Published in 2010, 5 years after the infamous ban on the dance bars of Bombay, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars is journalist Sonia Faleiro’s second work of creative nonfiction. In 2005, her reports about bar dancers were deemed unworthy of publication. However, Faleiro continued her research for 5 more years and published her eye-witness account of the lives and longings of these young girls living precariously in the metropolis. Through the story of Leela, her mother Apsara, and her friend Priya, Faleiro describes what it means to thrive as a bar dancer and survive after the ban. For an individual to be rendered a thing is an existential experience. And, for that thing to possess beauty, which is relentlessly consumed by the male gaze, relegates it neatly into the culture of commodity fetishism. Leela’s story stands for the stories of many others, who embrace the evening for the thrills and frills it entails, knowing all too well that the following day would glare at them through the chinks of their cobweb-ridden windows and into their damp one-room abodes.