Happy Women's Day!

Is it merely age that brings about a desire to observe the places, the people, the cultures around you a little more closely, or is it something else? So many things I missed paying attention to, I realise now. So many questions that remained unanswered through my growing up years.

By the way, I am still growing up.

Being from a small town has its disadvantages in this fast paced world, but it helps in so many other ways too. Sitting with colleagues over the lunch table at office, I realise that the exposure I've had to different cultures is probably more than most people who've spent their whole lives in one city. Add to that a job that has me running a team spread across sixteen cities in India, and you'll understand why I now envy anyone whose parents had transferable jobs growing up.

Life indeed is too short, and there is so much to explore.

If Delhi is my second home, Kolkata is definitely my third.

In my childhood, Kolkata was the ultimate destination for all of us, the biggest city in the East. It was the city every aspiring student dreamed of, and I grew up hoping to land there myself one day. As luck would have it, my elder brother was posted there with SBI. Among the blurred memories still in my head is the view of Victoria Park, where I saw, for the first time, hundreds of couples sitting barely ten feet apart, each pair trying to hide under an umbrella, too lost in each other to notice onlookers like me. What a spirit. One should really love as if no one is watching.

Kolkata has changed since. I read in a magazine that over seventy percent of the new generation there moves to other cities for better careers and a better life. Three new Bengali restaurants opening up in Gurgaon lately is proof enough, as is the record supply of fish to Delhi NCR over the last few years.

I'm no sociologist, but isn't it a good sight to see cities turning cosmopolitan? Gangs of Wasseypur wouldn't have caught as many eyes otherwise. May it continue, and may every city grow multi-ethnic enough that we find ourselves united for the right reasons. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the Sanskrit phrase, says much the same thing. It means the whole world is one family, and that everyone carries their own view of it, each one worth respecting.

But these aren't really the thoughts that had my observant self wondering, all through this recent trip to Kolkata. I probably have a few more years to go before I can write something proper about the new culture and how India is absorbing it. So what was it, then? Keep reading.

Because of a strike that week, I couldn't find a good hotel and spent an hour roaming Park Street, the Connaught Place of Kolkata if I may say so without offence to anyone, before finally landing a decent room. It was good enough to satisfy the small ego of a middle management corporate guy who insists on a nice property. While checking in, the desk mentioned, almost in passing, that the hotel had its own dance bar in the basement, open through the evening until midnight. I reached office the next day and mentioned it to my colleague. I wish I could describe the joy on his face. "I hope you don't mind me joining you tonight, sir, just for company, only if you say so," Rajesh said, right on cue, over evening tea. As if I hadn't seen that coming. His fidgeting feet and the constant glances at his watch told me it was already eight in the evening and his curiosity was working overtime to get us both back to the hotel. Kaisa hota rahega sir. Main na kabhi dance bar dekha nahin hai. Kitne paise lagte rahenge sir. Maine toh wife se bhi permission le liya hai sir. Hum na do peg laga ke jayenge, udhar kya pata drink bahut mehnga hove toh sir. That was more or less his running commentary as we walked back to the hotel. More than the questions themselves, I enjoyed the particular Gujarati meets Mumbai flavour of his tone. Being his boss doesn't mean I know everything, I thought, and let myself smile.

We walked into the dance bar. Loud music, and on a stage a short distance from the seating area, a set of beautiful, well dressed, wonderfully expressive women moved gracefully through the usual Bollywood numbers. I looked at Rajesh and loved the yeh-kahan-aa-gaye-hum look on his face, the classic where-have-we-landed expression. We settled into an average couch and ordered a beer that cost five hundred rupees, which we decided to nurse slowly so it would last a couple of hours. Nobody else there seemed quite as frugal as us. Most of the men watching were middle aged and looked comfortably rich, and they were tipping these women as though they were all somehow related to Warren Buffett.

There were eight of them, for anyone curious about the count, young, charming, and so expressive in their movements that it was hard to look away. Fully dressed, and yet every gesture was deliberate and precise. I remember thinking, that day, that I'd never regretted not being a Bollywood producer quite so much, I would have signed every one of them for something. They matched the choreography of each song almost exactly, sometimes better than the original. The famous gesture, crossing a thumb over the lips, from the song Mujhe Toh Teri Lat Lag Gayi, they did a thousand times better than the actress in the film. I must have played that song a hundred times since getting back to Gurgaon. And the talent went beyond dance. A few of them sang beautifully on the karaoke mic, and every one of them lip synced with total precision, the kind you only get from years of repetition. They all looked like they came from good families. None of us would have guessed, meeting them anywhere else, what they did for a living. Rajesh found out the next day, after asking around at the hotel, that the bar's daily turnover was close to three lakh rupees, all of it in cash, all of it, unsurprisingly, off the books.

While Rajesh was busy enjoying the music, and the view, I found myself somewhere else entirely, wondering what brought each of these women to dance for the pieces of paper we call money, and what made these middle aged, wealthy men throw so much of it at people they weren't even allowed to touch. I'll admit my mind went to cheaper places too, I knew well enough they weren't there purely for the music.

I wish I could have spoken to even one of them. I wish these questions didn't have to stay unanswered as I grow older. Not that the fate of the world hangs on the answer, but a person's curiosity counts for something too, doesn't it? I found myself wondering if any man in his right mind would say no to marrying one of them. They were that beautiful, and carried themselves with that much confidence. They looked dignified even under the weight of every staring, testosterone heavy gaze in that room. That was the day I understood that dignity is something you give yourself, never something reflected back at you by other people's eyes.

I'm not here to pass judgment for or against dance bar culture, or anything beyond it, there are far greater minds than mine to weigh in on that. All I want, from the heart, is to offer gratitude to whatever power made us all.

I love you, God. The best thing you ever did for humankind was to make women. They come in so many forms, and they've been carrying this species forward for more years than I can count. They come as power, as a mother, a wife, a sister, and as the women who dance and sing to entertain us, and yes, the ones who sell their bodies too.

Whatever form you take, my respect for you only grows, every time I come face to face with it. And I'm happy, I confess, to go through life with more than a few of these questions left unanswered.

Happy Women's Day.