, and no security whatsoever.

Places and owners also differ.  Sometime the charge covers only the floor show; others include drinking, eating, entertainment.  Some treat the women with a lot of respect, others treat them with scorn.  I have heard allegations that in one place the owner himself pimps for the girls who are willing.

A fat middle-aged man, an executive in a large company says, “Oh yes, I come at least twice a month.  “Why do I come? Because I don’t get it at home.” And he giggles. In the chic upper class crowd, it is fashionable not to like cabaret – it is regarded as cheap.  “No class,” one person said, “nothing at first shook their heads and said, “Cabarets? No I haven’t seen them.”  But slowly as they drank more they both admitted, “Yes I’ve been to three of them,” and added sheepishly. “Yes I did get excited.”

But why do men like to see cabarets?  So far the best answer I have got was, “See, there are these five or six lovely women, they are dancing, and they are very erotic.  All through the show, 98 minutes of it, I am excited. And even afterward, I can think of the girls, the movements, the various poses – I can use my imagination.  Where else would that be possible?  Suppose one goes elsewhere, it’s over so soon.  Cabaret leaves me with a memory.”

In another smoky place I went to 35 men were squeezed onto bench - -like seats in an area of 150 square feet.  In front are school-type benches to hold the soft drinks given with the show?  First I am taken to a small cabin hardly 50 square feet in area.  I refuse to sit in it. This is the VIP cabin.  You can see what goes on outside but no one can see who is inside.

Here, the people come only to watch – and the men unashamedly just stare.

The government keeps a strict check on floor shows.  For several years they weren’t allowed.  In 1990 the government drew up the code of conduct.  Each place has to have a license.  In Delhi recently, several places were raided.  “Some women, fully dressed, were taken from the dressing room and kept in jail for three days,” Priy says.  All this is just to bother the girls, and the owners, so that they can collect more bribes,” the Delhi court dismissed the charges.

The policeman in charge of the vigilance department, which is responsible for raids, tells me, “We haven’t raided a cabaret joint in two years.  Last time we did it, the judge insisted that as none of the customers were annoyed, we didn’t have a case.  If the customers are not annoyed, why should we do anything?  No one is forcing them to see the show.

To run floor isn’t easy, with all the rules and regulations there are.  Tickets get taxed 65 per cent entertainment tax, so no wonder the rates are so high – the entry fee is around Rs. 50-60.  The excise and prohibition people have to be kept happy, and the same goes for the sales tax and police people – slip up anywhere and there is potential trouble.  Your license won’t get renewed.

“And it’s we who get the brunt of it.  Where will we work?” groan the artistes.  “A union of some kind is necessary,” insists another.  “Sometimes we aren’t given decent contracts; sometimes the owners don’t pay us in time.”

“People find out you are a dancer, and they don’t want to rent you a flat – it’s so ridiculous.”

“There is no unity amongst us.  Only jealousy and envy – if a woman looks better, or dances well, cabaret girls themselves will start saying nasty things about her.”

Jeanie is bending over.  In her hand is a towel which she uses to wipe herself.  In it is a small black myna bird.  “I saw it on the road whilst coming to work.  First s scooter then a taxi almost ran over it.  So I stopped and picked it up.”  Everyone is excited, petting it.  I take it in my hands, so small, fragile, and soft, it flaps its wings.  I loosen my hand s to give it room, and off it flies, testing its wings.  I wail.  But Jeanie puts her arm around me and gives me a wide smile, “honey it’s a free bird.  I was just looking after it till it was well.  It was born free, it had to be free.  Now let’s celebrate – our bird is well.”

A free bird.  Born free.  To be free.  How many of the thousands in Bombay would have stopped in the hustle-bustle of the city, picked up the bird and brought it to work and cared for it?  A cabaret artiste is a warm person.

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