By Sarita Ravindranath
As a reporter, Sonia Faleiro walked the extra mile to tell the "unseen" stories of people we find so convenient to forget or dismiss as freaks.
She trawled the margins to churn out award-winning reports on Vidarbha farmers, transgenders, bar dancers and domestic servants.
Faleiro wrote of the "invisible", like Kalpana, a child domestic worker in Mumbai who dreams of becoming "visible" and a nurse some day.
She also told us the secret stories of in-your-face hijras and starlets. In her report, a Mumait Khan wasn't just an "item girl": The story took you right through the smells and sounds of Shabnam bakery, behind which the actress lived.
Now, in an exceptional piece of reportage, Faleiro brings her rare sensitivity and attention to detail to Beautiful Thing, her latest book which tracks the life of a Mumbai bar girl and brings alive a section of Mumbai that's so often stereotyped in our films.
Beautiful Thing Leela is at her prime when the story begins: A sassy, street-smart 19-year-old who believes that a bar dancer's game is "lootna....kustomer ko bewakuf banana (To rob, to fool a customer)". She is the highest-paid nautch girl in Night Lovers, the bar where she works, and considers herself "married" to the married owner of her bar.
But Leela's world comes crashing down after Maharashtra slaps a ban on dance bars in 2005.
Sonia tracked the Leela story for months - interviewing dancers, cops, waiters, bar owners, brothel madams and Leela's own family, friends and lover - to bring out a book that is as riveting, as it is shocking and saddening.
In an interview with Sify.com, Sonia Faleiro revisits her journey with Leela and speaks of the lost dance bars of Mumbai, our prejudices, and her views on the legalisation of prostitution.
Image: The cover of the Australia and New Zealand edition of Beautiful Thing. Sonia Faleiro will be appearing at the Sydney Writer's Festival in May 2011. Beautiful Thing will be launched in UK in August, and in the US later this year.
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Click here to buy a copy of Beautiful Thing
