Wed, 11/19/2008 - 16:29 — admin
Sixteen-year-old Hema wants to be a nurse. To fulfil her dream, she performs at a Kathmandu dance bar every evening, gyrating around a pole, stripping and giving company to strangers at night.
At a dimly lit dance bar in Thamel in the heart of Kathmandu, she performs to foot-tapping Bollywood numbers in front of customers seated on chairs around an elevated dance floor.
Hema (name changed) hardly receives any attention from customers busy sharing drinks and intimate moments with other teenaged girls – called “comfort girls” – until she sheds more clothes. Semi-clad, she finishes her act without any applause.
Soon another teenaged girl replaces her. Hema gets dressed and returns – this time to sit with the customers.
“Why are you sitting without a drink? Buy one for yourself. I will take pineapple juice,” Hema says in Hindi to this IANS correspondent.
She knows the tricks of the trade well. The dance bar makes money every time a customer places an order for himself or the comfort girls.
“Are you from a news channel? Why are you asking these questions?” she asks, visibly uneasy. Once she is told that she is talking to an Indian student, she starts to talk.
“I was in Class 8 when I joined this place last year. My father, who works in India, stopped sending us money. But I wanted to continue my studies and become a nurse. My elder sister left me here,” she said.
Rough estimates suggest there could be more than 1,000 dance bars in Kathmandu, each with 10-15 girls who take turns performing The bars open at 6 p.m. and close at midnight, attracting a constant flow of visitors.
Girls from poverty-stricken corners of Nepal dance in the bars, hoping to fulfil their simple dreams some day. Some parents are never told about their profession; others let their daughters go on as long as the money keeps coming.
“Since there is no other job opportunity, everyone lands up here. My employer pays me Nepali Rs.3,000 ($40) per month. Clients usually give a good tip to all comfort girls just for sitting with them,” says Hema, who hopes her run there will end in another six or seven months.
She said girls like her work at dance bars for a few months. “When we have enough savings, we quit.”
But quitting is never easy, given the fast money.
Though dance bars are not illegal in Nepal, stripping is. But in a nation where 30 per cent of the 30 million population is below the poverty line, few seem to care.
By Sahil Makkar
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