The Jaipur Ice Cream Club.

(An excerpt from my book: 'Unprotected Sects.')

Sometime in the eighties, on one of my business trips, I became fascinated by a sign outside a shop with darkened windows. It was some sort of strip-joint with the odd name of ‘The Jaipur Ice Cream Club.’ I stood in front of that place for a long time looking at a picture of a fluffy lady called Mojoini. Finally I went in, paid a few rupees and passed through a faded red curtain into a brightly-lit, hazy room with a lot of men smoking and drinking and talking but no women. Not one woman.

Eventually, however, I noticed men going down and coming up some stairs near the back. It led down into a kind of dark, dank, dirty dungeon, thick with more smoke, music blaring but nobody talking. The men sat quietly at round tables watching intently. At the front was a stage with a broken disco ball over it and an over-weight lady dancing to a Bollywood film song.

Madam Mojoini was the worst dancer I’d ever seen, not an exotic dancer at all. She did take her shirt off but there was a shirt underneath. Her under-shirt was a kind of cut-off tank-top. She clearly had a bra under that. And anyway she kept putting her red and black over-shirt back on, taking it off, then putting it back on again. She had a long red skirt on replete with sequins. Her eyes were darkened by cadjul. Her hair was long, black and she would whip it around somewhat in pace with the music as she sashayed around the stage. I ordered a ‘Kingfisher’ beer, pretended to sip it, sat back and wondered why I'd come.

Mojoini’s dancing was a type of hybrid belly-free-form-jazz-affair. It wasn’t sensual. It wasn’t particularly anything. Nevertheless she held the attention of each and every man as she built up to some sort of climax, moving faster and faster. All eyes were on her as she took off her shirt and put it back on coquettishly again and again. All eyes were on the way she repeatedly thrust out her hips as though she either needed a hip replacement or would soon need a hip replacement.

The actual climax, I supposed, came when the lady stepped off the stage. She began wandering around the room shaking every man’s hand. As the music continued to blare Mojoini went from table to table, from chair to chair shaking every man’s hand. She made a point of ‘connecting’ with each man, but she missed me. She missed only me. Out of the whole room-full of captivated, wide-eyed, excited, men of all shapes and sizes, I was the only guy whose hand was left undefiled, a fact I found somehow strangely significant.