The first bar-room dancer ever to be hauled up by Mumbai police was not an Indian but a Chinese woman from Hong Kong. In 1971 Joyce Zee, alias Temiko, was arrested by plain-clothes police in Colaba's Blue Nile bar when she took off her top.
Police charged her before a magistrate with 'indecent exposure in a public place'.
Far from being intimidated, she said from the dock in perfect English: 'Your lordship, my well-travelled and mature patrons would not be depraved or corrupted - much less annoyed - by my breasts.'
Smiling from ear to ear, the magistrate acquitted her and told the prosecutor: 'If the government believes that cabarets are indecent or socially harmful, it must enact a law to ban striptease. Otherwise, the show will go on.'
Thirty-four years later there is still no legislation in place and 75,000 women are now working in Mumbai's famous dance bars.
But the Maharashtra government has suddenly cracked down on the bars, threatening to close them within six weeks.