The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(37)
“Nothing else?”
“There’s talk that Vijayan is using it as a laundry for his dirty money.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TARA
Tara had danced on stages often enough in her life, but never seen one quite like this. The lights, for starters. Cleverly concealed, they went on and off in time with the beats. Shetty had hired a lighting technician and a DJ and installed speakers that caught each note and projected it into the large cave-like space, with a stage, a bar, restaurant tables, sofas in draped alcoves, each space lit with chandeliers and mood lights that could be dimmed till they winked like starlight on the ceiling.
Shetty said that he had found such places on his Bangkok trips. An evening’s entertainment at some of the restaurants included glamorous dancing girls who set the stage on fire. This looked less like a dance bar from Tara’s younger days and more like a nightclub from a movie set. She’d tried asking Shetty to lower his expectations of her new troupe—they had barely started moving in coordination. This called for more practice sessions.
“I don’t care what happens with the others. You must produce a night to remember,” Shetty had said the evening before in his usual sedate yet make-it-worth-my-money tone.
The chat with Mithi had made Tara wary. She wanted to talk to Zoya about it, but Pia answered the phone without fail. Tara couldn’t discuss Shetty within her daughter’s hearing.
On a short break in her room after lunch, Tara dialed Zoya again, hoping Pia had left for school, but Pia picked up and switched it to a video call.
“How are you, doll? Did your English exam go well?”
“Of course, Ma.” Pia rolled her eyes in a gesture that was so like her father’s it made Tara’s heart flip. “When are you back?”
“In a week, when I have tickets. Where’s your Zoya masi?”
“Making dinner. Half-day at school today, Ma. It is Saturday.”
A knock at her door. That must be a girl come to fetch her.
“I forgot, sorry. Talk to you later. Be good.” Tara cut the call and rushed out.
That evening, wearing a skimpy gown for her performance, Tara sweated in the cold dressing room, getting her girls ready. She flitted from woman to woman, adjusting hair, makeup—an earring here or a pleat there, encouraging and reassuring them. If they followed the music and her instructions, they’d win the evening.
This was different from fourteen years ago, when this man or that from the audience showered ten-rupee notes on her as she sashayed down from the tiny stage and, avoiding groping paws, accepted money from the customers and poured them a drink. By law, bar dancers were not supposed to leave the stage, but everyone turned a blind eye because the currency tended to be much bigger if the girls strutted about and seductively drew the money out of grubby male hands.
She wondered if any of these girls standing before her would do the same today. They probably would. Women did what they had to.
When she reminded these new students to stay on the beat, they nodded, biddable for once, the music having cowed them. It made the walls throb, the dressing tables shake. It held their hearts in fists and twisted their guts, nameless yet overpowering. The DJ was doing his warm-ups, his test set. Tara had instructed her students in moves that ranged from traditional to fusion to outright western, from pirouettes to jerky hips and pushy, rhythmic thrusts.
The number moved to Tu shayar hai, a remix of the Bollywood number that said, You are a poet, and I’m your poem. In the movie, the svelte lead, Madhuri Dixit, seduced with her body and also her eyes, but it gave Tara flashbacks of being blindfolded, of suffocating in a burka, of the sneering man in the dark. She rushed to the DJ. This hadn’t been in his lineup earlier.
“Mr. Shetty added it in,” the DJ told her.
Breathless from having run and the fear that threatened to paralyze her, Tara couldn’t find the right words. At one time, her performance to this number was the flavor of the month for the bar scene. Shetty expected old clients this evening—he would never agree if she asked for a change in music.
Did that mean he would appear—the jackal from whom she’d run? He loved Tu shayar hai. He’d made her dance to it each time. Tara sank into a chair and gulped harsh breaths, refusing to let old terrors take hold of her.
Shetty called the Blue Bar an orchestra bar, but it was still a dance bar. He could hire all the DJs in the world but, in the end, it was about the amount of money dropped. Tara and her girls were the target, the ones the audience tossed money at. The women must set the evening alight, worth getting sloshed over, for the money to come pouring in. Tara must deliver. The jackal wouldn’t come in—and even if he did, so what? She would go out there and dance. For her contract. For Pia.
CHAPTER THIRTY
BILAL
Bilal flicked channels on the massive television in the boy’s study, on mute. No one could know Bilal was watching TV, alone, because he was supposedly in meetings with the boy. The boy had gone walking, the way he did at least once a week.
It lets me breathe a little, Bilal.
Sometimes after a walk, the boy came back with a bundle of notebooks. Other times, cheap trinkets from roadside shops. Food, that Bilal gave away. Each time, the boy returned covered in dust. He took long baths afterward. He’d worn the khakis today, and carried a bag with clothes and supplies, sounding excited. That nervous energy boded grief for Bilal. He grew anxious. What if someone spotted the boy in a place he had no business in? The uniform or the Sikh turban wouldn’t get him far. That’s the thrill, Bilal. You won’t understand, the boy had murmured when he protested. No one will spare me a second glance or dare give me trouble.