Sharad Raj remembers the vibrant yet gritty nights of 90s Mumbai, reflecting on its transformation from a city of contrasts to a sanitized facade masking systemic displacement.

Sharad Raj takes us on a poignant journey through the streets of 90s Mumbai, where dance bars, street vendors, and mill workers defined the city’s pulse after dark. From his favourite Shruti Bar to the haunting story of a friend lost to tragedy, Raj vividly recounts the lives and livelihoods that thrived in the shadows. As redevelopment swept the city, displacing its nighttime inhabitants, Mumbai transformed into a sanitized version of itself, trading character for gentrification. Raj’s reflections question the cost of progress, offering a compelling narrative on the erasure of a city’s soul.

The year was 1991. I made a trip to Bombay to cast either Neena Gupta, Rehana Sultan, or Tanuja in my diploma film. Neena was not free, though she treated me to some hot aloo parathas while little Masaba was getting cranky in the adjacent room. Rehana Sultan saw through me, realizing that my intent in approaching her was more due to the sexual content of the roles she had done, and I had more of the same to offer. Tanuja, too, was very warm and cordial and would have been more than happy to do the film if she hadn’t been scheduled to leave for Toronto. Alas!

Despondent and hungry, I entered an affordable Chinese restaurant in Mahim before catching a train back to Pune to return to FTII from Dadar. For the first time, I saw a woman serving at a restaurant. Coming from Lucknow, I had never encountered a female waitress before. The restaurant was empty. I ordered a beer with peanuts while waiting for my Chicken Hakka Noodles. She served me the beer and started making small talk. It was apparent that I was both inquisitive and surprised to see her serving alcohol.

Finally, she broached the topic and said, “Aapke mann mein kuch chal raha hai jo aap keh nahi rahe” (There is something going on in your mind that you are not telling me). I understood what she meant but wasn’t entirely sure, so I acted naïve, eager to confirm if my suspicions were correct. They were. She asked for three hundred rupees, with the venue set for as soon as the restaurant closed for lunch at 3 PM. That was all the money I had, and an entire month was left.

That was my first tryst with Bombay bars, restaurants, and the women working there. Before that, whenever I travelled to Lucknow during vacations, I would get down at Bombay VT station at night and catch the Lucknow train in the morning at 8. I would spend the night roaming the roads of Bombay around VT.

The city came alive under the neon signs of Citibank’s tagline back in the nineties: “Citi never sleeps.” The contrast couldn’t have been starker when compared to those inhabiting the city at night. Girls stood behind each pillar from the VT station right up to Ballard Pier. Apart from them, chaiwallahs (tea sellers), idli-dosa sellers, and the famous Bombay anda-bhurji-pav vendors dominated the streets, joined by street kids snorting drugs, pimps soliciting with their refrain, “Nice girls, nice girls,” beggars, pavement dwellers, night taxi drivers—some resembling Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver, actually ferrying girls back and forth—cops, cigarette peddlers, and drunk men.

That was the dominant essence of Bombay on a regular night in the 80s and 90s.

The face of the woman in the Mahim restaurant haunted me still. Once I settled in Mumbai for good, the first thing I wanted to do was find out if her case was a one-off or if there were more women serving liquor. Typical middle-class curiosity. By then, Aunty’s bars had shut down.

Soon, I landed a job with Ketan Mehta on Maya Memsaab. That meant late nights, either at Opera House where he lived or at Aradhana Studio, where the great Paddy was working on the film’s sound. Ketan would give me cash for expenses and commuting. One night, after an enriching track-laying session with Paddy at Aradhana, I stepped out of the Natraj Studio complex and noticed bars all around, their neon signs and colourful lights glowing at the entrance doors.

I entered one of them. It was dimly lit, with loud Bollywood music playing, and to my amazement, not just one but several women were serving. Younger ones, garishly dressed, danced on a well-lit dance floor. I was numb, stunned, curious, and awestruck all at once. It was a world of its own, with its own norms, protocols, and pricing. Famously known as Bombay’s dance bars, beer bars, or ladies’ bars, they became a habit for me.

Every time my mother slipped a thousand rupees into my pocket apart from what my father officially gave me, I would see them off, step out, and head to a bar. Many of these bars had fine singers, both men and women, aspiring to become Bollywood playback artists. Apparently, quite a few of them had made it big in the past, so they all held onto hope. Over time, I got familiar with the nuances of this world and would almost always spend time talking to the women serving.

To my surprise, many of them were married women with proper family lives. Others were erstwhile dancers, now considered too old to perform on the dance floor. Some were the sole breadwinners for their families.

Those were the times when the mills were gradually shutting down. Unemployment was rising, as was the Shiv Sena under Balasaheb Thackeray. Before I shifted to a rented apartment in Lokhandwala Complex, Andheri West, I stayed with Ahmed Bhai and Suchitra Bhabhi at Nestle Apartments in the Bombay Dyeing compound at Elphinstone Road. Mills surrounded the area, but they were slowly divesting their land to builders. In fact, cotton balls from the Bombay Dyeing mill would float into our house.

The road to Ahmed Bhai’s house from Elphinstone Road station passed through a red-light area in the slums that catered exclusively to the working class. The conditions were filthy and unhygienic, but just outside that lane were hutments and chawls where their clients likely lived. Not to forget the mandatory desi daru bar, a chemist shop, and a Chinese food cart—lifelines for those hungry after midnight, myself included. Families and pleasure houses coexisted as neighbours on Elphinstone Road.

Late-night journeys by the local train meant traveling alongside mill workers. The evening shift ended around 9 PM, so workers returning home often stopped at the red-light lane or a bar. Meanwhile, night-shift workers would be heading to work. The lifeline of Mumbai was always the fastest and safest way to travel, for it was constantly filled with passengers commuting at all hours.

Soon, I shifted to a rented place in Lokhandwala Complex. It was my first tryst with the suburbs. Not being accustomed to local train travel initially, I would get down at Bandra and take an auto from there. From the portico of the station through the entirety of Linking Road, to Juhu, and the Citizen Hotel turn, the streets were lined with streetwalkers, pimps, auto drivers, drug peddlers, and small, inconspicuous hotels flourishing after 10 PM.

There were two major hotspots for auto rickshaw drivers. The first was opposite Nanavati Hospital in Vile Parle, where decked-up autos would wait, blaring Kumar Sanu-Alka Yagnik songs and their cover versions. These autos wouldn’t take you home—they chose to wait. Why? Because the Nanavati nurses would finish their shifts and come out, and the rickshaw drivers preferred them over other passengers.

I cannot recall the last time I sat in an auto that was refurbished and had Hindi songs blaring. Somewhere during my transition from auto to car travel, those charming autos seemed to vanish. Now, not many wait outside Nanavati, at least not with the same fervour and flavour as they did in the nineties.

Bombay three decades ago was also an olfactory experience—a city of flavours and smells.

The second hotspot for rickshaw drivers, who also doubled as pimps, was at the Citizen Hotel turn between BR Chopra’s house and Juhu Beach. Many of the fancy autos had girls sitting in them. Apart from these hotspots, bus stops along Centaur Hotel Road were also frequented by night birds.

On many sleepless nights, I would walk up to Juhu Beach late at night just to experience the empty roads of Bombay, the crowded pavements, and the bustling by-lanes. It was during one such walk that I befriended an immigrant from Bangladesh, Anita Muslim. Seeing a young man walking around, women would solicit, and that’s how Anita and I started talking. She shared her life story with me—she was saving money for her son and to marry her lover.

One night, as I wandered around Juhu Beach, I didn’t see her. It wasn’t unusual; she could have been with a client. A few days later, I saw her friend and asked about Anita. Her friend told me that Anita’s lover had duped and dumped her, and she had burned herself alive.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I had lost a warm friend who, inexplicably, had shared her life story with me. Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, an eternal favourite of mine, came to mind. She was my Giulietta Masina as Cabiria, the streetwalker, and Madhabi Mukherjee’s Sita, who lands in a brothel in Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha, rolled into one.

Mia Maelzer did fantastic justice to Anita as Anita Muslim in my film Ek Betuke Aadmi Ki Afrah Raatein (2023) and immortalized Anita’s story for good.

While I continued to patronize the ladies’ bars, my mother and aunt once even expressed a desire to visit them. Among the famous bars like Topaz and Lakshadweep, frequented by the rich and famous, my favourite was the simple and affordable Shruti Bar, located opposite Pinky Cinema in Andheri East. While working on my first daily soap opera, Kumkum, I noticed one of the dancing girls at Shruti Bar and thought she was gorgeous—perfect for the title role. Naïvely, I tried persuading her to act, but one day she told me, “Aap achche admi hain magar aap jo keh rahe hain woh nahi ho sakta” (You are a nice person, but what you are suggesting is not possible). 

Around that time, I watched Mizoguchi’s The Street of Shame, set in the red-light district of Osaka. Inspired, I started working on a script with Ishan Trivedi, drawing from the film but setting it in a Mumbai ladies’ bar. However, before we could finish the script, Madhur Bhandarkar’s Chandni Bar released, and we scrapped the project. Even now, I would like to revisit that idea someday.

In 2005, Mumbai’s dance bars were banned and shut down—an act that seemed like moral policing and an attempt to woo women voters. It wasn’t until I watched Robert Rodriguez’s Machete in 2010, where Robert De Niro plays a politician campaigning to close the Mexican border under the guise of fighting drug cartels, that I realized a similar strategy was at play with the beer bars. Politicians wanted to appear righteous, but the underlying intent was control. Reports emerged of bar dancers turning to flesh trade, being sent to Dubai, or dancing at private parties of politicians across India.

On August 14, 2005, the last day the bars were to operate, my wife graciously gave me a thousand rupees for beer. I visited Shruti Bar one last time with a friend.

The mills had shut, dance bars were banned, and the city was sold to builders as redevelopment began. Old, illegal structures were replaced and legitimized. The hotels in Juhu, once frequented by sex workers, were replaced by luxury buildings. From Bandra station to Andheri, most structures were refurbished or redeveloped, displacing all those who had once inhabited the city at night.

The slums are vanishing, and chawls have been replaced by malls. The city is getting swankier by the day. But where are those who earned their livelihoods at night—the auto drivers with their once-swanky rickshaws, Chinese food carts that were my lifeline during the days of daily soaps, drug peddlers, pimps, mill workers, anda-bhurji-pav vendors, tea hawkers, Tamilian idli sellers, and streetwalkers? 

They have been systematically removed. Mumbai has been “cleansed” for the benefit of the upwardly mobile, much like New York. Dharavi is next—ripe and ready for redevelopment.

Poverty wasn’t eradicated; the poor were removed instead. We are clean now. Mumbai is cleansed. Is it???