A girl who lost her job, dance bar girl .....

‘Life has come a full circle for me’
(This is the story of Asha, an unemployed dance bar girl who today has no option but to switch to the oldest known profession. She was soliciting customers through a pimp on Friday. It was her first day. TOI spoke to her. )
It was raining heavily, like today, when I boarded the Gitanjali Express from Howrah to Mumbai three years ago. As the the train moved, I thought I had escaped from the clutches of poverty and degradation. My sister, Asha was doing well in Mumbai and she was sending money to my ailing mother for the past so many years. She had informed me that I could earn good money too, if I came to Mumbai. “You may have to work in a hotel, but the money is good,’’ she said, when she had come to visit me in Kolkata. I had no option but to heed to her advice as our small tannery shop, the only source of livelihood, had closed down. My father had died and we were four sisters, all unemployed. We barely had enough to eat. My sister had reached Mumbai with the help of her friend and both were working in this hotel called ‘Dilruba’. On reaching Mumbai, I came to know that my sister was working at a dance bar in Vashi. After a few months of sitting at home, she took me there one day. I hated it initially. I saw men holding my sister and dancing throughout the night. But soon, I realised that she kept her limits and never allowed men to overpower her. Then one day, she asked me to dance in front of her. She said, “This is all I am asking you to do at the dance bar. Just try it once and if you do not like the atmosphere, you do not have to come with me again,’’ my sister said. That is how I got initiated. Somehow, the very first day I got a nice customer who gave me Rs 400 and said “Thu apli Priyanka Chopra jaisi hey (You look like Priyanka Chopra).’’ I never looked back after that. Every month I used to send Rs 5,000 home, and my mother soon got my three younger sisters married off in Kolkata. Later, I moved out and took a room near to my sister’s place in Nerul. Life was going on normally till the state ordered banning dance bars. We tried to resist. I was part of the morcha held at Azad Maidan. I was arrested twice by the Navi Mumbai Police, sent to the lockup in Turbhe as the dance bars were open after midnight. We were harassed at the police stations and the cops called us prostitutes. These were the same cops who came to us drunk in the night and pleaded with us to sleep with them. The number of people coming to the bar were dwindling and there were many of my colleagues who were already getting into prostitution. The shutdown of the bars proved to be the final nail in the coffin. My sister (whose husband had left her) said she was ready to sell herself to feed her two children. But I protested and told her not to for the sake of those same children. Anyway, I am not married and I saw no future for myself. I knew no one will come forward to marry me, so I convinced my sister that I would look after them, even if I had to sell myself. That is when I told Sanjay, my faithful rickshaw driver, to look out for prospective customers who could pay good money. I feel my virginity is of no use today. I feel life has come a full circle. I am back to where I came from. There is darkness all around—a city that has little mercy for its lesser mortals. —As told to Viju B