Kat Dehri, one of the villages in Rohtas, where dance girls reside. Picture by Sanjay Choudhary

Patna, Jan. 17: Dance girls of Kat Dehri village in Rohtas entertain people for money with one goal — establishing their wards. Suffering silently, they ensure their next generation remains miles away from their profession. Mission accomplished, they quit dance.

Several dance girls managed to give quality education to their children. Ganga Ram (name changed), an engineer, is a role model for the residents of Kat Dehri village. Employed by a multi-national company, 55-year-old Ram is posted at Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh.

Though he enjoys all comforts of life and commands respect at his workplace, he does not want to reveal the identity of his parents. Reason: he is the son of a dance girl of Kat Dehri village, about 4km north of Sasaram, the district headquarters of Rohtas. Sixty per cent of the women of the village are professional dancers. Some of them work as bar dancers in metropolitan cities like Mumbai and Calcutta to meet the expenses of their wards studying outside the state.

Ram’s mother and other relatives still live in the village. They sent Ram outside the state for studies at the age of 12 to keep him at bay from the profession of his mother.

After completing Bachelor in Engineering from a Banaglore-based institute, Ram joined a multi-national company about two decades ago.

As Ram’s earning was enough to meet both ends, his family distanced itself from the age-old profession. Ram has set an example for the wards of other families engaged in dance for ages.

Daya Shankar Ram (name changed), hailing from one such family, is now a manager with the State Food Corporation at Gaya. Another resident of the village, Munna Lal (name changed), is a teacher at a state-run Industrial Training Institute at Dhanbad in Jharkhand.

The list of such people is long. A number of children of dance girls are pursuing studies in different faculties.

“The daughter of a dance girl of Karma Tola, also a village of professional dancers, is pursuing MBBS at a reputed institute in Delhi, while the son of another woman is pursuing an engineering course in Bhopal,” said Saraswati Devi, a resident of Amari Tola. R.S. Ram, a cousin of Daya, said out of 900 families in Kat Dehri, about 450 are of Nut community. Dancing is their main profession.

“With the passage of time, the demand of dance girls at wedding ceremonies in the region has decreased. This has compelled them to adopt other profession,” he said.

There are families at Amari Tola, who send their daughters abroad on demand. “They work as call girls there. We receive the calls for sending the girls from the headquarters in Mumbai and Calcutta,” said Minu Rani, whose Bhojpuri album, Faguni Bayar, was released recently.

Another resident Binay Nut said several families had shifted their daughters to Sasaram for studies.