Free Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro

matter of course.
    So why leave now?
    ‘I can’t knit any more!’ cried Apsara, throwing her large, fat hands in the air. Tears rolled down her face.
    Pathetic, Leela mused. Manohar had pimped Leela, and Apsara had protected his shameful secrets as though they were her own. But God forbid someone mess with her knitting!
    ‘I went to doctor sahib,’ Apsara sobbed. ‘But he said, “It’s too late, Mrs Singh, you are too old. Nothing can be done to straighten this finger. Just manage best you can.”’
    ‘Why did he do it, Leela?’ wailed Apsara. ‘Knitting is my all! Didn’t he know it? The years I spent by his side! And he couldn’t see it?’
    Now Apsara, caring little that we had only just met and if anyone’s presence in her daughter’s flat needed explanation it was mine, launched into her personal history. She put aside her knitting, which she clearly hadn’t given up on despite the difficulties the task presented, and to ensure my full attention, hijacked my wrist. She moved this way and that, edging so close I could smell her gutka breath. I appreciated its minty freshness for it seemed she also enjoyed deep fried snacks.
    ‘Every time my mister gets drunk,’ Apsara said, breathing heavily, ‘he behaves like a buffalo rampaging through a sugarcane field. With God’s grace if I manage to run away all he can do is throw something in my direction—a chair, a stool, the knife he insists on keeping in his back pocket like he’s some hunter-wala! But if he catches me— Hai Ram! —God says bye-bye and the devil says “Apsaraji, kya haal chaal ?” One limb at least goes ka-ra-ck !’
    Leela rolled her eyes. ‘Apsara is fat! And she’s very, very simple.’
    By ‘simple’ Leela meant ‘stupid’, but in a kindly way.
    ‘My mother is simple,’ she would shrug, when I asked why her mother hadn’t taken her away from Manohar. ‘My mother is simple!’ she would comfort herself, when she heard from her brothers that Apsara had spent her money orders on custom-fitted motorcycles and satellite radios for them. Leela’s brothers were unemployed, and hoping to remain so, reminded her in STD calls she paid for that they were praying for her health.
    ‘Buy yourself a box of Shimla apples,’ they would instruct, as though it was on them.
    ‘Eat almonds soaked overnight for breakfast.’
    ‘Drink a quarter litre of cow’s milk every morning.’
    Leela saw through their solicitousness. ‘What will happen to them if I fall ill and cannot dance?’ She stuck her palm out. ‘Madam, paisa do na, do na paisa madam.’ Beggary.
    All of this, Leela wanted me to know—Apsara’s attitude towards her sons, her sons’ stupidity and sloth, who knew, perhaps even Manohar’s antagonism—was a product of Apsara’s weight and girth and the fact that she was unforgivably simple.
    Leela looked at her mother thoughtfully. ‘Since I could see, I saw my father beating my mother. I didn’t know A-B-C, but I knew what it meant when Manohar threw aside his plate. That’s why I ran away. Because he abused her. Once he hit her so hard she fainted. And because she didn’t say No, he abused me; and I knew that if I stayed on, if I didn’t say No, one day he would do the same to my children. Now I see her sons have inherited this quality from their father—they think women were created by God to serve men like them. And that’s what makes me so angry; that she can see what they think of her, she can see it because I can see it and neither of us is blind. And yet she supports them. She loves them. She loves them more than she loves me. But why? Why when I’m the successful one, the one who works, who feeds her, who clothes her, who asks if she has taken her medicine? Why when I’m the one who had the courage to leave for the city? When I’m the one who became a success and made money, makes money!
    Money like a man! No, no, more than a man! I’ll tell you why. Because they’re boys. And I’m a girl. Nothing