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Tuesday, May 10, 2005

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National

In defence of the `bar girls'

Ban on Mumbai's dance bars shocks Pulitzer-nominated author

"If the Government wants to combat vice, it should look into the red-light areas"

NEW DELHI: He has a chapter on them in his book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found that was nominated for the Pulitzer Awards this year. So it comes as no surprise that the U.S.-based author Suketu Mehta is extremely critical of the Maharashtra Government's decision to close down the dance bars where nubile young women gyrate to the tunes of music and men of all ages sit ogling, and wanting even more.

``The decision to ban the bars is a stupid one. If the Government wants to combat vice, it should look into the red-light areas, where the condition of sex workers is truly pitiable,'' Mr. Mehta stated in an e-mail interview. ``It is rank hypocrisy for the same politicians that I have personally often seen in the dance bars, throwing money over the girls, to now profess righteous indignation at their immorality,'' says the winner of this year's Kiriyama Award.

Although he has lived on the other side of the Atlantic since age 14, Mr. Mehta is quick to dismiss any criticism about his not being Indian enough to write about the county's financial capital. ``Anyone who's spent five minutes with me immediately realises I'm a Bombay boy, no matter how far I wander,'' he says.

Mr. Mehta is also no stranger to Bollywood or Hollywood. Currently writing the screenplay of The Goddess, a Merchant-Ivory film starring Tina Turner, he marked his entry in the Hindi film industry some years ago by co-writing Mission Kashmir.

Mr. Mehta's efforts to discover the real Mumbai for his 500-page book often saw him interacting with criminals and religious fundamentalists in the two years he spent researching for the book. ``It was tough sitting and eating with murderers as they were telling me about their crimes. But I tried not to judge, or to keep my judgments to myself while talking to them and also while writing,'' says Mr. Mehta. ``I tried to recognise that a man who kills a person simply for belonging to a religion different from his could also be a good father or a patriot. It's the only way to stop evil — by understanding the complexity of it.''

According to Mr. Mehta, there is a lot of scope for narrative non-fiction today as it brings out the complexities of the real world. ``It seems to be how we explain the world to ourselves these days. After 9/11, the dramatic value of the real seems to have overwhelmed our power to invent new stories,'' he says. ``At the same time, I am by training a fiction writer, and will definitely get back to my novel sooner or later.''

Next up for the author is possibly a book on New York, in similar vein to Maximum City. Though that does not mean he is averse to writing screenplays.

``I'm open to offers to write screenplays, although I'm enjoying writing for myself at the moment. Ultimately, a screenplay is really a blueprint for somebody else to build a house intended for yet another person,'' he says.

After finishing his research for Maximum City, Mr. Mehta returned to the U.S. Did he ever miss the hectic pace of the city of dreams?

``I miss the people of Mumbai — their maximum life-force and the stubborn ways in which they hold on to their crazy dreams. I miss Borkar's vadapav and Thursday nights at Olive and the psychedelic streetscape of the inner city,'' he says.

PTI

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