Dear Ertyaas,
I should have taken you to watch the
dancing girls of Dar, when you were here. You can call it my inflamed
sense of protectionism or may be i wanted to keep something for you and
me to come to Dar in the distant future. You
had your Pani Puris and Indian food tasting here but the subcontinent
is not just exporting food. There is a thriving and not so underground
culture of dancing bars here as well , kind of a mini Chandni Chowk or Rung-mehal in
the heart of Africa... can you imagine that!!!
It was some
months back when an office colleague told me about this new night club
opened not so far from where i live, called 'SB' (greetings to old Bombay). I was a bit
skeptic in going there, my past experience with these sort of night
clubs was not so good. They were more of tone down Desi versions of
strip clubs where Indian and Nepali girls were trying to show off and dance in slow
motion on Desi beats. They had this melancholic feeling , and one always leaves with the guilt feeling of
promoting a male-chauvinistic activity...But this one was different.
You
enter and you find yourself in a different world, a world full of colors and smoke.
you can feel the amount of money and effort spent on the level of
details in creating that out of the world ambiance. Glittering lights, Disco balls hanging,
laser and trance lights trying to play hide and seek on a wooden floor beaming with lights. And then there are these really good dancing girls showing their art of Indian dancing and hungry of appreciation. Nothing vulgar or obscene. All art..
You remember that Milonga party we went together, where I was dying to dance with that Argentinian girl, staring her as if i will eat her raw, and finally she relented only to let me go in 5 seconds because of my beginner's Tango steps. This place reminded me of those tango parties where the invitation goes with the eyes only. A connection between you and her that only you and her is feeling. The smoke coming from the smoke machine and the smoky drinks and the smoky eyes of these dancer, they all take you to this other world i am talking about. There are not just we men in the audience, there is a whole lot of couples and girls from wealthy families coming to appreciate them.
One
can say due to the current oil boom of Tanzania economy it is the sellers of these entertainment industry trying to print some money, but if you
think a bit deep it is the buyers, the very us humans, having some thing
inherent or with a coded mystery hidden in our DNA perhaps, who are
actually letting this whole business flourishing. For what is luxury, if
not just a sugarcoated need for the wealthy and stomach filled people
to explore the mysterious side of human existence and survive the ever
increasing boredom.
And there is a bar now open with girls from my country as well...Can you believe that????
