Beautiful Thing
Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
“Both a tragic monument to the abused bar girls of Bombay and a celebration of their amazing resilience and spirit.”—William Dalrymple, bestselling author of The Anarchy
Published in India to great acclaim and named a Time Out Subcontinental Book of the Year and an Observer Book of the Year, Beautiful Thing is a stunning piece of journalism that offers a rare firsthand glimpse into Bombay’s notorious sex industry.
Sonia Faleiro was a reporter in search of a story when she met nineteen-year-old Leela, a charismatic exotic dancer with a story to tell. Leela introduced Sonia to the underworld of Bombay’s dance bars: a world of glamorous women; of fierce love, sex, and violence; of gangsters, police, prostitutes, and pimps. When an ambitious politician cashed in on a tide of false morality and had Bombay’s dance bars wiped out, Leela’s proud independence faced its greatest test. In a city where almost everyone is certain that someone, somewhere, is worse off than them, she fights to survive—and to win.
In Beautiful Thing, Sonia Faleiro has crafted one of the most original works about India in years, an “intimate and valuable book of literary reportage . . . [that] will break your heart several times over” (The New York Times).
“Reporting at its best.”—Junot Díaz, The Rumpus
“A glimpse into a frightening subculture . . . In lesser hands, these young people could have come off as clichés, but the author makes sure we care for them and root for them to survive a life that most will never understand. Gritty, gripping, and often heartbreaking—an impressive piece of narrative nonfiction.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
