The first night in Mumbai ended with a police shakedown outside some tacky club in Colaba, the old colonial center stuffed with Victorian mansions, boutique and luxury hotels, the Gateway to India, a Starbucks flanked by airport-style metal detectors, and throngs of young beggars who slapped bracelets of fresh flowers on our wrists and led us to grocery stores to buy them big bags of rice or cans of ghee. We’d stepped outside the club and into a side street to escape the music, chatting with some other travelers about our plans in the South a few days down the road. One of them may or may not have sparked a spliff, resulting in quick cop presence and, eventually, a payoff to get him to go away.

We’d just been looking for a decent place for a drink. We’d tried the rooftop bar of a nearby hotel — some place mentioned in the guide books — but were turned away because they were hosting a private party, maybe a wedding reception, and we couldn’t convince them we were on the guest list.

Next night it was the same scenario: fewer places with liquor licenses than we’d expected to find, another wedding party at the same hotel rooftop, and we didn’t want to end up again where we’d had a run-in with the pigs the night before. Most places had already closed, the street vendors had gathered their wares, and the sidewalks were empty except for trash. Someone remembered walking past a sign for a bar on the Colaba Causeway and so we set our route to the hotel with a slight detour in that direction.

Outside, lurking beneath scaffolding, two bouncers served dual functions of keeping some people out and trying to entice others to enter. When we stepped up and asked if this was indeed a bar — no windows, of course — they said yeah, yeah, bar and singing contest. Karaoke? we asked. Yeah, bar and singing contest, they said. No cover. They asked for tips as they held the door and we told them we were low on small cash, we’d catch them on the way out. Stepped in the door and up the stairs.

No way to prepare for what we found: a narrow room, stage on one side, bench seating on the other. Low light, colored fluorescents, ropes of vinyl-sheathed LEDs. Lots of mirrors. A row of guys, all Indian, mostly in their 20s and 30s, at low tables sipping tall beers, stroking pencil mustaches. A small bar at the far end, bathed in yellow light, emitted the occasional jingle of a cash register opening. A curved stairway led upstairs, though with no indication that going upstairs was actually an option. An obsequious host, more like two or three of them in a cluster, greeted us and seated us in a corner, with only a lousy view of the stage, where three young women, early 20s by the looks, stood as if waiting for something to start. A few musicians, including a tabla player, sat in the rear. We ordered beers — the big Kingfishers, of course, and the stronger ones (Kingfisher Blue?) — which a portfolio of waiters hustled over lickitty split. We asked to be reseated opposite the stage so we could have a better view of what was going to happen, still unsure of what it might be.

Later, back in the hotel, we’d Google some combination of keywords — Mumbai, girls, singing contest, bars — and learn that we’d found ourselves, quite by accident, in a Bombay ladies bar, a venerable though contested feature of local nightlife. The basic principle is comparable to a Western strip club: women dance, men offer money. The catch here is that the women remain fully clothed. Live clothed girls. Maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of a bare midriff or a seductively revealed arm, but for the most part it’s all swaying, a hair toss or two, a gentle spin or buck of the hips to classic Bollywood or recent Indian pop. Such surface chastity notwithstanding, dance bars, as they’re also called, suffered a serious setback in the last decade when they were briefly banned, deemed to be gateways to prostitution and a threat to the Indian family. Some 150,000 people, including 75,000 female dancers, stood to lose their jobs, and the bars found support from an unlikely coalition of feminists, dancers, and their patrons. Even though the ban was overturned after a year, police raids continue, and many of the performers have migrated elsewhere.

The phrase dance bar would have been misapplied in the case of our club, where nothing like dancing threatened to ruin these girls or their audience. Neither did the promised singing contest seem to involve any singing. Rather, the performers stood stock still, almost as if they were at auction. They checked their cellphones. Only one of them made more than brief eye contact with anyone in the audience. A purveyor of petulant frowns, she eyed her particular patron and stamped her foot on occasion, whereupon he’d peel off a few small notes — 10 and 20 rupee notes, smaller than any bills we’d seen elsewhere in the city, where a 1000 rupees equal 20 USD — and beckon for her or a male emissary to come and collect. Every ten minutes or so, he’d signal to the host that he had bigger cash to drop: in exchange for a wad of bills, the host would retrieve from the bar a rolled-up paper garland — dozens of feet long — and pop it from its cellophane wrap before handing it to the favored girl, who’d fold loop after enormous loop around her neck. When she was done, she’d heft off the load and the host would retrieve it, patiently roll it back up, send it behind the bar to have its plastic wrap restored.

Reseated with a better view of the stage, we found ourselves sitting right beside the favorite dancer’s sugar daddy. He seemed to be running out of cash, a problem exacerbated when he shuffled off a stack of 20s like playing cards, a gangsta strip club move if I’ve ever seen one. One of us ventured to ask what was going on. We like the girls, we were told. You like a girl, you give her money. He made eye contact with us — this was the important part — no hanky panky. When do they sing? we asked. Do they dance? It’s all over by 1:00 am, he said back, not really answering the questions. He grabbed the TimeOut Mumbai guide one of us had set on the bench beside us and laughed with his friend for a few minutes about descriptions of local recommendations. This place wouldn’t be in there, one of us said. No, no, not in here the guy smiled, tossing the book back to us. This place is off the books. The hosts brought three more Kingfishers. Our friend passed some cash to his lady, who pounded her foot a few times to indicate that we were becoming a distraction. No other clients seemed inclined to part with their money.

With several hours to go until 1:00 am, we had to make a move. One of us — all identities have been obscured to protect the not-so-innocent — thought we should up our participatory stakes. What if we threw a 1000-note in the direction of a different dancer? All holders of advanced degrees in literature and cultural studies, feeling more than vaguely uncomfortable behind our Western white male gaze, we all agreed that another dancer — a term applied loosely — was better looking than the one who seemed to be making off with all the cash. But what would it mean to interfere with this delicate ecosystem? Would we get beat up outside the club for tipping the balance away from this guy’s girl? A furious round of debate ensued followed by a bill — what denomination I can’t now recall — passed from our table to the candidate we deemed more deserving. Her rival pouted, stamped, then marched directly to her patron, holding out her hand. He gave over a bill and she stamped again, asking for more. He gave more. When she returned to the stage our neighbor called over the waiter, asked to settle his tab, left exact change, and shuffled from the club in what seemed like a hurry.

Either we’d scared him off or he was gathering friends to wait for us outside. Or he’d just blown through his budget for the evening. It was hard to tell. What now? we wondered. Still no singing, still no dancing. Asked the host again and got the same 1:00-everything-shuts-down answer. We decided to settle our tab, too, though we made the fatal mistake of asking for change in small bills, thinking we’d leave some more with the performers before heading out. Instead, the host, returning with change, held out his hand: Tips, tips, he said. One of us forked over a twenty or two. Then, like pigeons descending on breadcrumbs, they gathered: the waiters (tips, tips), the musicians (tips, tips), the bartender (tips, tips), the seedy looking manager who’d been sitting in the corner (tips, tips), everyone lined up, palms cupped. They’d seen the fat stack of small bills and seemed determined to keep them on the premises. The ladies (tips, tips), the doorman as we exited in a rush (tips, tips).

Outside on the sidewalk, the same two bouncers stood guard, conversing with a guy who appeared to be a local. He had white hair and a white beard, wore a Cosby sweater and cuffed khakis. Wire-rimmed glasses. He looked for all the world like he might be a professor at one of the schools nearby. The bouncers reminded us that we owed them (tips, tips), and then the local, a grin the size of the subcontinent crossing his face, held out his hand, too. Tips, tips for me? he asked. My friends already having passed, I returned his smile, then barreled for the safety of the sidewalk.

Previously on TGW. And. And. Oh, and.