Sold by her father to the local police station at the age of nine to be repeatedly raped, Leela’s abuse and her entry into the sex trade is quite typical. But that’s not how we see her.

Leela, the "bootyful" heroine of Beautiful Thing, doesn’t come across as exploited and beaten into a life she abhors. She is "foul-mouthed", a "genius of vulgarity", "quirky", "alive" and full of "grit" and "chutzpah". She enjoys what she does; she loves to be pleasured.

Being the highest paid bar dancer at Night Lovers, she is wealthy and believes, as Basharat Peer writes in his review, that "her job is to fool every man and extract what she can from them before surrendering her only asset – her body." She is only 19 when Faleiro befriends her and presents her to us in a series of rich, unguarded moments.

But Leela's life, along with the lives of thousands like her, altered beyond recognition when an ambitious politician imposed a ban on dance bars in August 2005 to uphold the "murky, middle class morality" that continues to pervade the Indian society. The sex, which was a choice and not the primary occupation of these dancers, then became a compulsion and pushed them into unemployment and prostitution.

This literary reportage won great acclaim and was named a Time Out Subcontinental Book of the Year and an Observer Book of the Year. It leaves the reader with unresolved issues and a lump in the throat for Leela.

Published in 2012.