Beautiful Thing: Book Review
Beautiful Thing Inside the secret world of Bombay’s dance bars Book author: Sonia Faleiro Beautiful Thing is a documentary book on the lives of bar dancers in Bombay. The story unfurls when Faleiro meets Leela (the “bootiful” girl) and slowly gets acquainted with her world. Faleiro built a chemistry with Leela and then her acquaintances in a way, it grew into a friendship. It was a different kind of friendship. Faleiro calls it, So our one-sided relationship may be characterized thus: I called Leela. She ‘missed-called’ me. The journalist in her story-style documentary tells her why she was drawn towards Leela. Leela was paid to dance for men. And I, and most people I knew, had seen bar dancers only in Bollywood films—not as the protagonist, but as background entertainment, one-dimensional and on the margins; manipulated and mistreated. Accompanied by Faleiro, we visit the apartment of Leela. Six squeezed into a 1 BHK, living in such disarray to a stranger’s eyes it would appear the
