Through Someone Else's Looking Glass

This was published on 31 Jan 20o9 in my blog and then in the Mumbai Mirror on 07 Feb 2009.

These are the two links.

Through someone else’s looking glass

Sometimes when we see ourselves through others’ eyes, it can be quite a revelation; especially when what those others’ see are dancing bar girls, cavorting arou

Mumbai MirrorMumbai Mirror

Man From Matunga: Through Someone Else’s Looking Glass

Sometimes, when we see ourselves through others’ eyes, it can be quite a revelation; especially when what those others’ see are dancing bar girls, cavorting around you and I.

Three years ago, I was in Raipur, along with two other colleagues from Mumbai, lecturing at a State level professional meeting. After we reached the hotel, the organizing secretary proudly told us that he had arranged some really exciting entertainment at night, which he was sure, would not disappoint us. We expected an orchestra or perhaps a ghazal session to accompany the dinner buffet, as is usually the case at such meetings.

 Around 9.30PM, with dinner well underway, one of the organizers came on stage and announced the start of the anticipated event. Through the haze of a thick fog of liquid ice, a woman, dressed in a tight, bright, plasticky dress, started slithering and gyrating to one of the popular “dhin-chak” numbers of that time. Apparently, the great piece of entertainment that we were so breathlessly awaiting, was…get this… “dancing bar girls”!

 Within half an hour, all the women and children had left. As we too were making our way back to the rooms, we ran into the chief organizer who asked us whether we were enjoying ourselves. Without waiting for a reply he said, "I couldn't get dancing bar girls from Mumbai (this was around the time they were banned), so I arranged them from Nagpur" and then without batting an eyelid, came his kicker, "But I guess this must all be so routine for you...do these girls meet the high standard of the ones you normally see in Mumbai?"

 Routine? High standard? Dancing bar girls? I personally have never been to one of these bars, but I couldn’t care less if this is how some people get their highs (which I guess would be both literally and figuratively). My problem is that our hosts in Raipur actually, truly believed that our main form of entertainment in Mumbai was to go and see dancing bar girls. For a long time I tried to understand why they would form such impressions and I could only guess that this may be due to a combination of Bollywood movies, reality shows, television soaps and Ms. Rakhi Savant’s media antics. It is so easy to form such weird impressions of people and places; even today, many people who have never been to the US firmly believe that it is a land of easy XXX chicks, eagerly waiting for us outside JFK, the moment we disembark.

 I thought this was an isolated incident. However, the more I narrated this story to other colleagues and peers, the more it became clear that this was becoming a routine phenomenon, which became quite clear when I was in Patna two weeks ago attending our National level conference. Each night for three nights, for entertainment, there was an orchestra along with dancing bar girl types in low-cut cholis and ghaghras, swaying to the usual "beedi jalaile" numbers. This time, three years later, even the women and children hung on, without any embarrassment, almost as if such shows have now become a way of life.

 At the cost of sounding repetitive; dancing bar girls surely have their place in the scheme of things, serving the needs of a specific target population. But when they start occupying the top of the non-cinema, non-television entertainment pyramid, perhaps it’s time for some soul-searching and interrogation? 

 Or maybe it’s just me being naïve?