Dimensions
154 x 234 x 18mm
When Sonia Faleiro set out to report on Bombay's bar dancers, she thought she knew what she would find: downtrodden, voiceless women, the helpless victims of predictable poverty. Instead she meets Leela: nineteen, charismatic and fearlessly outspoken, Leela has been dancing in Bombay's bars since she was thirteen. With her sharp wit and stubborn optimism, she is the best-paid dancer in a bar on the notorious Mira Road, where she dances to Bollywood film music. In the audience are 'kustomers', men with a little disposable income but not much else going for them. Leela has a 'husband' (who is already married), a few lovers whose names she can't remember, an insufferable mother camping out in her flat, and an adored best friend, Priya - the most beautiful woman she has ever seen. But when an ambitious politician shuts down the city's bars, Leela is forced into the most precarious kind of sex work - and must trade her proud independence for mere survival. Beautiful Thing is the vivid, intimate portrait of a young woman fleeing abuse and poverty to build a life on her own terms, in a city equally bent on reinventing itself. And it is the compelling st
