IN AUGUST 2008, my cousin Sunilla accompanied me to a narrow shop in south Mumbai that dealt solely in women’s underwear. ‘Could we see some bras in black?’ she asked. Almost as an afterthought, she added, ‘Not for me, but for my brother.’
To her credit, the Sindhi woman behind the counter didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she gazed expertly at my chest, and with only the slightest curl of disapproval, began pulling out different styles from white cardboard boxes. Sunilla rummaged through them, discarding those that were too frilly or lacy, picking up the ones that met her approval and holding them against my body. ‘Don’t you have some with more padding?’ she asked, poking at the cup of the one she liked best and flipping it inside out. ‘He needs it for a dance he’s doing — we have to make him look more filled out.’
The Sindhi woman’s brow furrowed. ‘This is the maximum padding we carry, madam.’ The curl of her mouth deepened into a scowl when Sunilla suggested I try the bra out to make sure it fit. Reluctantly, the proprietress pointed me to the tiny trial room.
Inside, I looked unsurely at myself in the mirror. Should I take off my shirt and strap the bra under my banian? Across my bare chest? What exactly was I supposed to be looking for? I finally just stretched it over my shirt — it felt a bit tight once I managed to get the hooks in place. I thrust myself towards the mirror. Not quite Helen, by any means. But yes, my new topography should do the trick.
The invitation had come about a month prior — to give a reading at the Brooklyn Book Festival in New York, in September 2008. The catch was that, after the reading, each invited writer had to ‘take a risk’ — perform something on the public stage that they’d never done before. I’d always wanted to dance like Helen, do a homage to her. What better excuse would I ever get?
The timing was perfect, because I could pick up a costume on my upcoming trip to India. Sunilla was thrilled to take me shopping. Back when I was five and six, she would dress me up as a girl, using bangles and clip-on earrings, and draping a dupatta over my head like the pallu of a sari. Once, she spent an hour dolling me up as a Japanese geisha, complete with kimono and eye shadow and chopsticks in my hair, for a fancy-dress competition (needless to say, I won). Although this cross-dressing phase didn’t last, the photographic evidence remains — there I am in my childhood albums, all decked out in jewellery and make-up, positively beaming in delight. I knew my Helen would have to be in full drag, to do justice to the memory of all those photographs.
I’m not sure when I first saw her dance. The earliest I can remember now are Helen’s movies Dus Lakh and Teesri Manzil from 1966, when I was seven. It was still the golden age of Hindi cinema (with the industry not even called ‘Bollywood’ as yet), when movies were the only form of entertainment for most families, the common thread that linked all strata of society. On Mondays, my mother and I would take the bus to Worli to buy advance tickets at the small, boxy Lotus cinema, where a new film was released every Friday. (Sometimes, we’d even see a second movie over the weekend, at one of the more prestigious ‘main run’ cinema houses like Maratha Mandir or Novelty.) Helen’s name in the credits ensured that even if the movie was a bust, there would at least be one reliably entertaining bit in it. I’d wait for her to emerge in her glitzy outfit, her lips pouting in the trademark ‘bad girl’ smile that could turn vulnerable in an instant. No matter how sizzling her ‘cabaret’ number, she always managed to project sex and passion and energy without descending into vulgarity (even covering her midriff in a flesh-coloured ‘skin’ for modesty’s sake). Sometimes, she’d have a speaking role, such as the villain’s moll — the one who pays for her crush on the hero by taking a bullet through her heart of gold. But usually, producers cast her for one reason alone: to dance. In this, she was the leading brand name, much like Pran for villainy and Mehmood for comedy. Her competitors over the years (the Bindus, the Faryals, the T. sisters Jaishri and Meena) could never quite match the show she put on.
The dance I decided to perform was Piya tu ab to aaja, from the 1971 movie Caravan. I’d first seen it several months before its release — my father, who worked as an assistant to the music director Madan Mohan, was friends with the director, Nasir Hussain. One morning, instead of school, my father whisked me off to Famous Labs in Tardeo to watch the preview. The movie, utterly escapist and thoroughly entertaining, was one of the best potboilers from that period. What really stayed with me was Helen’s dance — so much so that later the same year, I found myself performing an improvised version during a talent contest at an overnight cub scout picnic in Lonavla. Not just in front of over a hundred of my schoolmates, but also a highly titillated vice-principal, clapping and cheering along in his priest’s smock. Clearly, I had deeper roots to draw upon than just the geisha photographs.
Over the years, Helen’s dance from Caravan has perhaps become her most iconic — in fact, this is the dance Jerry Pinto describes as the starting point in his definitive book Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb. Watching it again on video, what comes through is the high camp, the over-the-top drama. Right from the first shot of Helen’s feet encased in fishnet stockings impatiently freeing themselves of her slippers, we know this is the dangerous antithesis of the ideal Indian woman, one willing to indulge even the most taboo of her desires. A notion confirmed as the camera moves sinuously up her body and reveals the whiskey she’s drinking. She drains the glass, then staggers across the stage in search of her lover — hearing him call her name ‘Monica’ sets her on fire, and the dance begins. (Rumour has it that the song enjoyed a sudden surge in popularity years later, during the Monica Lewinsky affair.) Later, after she’s clutched whiskey bottles to her breasts and writhed around at the base of a pole, her skirt gets caught in a barstool. Rather than free the cloth, she jettisons not only her skirt, but also her top, and prances around in a gold micro skirt and matching bra for the rest of the dance — the picture of a woman freed of all inhibition.
One could write a scholarly essay on the 1970s Bollywood clichés evident in the dance: the incongruity of Big Ben in the background when Helen’s dress (a red flamenco frock) is Spanish, the typical lack of attention paid to the extra-like male dancer who, stuffed in an ill-fitting matador outfit, acquits himself with all the grace and elegance of a frog, the irritating camera cuts to the heroine Asha Parekh, enshrouded in a traditional white sari to hammer home the contrast with the bra-and-skirt-clad vixen on stage. But little of that matters while watching the song. All that comes through is Helen having a ball, in all her campy glory, magically imbuing even the racier bits with vivacity rather than crudeness. This is the essence I wanted to capture, and experience jointly with the audience — the ebullience of Helen, her joy, her sense of liberation.
Which meant that any kind of drag queen outlandishness was out. Tapping into my ‘inner Helen’ was more important than looking like her. I realised I needed neither wig not make-up — in fact, I didn’t really have to duplicate any of Helen’s get-up. Sunilla took me to the famous Maganlal Dresswala store in Kalbadevi where, after trying out several wedding dresses, I selected a red number which combined drama with elegance. The top was too tight, and the ghagra had to be hemmed, so the next day, I stood in line behind a couple of actual brides, waiting to try out the altered dress. The tailor nodded approvingly when I put it on. ‘The colour suits you well.’
Back in the US, a few hours of practise quickly taught me that the actual dance was a lot harder than it looked. For one thing, the song was long, and required a great deal of stamina to perform. I soon gave up on the idea of duplicating Helen’s choreography — where would I get a short, squat matador anyway, to drag around the dance floor by his hair? The whiskey also got edited — instead, I decided to be coyer in the introduction, progressively revealing my face in brief snatches to the audience. After a few days of rehearsals, I decided it was time to get feedback from someone else.
Larry, my partner and the guinea pig I decided to test it on, didn’t know what hit him. I turned on the music as soon as he entered the door, and appeared sashaying in my dupatta as he staggered into a chair. I went through the entire routine, in full regalia (including peeling off the top layer to reveal the bra and skirt underneath). Even before the song wound down, I could already see the thoughts going through his head. Was I a closet transvestite? Had I hidden this aspect of myself all these years — is this how I secretly got my kicks? ‘Tell me you don’t intend to do this in public,’ he said.
As I scoured my carpet for tiny silver bugle beads shed from my blouse afterwards, I decided that the reason the trial had not gone over well was that my dancing simply wasn’t good enough. So I contacted my friend and colleague, Doug Hamby, a professor in the dance department of my university, for help. The next Monday, after lecturing to my mathematics class about continuity and derivatives, I went over to the studio he’d reserved for practice and showed him my dance.
‘Tell me you don’t intend to do this in public,’ Doug said. (This even before I put on the costume.)
Once the shock had worn off, though, he gave me some great tips. He suggested that, rather than memorising a set composition, I develop a repertoire of basic moves I could draw from, and improvise as I went along. ‘Strike a dramatic pose every once in a while — like an Indian goddess.’ His tutoring worked — when I showed my new moves to Larry, he seemed a
lot less scandalised. (Perhaps this was just because the initial trauma of seeing me in a dress had passed.)
On the scheduled Sunday of the event, the forecast for New York called for a possibility of afternoon showers — in which case (to my disappointment, but maybe also relief) the dance would be called off. I had gone to inspect the stage that morning — to my horror, it was right in a central square, facing the main street and a subway station entrance, in full view of both pedestrians and cars going by. Now that the time was at hand, I was overcome by something deeper than mere stage fright. What would this do to my career? My reputation as a serious writer, as a respectable mathematics professor? What would be my colleagues’ reaction? Worse, that of my students? I particularly wasn’t sure of the last part of the dance — by what stretch of imagination did I think it advisable to strip down to a bra in the middle of Brooklyn?
The rain held off — in fact, it was warm and breezy by the time four o’clock rolled around. The first part, my book reading, went well. There were two other readers, whose ‘risks’ were somewhat disappointing. One of them said she was going to ‘risk’ calling Iran, even though it was night there (she ended up not even doing that), while the other said he was a bad cook but had made brownies at home, which he passed around for the audience to sample. I didn’t get a chance to watch either one because I was busy changing into my costume at the festival headquarters building.
Let me tell you right away: it’s not the most comfortable thing to cross-dress. My layers of ghagra and underskirt and briefs (black, in case the waistband showed over the black skirt) were hot and bulky. The bra felt tight and scratchy. In fact, my chest, which I’d had to shave, itched for at least eight months after the event. (O how we artistes suffer for our art!) I donned an oversize raincoat to hide the outfit, and looking as unsavoury as someone you might expect to find loitering outside a porn theatre, padded in bare feet to the stage.
Where I cooled my heels for a quarter hour, trying not to meet the eyes of curious passersby, while an electrician was called to hook up the CD player, which they’d forgotten to connect. We finally got Asha Bhonsle’s voice ringing through the streets of Brooklyn — beckoning people to come see my dance.
Through all my planning and practice and fretting, the one thing I could never have imagined was how energising, how fulfilling, the actual performance would be. From the moment I started, I felt it — this was one of the most memorable things I would do in my life. It was like breaking through a personal barrier, reaching deep inside to express a vitality I didn’t know I possessed. No longer was I imitating Helen — these were my moves (some elegant, some ungainly), my body I was working on stage, me the audience was cheering.
If you’ve watched the video (try ‘Manil Suri Bollywood dance’ on Google), you may have noticed that there’s a point at the beginning (while I’m strutting and stretching to show off my curves) when my dupatta catches on my blouse. Mishaps like these frequently scuttled practice sessions — this time, luckily, I was able to easily free the cloth. A more serious glitch occurred while taking off my blouse — for several agonisingly long seconds, you can see me try to find the knot behind my back. But I managed to get it off in time, and with it, freed myself of the last of my inhibitions. For the final verse, danced in just my bra and skirt, I felt as liberated as Helen.
Afterwards though, as the story began appearing on various blogs, my euphoria gave way to nervousness. I waited for upset relatives to call me from Mumbai, where Mid-Day ran colour photos of me in various stages of dress and undress. Hindustan Times chided me for becoming an ‘item girl’ to sell books (in truth, I only sold two at the signing afterwards — the audience was as cheap as it was appreciative). Now that the dance was posted on YouTube, could it be long before colleagues stumbled across it? To minimise any backlash about the appropriateness of a faculty member performing a striptease on the internet, I decided to show the video to Dr Hrabowski, my university president.
‘Oh my god,’ he said when the video started. He’d wanted to call the secretaries and other office personnel to share in the viewing, but fortunately, I’d convinced him to watch it without them. He didn’t laugh (as I’d hoped), just kept whispering that single phrase, ‘Oh my god,’ over and over again. When my blouse came off, he slumped a bit in his chair and brushed his hand over his forehead as if assessing the loss of face to the entire institution. To his credit, he recovered by the end of my visit, even managing a positive spin (‘I’m constantly amazed at your ability to think — and act — outside the box’). I told him that given his support, I’d be happy to publicise the video the next time an area journalist interviewed me. He laughed nervously.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter. People judged the dance to be cute or funny or daring, but not in bad taste (perhaps thanks to Helen’s presiding guardian angel spirit). I did have to put up with the occasional ribbing from friends (‘I didn’t recognise you without your bra’), comments posted on YouTube (‘this guy was my calculus teacher, wow’), and an extremely unnerved eight-year-old nephew in London (‘Why is Manil Uncle wearing that dress?’). But aside from a drunk desi socialite at a New York party who said she’d lost all respect for me and would never read anything I ever wrote again, the result was overwhelmingly positive.
In fact, perhaps too positive. (What does one have to do to scandalise people these days?) I suppose this might be expected, with Bollywood so mainstream now that Hindi movies get their own reviews in the New York Times, and contestants in American television dance contests regularly perform Bollywood numbers. In fact, an organisation called Dhoonyadance has even started offering Bollywood dance classes in the Washington suburbs, not too far from where I live. Some days back (motivated, perhaps, by the red blouse and ghagra sitting forlornly in my closet) I went for my first lesson. The moves, as we danced to the remixed version of Love mera hit hit from Billu Barber, were much more disciplined, rhythmic, muscular. Participants (mostly American) wore leotards and workout clothes, I myself was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. We began and ended with a yoga warm-up. It was entertaining, exhilarating, well-packaged, and, as our instructor promised, a great workout. If my body ever recovers, I hope to go back.
Of course, I realise this streamlined version has little to do with Helen. The slyness, the mischief, the camp, the seductiveness have all been jettisoned, in the interest of slick freneticism. Most strikingly, the movements are so gender-neutral that even if I ever get proficient, my Helen costume is unlikely to be rescued from retirement. I suppose there’s little else to do except keep up with the times — be happy at Bollywood’s newfound respectability, its successful globalisation. After all, as Pinto points out in his book, even Helen has been canonised by now — the subject of four documentaries, not to mention scholarly analyses in doctoral theses.
Fortunately, if the nostalgia ever gets too strong (as I know it will), the original Helen is only a click away. Forever twisting and pouting and dancing up a storm, on videos and DVDs and the internet. As for me, I intend to look for a more authentic costume on my next trip to India — the gold two-piece Helen sizzles in at the end of Piya tu. One never knows where I might get invited to reprise my performance, when this might turn into a lucrative new side career. I can already see the business cards now:
‘ Cabaret Dancer ‘
By Appointment Only x Specialising in Helen
Book Fests, Weddings, Bachelor Parties,
University Functions, White House Events
Rates available on request