Amanda's Story From Nikhila Henry’s The Ferment

Nikhila Henry’s The Ferment examines the driving factors that are forcing the youth of India to take to the streets and the energy, aspirations and dejections of the young by focusing on educational institutions in the country, ghettos where the outcasts live and conflict-ridden zones which have minimal mechanisms to cope with the growing need for education and employment. An excerpt from Amanda's story:

Skirts swaying, gyrating to the beats of the Bollywood number Chikni Chameli, a girl who likes to be called Amanda, danced. It was 7:30 pm on a sticky Mumbai summer day. A whistling, applauding audience cheered her on. Amanda’s dance lasted for 15 minutes at a stretch till she walked up to a round iron table placed in the corner of the beer parlour. At the table, she was offered Rs 200 in tips. She gave a quick cue to the stout man managing the old sound box and started dancing to another number, Mere photo ko seene se yaar…Chipka le saiyan Fevicol se. ‘Stick my photograph to your chest,’ she gestured with her hands imitating Kareena Kapoor, the actress who danced to the popular song in 2012. Amanda was a 21-year-old woman from Kolkata who had come to Mumbai in search of work. In Kolkata, she had finished Class X thanks to a scholarship offered to economically backward girl students whose parental income is less than Rs 1 lakh per annum. In Mumbai, Amanda earned a living of Rs.15,000 per month and stayed at a rented flat with six other women. She paid Rs 4,000 as her share towards rent in one of the most expensive and populated cities in the country known for its tinsel town, stock exchanges, red light areas, beaches, and colleges. She worked at one of the oldest institutions in the financial capital of India: the dance bar.

‘It is better to dance than to go to streets for begging or earning livelihood through unacceptable means. The mindset cannot be to prohibit…we are treating it as a performance of art,’ the Supreme Court observed in its 2016 judgement.

A business which evolved from the cabaret dances of the 1960s and 1970s, dance bars, where women danced to fast beats of scintillating songs, were once banned in 2005, only to be allowed 11 years later by the Supreme Court of India which upheld Article 14 of the Constitution that ensured the right to earn a living and Article 19, right to equality. ‘It is better to dance than to go to streets for begging or earning livelihood through unacceptable means. The mindset cannot be to prohibit…we are treating it as a performance of art,’ the Supreme Court observed in its 2016 judgement. An estimate of five lakh dance girls lived in Mumbai and Thane; older women were out of work and young ones still earned a living discreetly. Powered by the SC judgements of 2013 and 2016, Amanda earned tips up to Rs 600 on good days in a dance bar located at Borivali East and attended college at Navagaon. She also supported the education of two younger siblings, boys of 12 and 17 years of age who lived in a small town in West Bengal. The young woman, who spoke fluent Hindi and English, said dance was always her passion. ‘I had learnt classical dance. Bharatanatyam,’ she told me. But in the college where she was studying for a B.Com. degree, she did not participate in dance competitions. ‘I don’t want to be identified as a bar dancer,’ she said while spreading out her modest wardrobe. Her worries were not unfounded because there was a fair chance she would be expelled from college if someone revealed what she did for a living. Her character could be scrutinized. She could be judged immoral and unworthy of education.

Her worries were not unfounded because there was a fair chance she would be expelled from college if someone revealed what she did for a living. Her character could be scrutinized.

When her shift ended at 12.30 am, Amanda shared why she became a dance girl even when the profession was considered unbecoming of a woman. ‘My father died when I was 12 years old, and my mother fell ill last year. I wanted to study and support my family. When a friend who worked in Panvel came to my home in 2015, she offered a place to stay and a job as a waitress. That plan did not work out and I got this job. I am not ashamed,’ Amanda spoke with the confidence of a woman who felt proud of having beaten the odds.

In the bar, it got rough sometimes. She had suffered a cut on her wrist as she got caught in a drunken brawl. ‘But they can’t touch me. My sisters in the bar are strong. They protect me,’ she said, glancing at older women who had worked the same job for more than a decade. Women who danced to fast-track Bollywood songs were sisters connected by the same socio-economic affiliations that manifested as a strong kinship. They educated their children, paid for their own college education, and sometimes even sheltered ageing parents. While India’s female literacy rate of 65.46 per cent lagged behind male literacy by 16.68 percentage points, women struggled to keep pace and get ahead. Many, like Amanda, ended up in socially stigmatized professions, and others inched forward carrying the weight of gender-based constraints—including physical and sexual assaults—to be college students or working women. In more than one ways, their stories were tangled.

Women who danced to fast-track Bollywood songs were sisters connected by the same socio-economic affiliations that manifested as a strong kinship.

‘I didn’t have a television at my house. Some of the songs I dance to now, I heard on the TV set of a neighbour. But I had noticed even back then that actresses who dance to the song are held in esteem,’ making a comparison between her yearly earning of Rs 1.8 lakh and the estimated Rs 15,500 crore Bollywood film industry. The college girl pointed a finger at the divides between good and bad women, judged so by society. In her view, she was any other girl in her early 20s: optimistic. Amanda wanted to be a Chartered Accountant after finishing her Bachelor’s in Commerce. She harboured dreams of walking along Mumbai’s Marine Drive with her boyfriend to whom she planned to get married. ‘I like films shot in office spaces with cubicles. I could get a Customer Service Centre job once I better my English,’ she gazed beyond the present to a future that was already in the making. Whether others liked it or not, she was one of the 3.46 crore students enrolled in higher education in India as per 2015–16 statistics. Amanda was also one of the 1.6 crore girl students who made it to higher education the same year, even as enrolment of girls remained at 46.2 per cent of total enrolment. ‘In one year, I will take dance lessons again. Maybe Salsa. Later, I’ll dance only for myself,’ the girl who now wore thick mascara and blue eye shadow, said.

I asked her why she named herself Amanda. ‘I like English songs. A friend had given me songs of Justin Bieber,’ she smiled. We laughed at the connection; she had named herself after Amanda Cerny, Playboy model, and girlfriend of US-based singer Justine Bieber. By the time we wound up our conversation, Amanda was ready to go home to get a good night’s sleep. She didn’t like being late for class.

Excerpted with permission from The Ferment: Youth Unrest in India by Nikhila Henry published by Pan Macmillan at Rs. 599, 284 p.

Picture Credit: Pan Macmillan

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