The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(25)
Mumbai smelled different. Or was it her? Shetty had paid for her maiden flight. She understood the announcements in English now, and the snatches of conversation around her. Her new clothes were different, too. Gone, the shiny, too-tight ghaghra-choli she wore while dancing at the Blue Bar. Gone, too, she sighed in relief, the scratchy, blue-sequined saree she wore to the railway station. She sported a pair of dark jeans and a full-sleeved shirt: a woman on her way back from an office trip. No-nonsense walking shoes and hair tied in a severe ponytail completed her outfit. Tara had dressed for her new job. She was older, and at thirty-one, her body had rounded out despite the hours of chores and dancing she put in every day.
After a good minute, she found her name, a simple “Tara” written in crooked letters on a flimsy piece of paper. She walked over to the short, gray-haired driver. He led the way to the pickup spot and asked her to wait for him to bring the car around from the parking lot.
She’d once imagined her entire name, Noyontara Mondal, splashed on billboards and magazines. Tara straightened her shirt. She’d never act in movies, never be known beyond the few students she trained and their parents, the small neighborhood gigs she choreographed, and Zoya, who lived across the street and got by with babysitting and applying henna and beauty treatments to those who couldn’t afford a salon.
Tara held her hennaed hand to her nose, breathing in the earthy, hay-like fragrance, and smiled.
“This is for luck. A smart, modern design,” Zoya had said as she applied it. “Shetty won’t mind. And you’re not a mere dancer now. You’re also a choreographer.”
Shetty was not bad as far as bar owners went. Not lecherous or violent like the others. He’d made sure no one molested his girls. He sent auto-rickshaws to fetch them, paid off the security guards in the apartment block in order to keep them safe, and hired bouncers to throw out anyone who groped the girls without their permission. But he also worshipped money, and never let his bar girls forget that.
“What about the loss we caused him when we ran?”
“Stop worrying,” Zoya had reassured her. “Shetty has known all this time exactly where we live. You don’t think he would have acted sooner to extract his pound of flesh?”
“I don’t know, Zoya. You keep saying it was your Rasool who protected us, but—”
“He has. What do you think our calls were about, huh?”
Zoya and her boyfriend, Rasool.
Rasool Mohsin had gone from being a potbellied underling of a mafia boss to becoming a don himself. Each morning Zoya used to return with bruises she did her best to hide—her throat, her breasts, her back, other places she wouldn’t let Tara help patch up. He showed up each afternoon with perfumes and roses, then begged and sobbed outside the Mira Road apartment Tara and Zoya shared with six other girls. Rinse and repeat.
That stopped fourteen years ago when Zoya escaped Mumbai with Tara, along with bundles of black money stolen from Rasool. Rasool had every reason to have their throats slit, a routine affair in his profession. He hadn’t, though.
Tara sighed. Only Zoya and Rasool understood their relationship, which had turned long-distance now with Zoya in Lucknow. He’d begged Zoya to accompany Tara to Mumbai, but only Tara was here now.
Around her, passengers jostled each other, clanged carts, and muttered apologies. Arguments broke out. No one glanced her way. This was a change, too. Sweat trickled at her temples and pooled in damp patches at her armpits before she noticed the driver making his slow crawl through the jumble of taxis, app cars, private vehicles.
Once in the air-conditioned car, she heaved a sigh of relief. More than a decade ago she’d run from Shetty like a wanted fugitive, and now he’d sent her a not-half-bad saloon car. Not shiny or new, and it reeked of tobacco, but still. It showed that Shetty had meant it when he’d assured Zoya that Tara could do her job in safety and comfort, take her payment, and leave. She needed money. He wanted a good lead dancer and choreographer who understood the job but wouldn’t ask for the going rates in Mumbai. Seven nights of dancing at the revamped and relocated Blue Bar, and training a few girls. Easy.
The last thirteen years were about diapers, potty training, schoolwork, mealtime tantrums. Her Pia.
A reality divorced from the one she’d left behind in Mumbai.
She watched the huge billboards that flanked the road and stared at the latest crop of movie stars. She’d been naive—dreaming of the impossible. Her phone buzzed and she checked the message.
Pia, asking her if she’d landed yet. She dared not call Pia unless she was by herself—the less Shetty knew about her current life, the better. She tapped out a message, promising her daughter she’d call later. Tara exhaled, and closed her eyes. All this caution might prove pointless.
Zoya had argued that yes, their escape had hurt Shetty’s business, but the bigger disaster was the banning of bars in Mumbai. Now that the government was approving licenses again, Shetty could make his money back, and more. Tara need focus only on Pia, and the new international school where she might get admission, if only Tara could put together the fees for the next few years until her daughter became eligible for scholarship.
Tara needed to cash in on her strengths while her body lasted, while she could swing double duty as both lead bar dancer and choreographer. By the time she hit forty, she’d have to fall back on choreography. That didn’t pay much in a smaller city like Lucknow, and she didn’t have enough connections to make it in a megapolis like Mumbai. Pia would be twenty-one by then—graduated from college. Ready for higher studies, and marriage, someday.