Leela and Priya wanted to be rescued through romantic love, even though they had chosen bar dancing for the independence it allowed them to enjoy; independence, in particular, from men. This was one of the great contradictions of the line and of bar dancers themselves. 

And so love was the constant in every conversation, an audience to every silence. Thoughts of love filled the emptiness of Priya’s evenings with Leela when the sun began its descent into the salt flats and with its vivid colours faded Priya and Leela’s ability to lie to one another. The idea of love was a comfort when Leela suspected Priya was thinking of where her life was headed, and she worried that hers was going the same place because unlike ‘good girls’ no ‘decent’ man would have her. 

Above all, the cutting was an expression of the girls’ fear of what would happen to them if they didn’t marry. If they didn’t marry, they would have to work. And if they couldn’t find a job outside the line they would have to remain in it. But not as bar dancers - soon they would be considered old - as madams.

Dalali, pimping, was the natural next step because no one was better equipped to sell women, it was believed, than one who had been sold, or who had sold herself. And no one was exempt.

Not the kaali-billis - the dark-skinned girls pejoratively referred to as black cats. Not the Bengalis who were ‘dirty’ or the ‘Telugus and Madrasis’ who had ‘paise ka lalach’ - coveted money. Not even the optimists who tried to make do by embroidering kerchiefs their children would sell on the local trains, five in five different colours for ten rupees, or the ones who married with little or no discernment, believing that marriage alone was not enough, even if it was to the sort of man whom it could be said with frank acceptance of one’s fate, ‘sometimes he works and sometimes he does not,’ and ‘one day at work, ten days at home.’ And if one was in a nudging-winking sort of mood: ‘My mister didn’t go to work today. He drank too much deshi at our wedding.’

‘Oh, congratulations, when did you marry?’

‘Ten years ago!’

— Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing.