I am sin, you are the sinner: Life and death of a cabaret dancer

and condolence cards continue to fill up a small apartment near Kolkata, home to the city’s most popular cabaret dancer who died this week.

Aarti Das, fondly called the “Queen of Cabaret”, died on 6 February 2020, around the time the family of Bob Marley announced plans to celebrate the 75th birthday of the late Jamaican-born reggae legend.

Das, popular as Miss Shefali, started her career with the city’s singing sensation Usha Uthup in the mid-1960s at some of the city’s popular bars. She and Uthup were star attractions of the city’s nightlife, loved and liked by film stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Vinod Khanna and Tollywood superstar Uttam Kumar. “I have lost my voice, we started our careers together, she was such a wonderful dancer,” Uthup said in a brief telephonic interview. “She was known only as a cabaret dancer, never called an actress, though she acted in movies where Uttam Kumar played the lead role and in movies directed by Satyajit Ray. She lived her life, she was a very positive woman. Laughter was her constant companion.”

Shefali was laced with love and lust, wooed by the rich and famous. But it was only for a one night stand. “I could never be anyone’s wife,” Shefali once wrote in her biography, which was published some years ago in Bengali.

She emerged in Kolkata’s cocktail circuit around a time when sex was a taboo in the city, Bengali movies were shot in black and white films and only the glamour world and film stars backed cabarets. The evening and late night shows at the city’s popular bars at Firpo’s, Trincas, Blue Fox and The Oberoi Grand hotel were dominated by the Anglo-indian fraternity, who lived close to Park Street, Kolkata’s only boulevard.

And Shefali dazzled with her dances, often sitting on the laps of the guests, only to leave in the next second because the wives never liked her.

But she was attractive and ran around the imposing Victoria Memorial every morning to remain fit. Her lovers called her the “Queen of the Nights”. But that was in private, in public very few openly interacted with Shefali.

She walked into a 1970 Ray film, Pratidwandi, which translates into The Competitor, without a screen test. The movie revolved around a jobless graduate, whose financial constraints caused him to hallucinate about success. She portrayed the role of a nurse who was also a part-time sex worker. Ray was very keen to include