Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars

In Bombay, street urchins hawk pirated goods just steps away from white-pillared mansions, and the sex trade has infiltrated all corners of life—from the rickety, tin-roofed brothels that line the red-light district of Kamatipura to the spare rooms middle-class women rent to pimps for pocket money. Faleiro (The Girl) mines the gritty underworld of Bombay’s dance bars, where dancers perform for male patrons in exchange for showers of 100-rupee notes and the hope of escape from poverty. She spent five years shadowing Leela, a teenage dancer with a bubbly personality and a love for Western-style clothes, Bollywood glamour, and all things “bootiful.” Leela and the breathtaking Priya, her confidante and fellow dancer, consider themselves a cut above women who sell their services on the streets and in brothels. But when a self-seeking politician takes up a moral crusade, shutting down Bombay’s dance bars, the two are left with few options. Faleiro paints a grim picture of rape, physical abuse, and sexual slavery, often perpetrated on women like Leela by their own families. But Leela’s fearlessness keeps her afloat in the mire of madams, pimps, and hit men, where the cops are as corrupt as the gangsters and HIV an unspoken but constant threat. Through a kaleidoscope of deftly captured voices, Faleiro recreates the harsh world beyond the bar lights’ glow. (Mar.)