‘Between a suitcase and a sofa’

[Guest guest]

`Between a suitcase and a sofa'

Published: Tuesday, Nov 9, 2010,

By Shrabonti Bagchi | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

" I love being around loud people, maybe because I'm not loud myself. Loud people

are just so… grabby, " says Faleiro, author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the

Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars, sitting in a spacious apartment located in

a leafy lane off MG Road.

It is a relative's house, and Faleiro is spending a few days here as she visits

the city to launch her book at Crossword bookstore later in the day.

As a setting, it couldn't be more different from that of her gutsy, intimate

book, which does just what it sets out to — and then some.

While its primary setting is Mira Road in Mumbai, where the city's famous dance

bars once did roaring business in entertainment, drugs and sex before the great

dance bar shutdown, Faleiro's story takes her to places each more seemingly

inaccessible to people from the upper middle-class to which she belongs:

Kamatipura, Aksa beach, the hill shrine of Sufi saint Haji Malang.

Yet, these were Faleiro's haunts for close to three years as she met and talked

to bar dancers, bar owners, their families, pimps, auto-drivers who doubled up

as middlemen, transsexual sex workers, brothel madams, bhais who supplied Dubai

dons with girls from Mumbai… During these three years, she spent eight to nine

hours a day with a bar dancer she calls Leela in the book, and Leela's story

forms the skeleton around which the flesh and bone of this book is hung.

" When we write about any subculture we don't know that much about, we write from

a particular viewpoint. We see these people as abused, exploited; their lives as

sad and sordid. The reason I like writing books of narrative non-fiction is it

gives me the scope to show that these are complete people, with full lives, "

says Faleiro.

Faleiro, who has been a feature writer with Tehelka and India Today and is

currently a contributing editor at Vogue, was introduced to this sometimes

revolting and sometimes uplifting world through a request to contribute an essay

to AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India. Subsequently, she also contributed to

the anthology India Shining, India Changing' — her essay was about Mumbai's

hijras. " After collecting so much material, for a while I was unsure what story

to tell. I showed a friend an early draft, and he said `Leela is the story.

You have to concentrate on her, " says Faleiro.

It fell into place; after all, Faleiro had spent nine months in close proximity

with Leela, recording her voice, making notes on her clothes and makeup,

chatting with her mother and friends, sifting the truth from the many, many lies

she was told by people who are sometimes compulsive liars.

" If you write about a certain kind of person, you should be ready to be lied to

almost obsessively and you have to respect that. Being wide-eyed and naïve is

not going to help, " says Faleiro, who learnt in the course of her research that

tough people open up to those they see as unflappable, those " who have the

smarts. "

To tell Leela's story with all the honesty and space it required, Faleiro had to

edit herself out. As a writing technique, narrative non-fiction requires a

certain emotional investment from writers as they stand witness to their

subjects' lives. Recording that, and not one's own emotional responses, can be a

challenge, confesses Faleiro, " but I'm good at it, " she says.

" My responses would be the same as the average readers'. What's the point of

writing `I went home and cried my eyes out'? This wasn't about me and how I felt

observing Leela's life, it was about her feelings as she lived it, " says

Faleiro.

Gaining her subjects' trust meant being a superlative listener. " Bar dancers get

enough sympathy from others in the same situation, but then so many of them have

similar stories. They have a desire to talk to someone who is sympathetic and

objective. To gain their trust, I had to be something between a suitcase and a

sofa, " says Faleiro.

She also refrained from discussing her research, leaving even her family in the

dark about its specifics. They are only now discovering the potentially

dangerous places and situations she often found herself in. " I didn't want to

tell bits and pieces of this story while nibbling on olives at a party. I didn't

want this story to become a party anecdote, " she says.

With that, Faleiro reveals the comfort with which she inhabits the various

spaces in her life: Shobha De may launch her book at a glamorous evening in

south Bombay, but for almost a year, her closest friend was bar dancer Leela.

http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_between-a-suitcase-and-a-sofa_1464139