We press on. A swarm of warm bodies in winter heat.
It's a small town in North India - wild and unabashed in its ways - and somewhere on its outskirts tonight, students, rickshaw-pullers, day-labourers, night-watchmen, and the anonymous, have all descended to a small enclosed booth. In the yellowed darkness of a dangling bulb, only flailing arms can be seen, with callused hands that clutch 10 rupee notes, and push and shove, to get to the cavernous opening at the counter; where another hand, equally rude, dispenses red tickets – or the promise of sinful pleasure.
The night is lecherous and a few of us from the University - our faces wrapped in scarves - have joined the crowds; determined to see for ourselves what we have only heard of until now. Abuses are hurled, elbows thrust and collars clutched, but our momentum of numbers carries us to the front and the tickets. It's supposed to be out of bounds for us – the University advisory says so. It's forbidden, sinful, profane and vulgar, and called The Variety Show. Though nomenclatures can be misleading and full of irony.
The crowd, now about a hundred strong, stands huddled in groups, anxiously waiting for the gates to open. It is a makeshift canvas tent that we are about to enter: contrived out of bamboo poles and tarpaulin and fortified with metal grilles that act as barricades, to keep the inquisitive and the ticketless out. From inside, into the winter air, waft sounds of a risque 90's bollywood number, punctuated with shrill whistles and loud catcalls.
A few minutes later, with a huge roar the audience from the earlier show gushes out. Wrapped in chadors and scarves, laughing, back-slapping, and scattering ticket-stubs in the air like confetti, they raise a cloud of dust that refuses to settle down, and then quickly disappear under its cover.
It's time for us to go in. But we let the others - the more zealous, the more experienced - go first. In the rush to get to the front seats, bodies are pinned against barricades, chairs overturned and the entire tent almost uprooted. The whole structure convulses a few times, perhaps in warning or anticipation. I can't tell right now. Later, we file in silently and sit where we can.
The stage is bare. There are no curtains to be raised or props to be set up. Nothing dramatic or distracting. The show has no pretensions to being anything else than what it really is - a modern day mujra.
A song starts playing from somewhere back stage. It's a number from Ram Teri Ganga Maili, the one in which Mandakini contorts under a waterfall trying to get her bosom visibly wet. The crowd lets out a huge roar of approval. Some sit up in their seats and let loose a cacophony of whistles, while still others pelt the empty stage with peanut shells. To each his own mode of appreciation. The show has just begun.
A woman walks onto the stage. Curvy, fair-skinned, amply bosomed, and wrapped in a white saree, she is carrying a bucket of water with her - that she places at the centre of the platform. A boy follows with another bucket. Then she looks at us with a practiced sweep of head that could have been almost regal, had it not been for the winter chill in the air- a reminder as to where we were.
Slowly at first and then quickening her motions, she starts convulsing to the song. She dances on her toes, I notice. It isn't a very danceable song but she does her best. Every once in a while she walks up to the buckets and pours a mug-full of water over her head. She keeps at it until her nipples perk up from the cold, and start peeking out from under the now soggy white cloth. She playfully splashes a mug-full our way. The crowd goes ballistic.
She is wet and it's not winter anymore.
