Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a wonderfully engaging and elegantly written book that tells the story of Leela, a teenage bar dancer in Mumbai’s seedy, barely-concealed underworld of dance bars and prostitution.


I forgot that I was reading a work of non-fiction. The author has so skilfully crafted the story and the characters that you feel you know Leela intimately from the very first page. Later characters like Priya and the cleverly constructed Apsara are also brilliantly drawn.


Although the book covers a fairly short time span and is relatively short in length, this adds to the pace of the narrative, which was gripping throughout. Beautiful Thing is a page turner. The twist in the tale in Apsara’s story, in particular, was unexpected genius and the somewhat sudden and frustrating ending left me wanting more. If ever Faleiro was to produce a sequel I’d be eager to read it. Leela is a character that stays with you long after the final page. There are many questions that remain unanswered, many fears for Leela that remain unassuaged.

Faleiro is subtle in her revelation of the prejudices that exist within the world of the dancers themselves. While it would be easy to focus on the obvious injustices the dancers face in the outside world, Faleiro succeeds in highlighting the bigotries that consume Leela and her cohorts, revealing a moral hierarchy within an immoral world.

My one criticism about the book would be the use of long strings of Hindi, which had the tendency to disrupt the flow of the narrative rather than add to it. But this is minor. Faleiro has created an endearingly solid work that was five years in the making and is as beautiful as its title implies. Beautiful Thing is a sensitive, often shocking and moving insight into a world that most wouldn’t want to be a part of but one which we’re hooked on discovering more about, however uncomfortable it is. That’s the writer’s ultimate talent in producing this gem of a book.

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