The movie is about the life and times of a contemporary bar dancer. Bar dancers are a strange tribe, existing in shadows. Their day comes on in the night, bright neon lights, painted faces, gyrating to the beats of the latest hits suggestively. Pinched bottoms, groping and fetid drunk breath is a part of their daily grind. Though they run their houses, they dare not reveal their true vocations to their neighbors lest they be looked down upon or preyed upon as being easily available.
Chandni Bar is a perspective on this lifestyle. Tabu aka Mumtaz arrives in Bombay in 1985 after having lost everything including her house and family in the madness of the communal riots in Meerut.
She had nothing to loose yet she kept loosing.
Having to eke out a living, her uncle takes her to a beer bar where she becomes a bar dancer. Life has lot more trials in store for her. She is raped and yet she has to relive her trauma everyday as she has to stay with the same person responsible for her rape.
She sees some fleeting good moments in her life. She marries the person who loves her, Pothya, an underworld henchman who becomes a don. She has a lovely boy and a girl and she tries to ensure that they don’t turn out to be like their father or mother.
Pothya is killed in an encounter due to the betrayal of his own gang. The gang members continue to harass Mumtaz whose only purpose of survival is to bring up her children.
But fate has yet something else in store for her.