Sonia Faleiro > Quotes

“Tears,’ they would sneer, ‘are the indulgences of those who haven’t suffered enough.’ To”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“if one woman doesn’t help another, we will all suffer.”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“poverty eventually made criminals of everyone, even those who swore to resist—it was the only way to transcend the free fall of their marginalized lives.”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“Remember the wise words of the legendary courtesan Umrao? ‘No one knows how to love more than we do: to heave deep sighs; to burst into tears at the slightest pretext; to go without food for days on end; to threaten to take arsenic …”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“Dalali, pimping, was the natural next step because no one was better equipped to sell women, it was believed, than one who had been sold, or who had sold herself. And no one was exempt.”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“And so, just like that, in less than an hour since they were gone, Padma was no longer the quick-tempered one. Lalli was no longer the faithful partner in crime. Who they were, and what had happened to them, was already less important than what their disappearance meant to the status of the people left behind.”
― Sonia Faleiro, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing

“If I embrace the sorrows of other people, even if they are people I care for, people I love, how will I live, you tell? There are too many of us, too many like us! I would suffocate!”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“The story of Padma and Lalli revealed something more terrible still – That an Indian woman’s first challenge was surviving her own home”
― Sonia Faleiro, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing

“He had to plead for her attention by phoning her dozens of times, by throwing money at her as she danced. He had to offer daily tokens—lipstick, earrings and perfume—through the security guard who stood outside Night Lovers, a giant of a man whose fiery red turban matched his temper.”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“It’s not that people are not compassionate. But that compassion has to be aroused. Emotion is a critical factor in helping us understand an event, and it is a motivator that impels action as opposed to just abstract thoughts.”
― Sonia Faleiro, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing

“Elles étaient convaincues que ces hommes, qui comptaient pourtant parmi eux leurs propres pères, leurs oncles et cousins, "les tueraient s'ils les retrouvaient". Sohan Lal l'avait dit-lui même à la Dr Srivastava. À la question "Si les filles avaient été retrouvées vivantes, qu'auriez-vous fait pour laver l'honneur de votre famille ? " , il avait répondu par ces mots : "On les aurait tuées.”
― Sonia Faleiro, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing

“It is owned by men in Cavalli and by women who favour Lanvin; couples who like to inform everyone they meet that Vogue magazine once referred to them as ‘Bombay’s beau monde’.”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“pretense,”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“beau monde’.”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

“Elles étaient convaincues que ces hommes, qui comptaient pourtant parmi eux leurs propres pères, leurs oncles et cousins, "les tueraient s'ils les retrouvaient".”
― Sonia Faleiro, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing

“Around the 1970s, bars in Bombay began to employ young women irrespective of their experience. This was for a new innovation called ‘waiter service’. Waiters, in this context, referred to female servers. These women wore saris, not uniforms, and they were paid a monthly salary and did not have to survive on a collection.”
― Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars