Chandni Barred

Prabha Desai's Sanmitra Trust is asking the Malwani girls if they would like some vocational classes now that the dance bar closure date is looming. Would the girls like to learn to apply mehendi, make papad, or teach dancing, or volunteer at the trust's clinic? But in house after house, there are nervous giggles. The girls are hoping the bars won't close down. Most say they don't want to take the classes because learning will take a few months, during which they will not earn and even later they will not get anything close to what they do now. They are acutely aware this is their only skill and also a well-paying one—upwards of Rs 10,000 a month that could go up to Rs 10,000 a day. "We have never done physical labour," says Soni. Rehana, a pudgy smiling bar girl from Calcutta, has been offered a job by the trust, but she is not taking it; she thinks the starting salary of Rs 1,000 is too low.

Kale says the Bar Girls Association also plans to work with the bar owners and institutions to teach the girls skills related to the bar business. She says they could learn embroidery, make snacks, toothpicks or napkins. For now, though, she is busy lobbying their case in the media, and the girls are watching their so-far hidden lives played out on national television. Some even ask for mikes before they start talking. They want to know which evening news they will be on.

Some of the richer women do want to open small businesses. Some have already bought houses, or educated their children at expensive boarding schools. Some of them have set up beauty parlours and other businesses. Veteran dancer Lata, whose husband is a steward in another bar, says they have saved some money and will set up a small business back in their village in Karnataka. People there don't know what Lata does in Bombay and this will be an opportunity to make a clean break and start life afresh.

But going back to their villages is an option very few girls consider. Paramjit went back home to Punjab where she had supported her family. But within weeks, she knew she would never get a job in her village that would pay her as well as bar dancing. She is now back in the bar. Returning home is also out of the question for most, because they have identification like ration cards that say they are bar girls, and their relatives will not exactly receive them with open arms.

So, if the dance bars do close down, they will be out on the streets. Literally, for a livelihood.