Daughters of the Red Light: Coming of Age in Mumbai's Brothels (4 page)

When Saira asked why her mother was getting dressed and putting on makeup, her mother shouted impatiently not to ask questions. Saira persisted, over and over again asking, “What are you doing? Why do you have to dress up like this to go work at a hostel?”

Saira’s round face can morph instantly from a wide smile to a thundery scowl. When she was unable to secure a response, she gave her mother a look of death. Their relationship soured. At a shelter home for the children of sex workers, where Saira spent the nights, she quickly learned to decode what “hostel” meant.

“From the time I understood what she did, I stopped liking my mother,” said Saira. “I used to fight with my mother a lot because I didn’t like that she was a sex worker. I thought what she did was dirty, so I would behave in an equally dirty way with her.”

The idea that sex work is promiscuous is not unique to India. Sex workers the world over are regarded with disdain. But in India, the taboo surrounding extramarital sex, combined with abject poverty, completely excludes sex workers from the rest of society.

Life is hard enough for the women who are working day and night, putting their own bodies and health at risk. It’s made worse because the children whom they are working to feed and educate treat them with resentment, disgust. But the women continue to lie instead of trying to level with their children. The self-loathing passes from one generation to the next.

As long as there are men willing to pay for sex, there will be a ready supply of vulnerable girls and women (and men). And once they enter the sex trade, few find a way out.

Roshni explains why. A single parent, she puts her two children through school — “English medium,” she told me proudly — as well as the children of her disabled boyfriend. “The world can turn up its nose at what I do, but how many illiterate women do you know who support two families?”

I have no answer.

Roshni is clear that she doesn’t enjoy her work. She complains of drunken clients and bad hours, and is both physically and emotionally scarred from the abuse she has sustained. She is also sad that she only sees her children once a month, which is what the shelter permits. But she has come to accept her circumstances. Life dealt her a raw hand, and she is playing the cards the best she can.

What will her children go on to do? Anything they want, she tells me, and her daughter won’t have to have sex for money. But the cynic inside me wonders if they will have the success Roshni dreams of, given what I’ve seen.

The nonprofits I go to feel like Band-Aids over a broken leg. I am beginning to seriously question the purpose of what I am doing. As a reporter, I’m not offering any alternatives for sex workers or their daughters. I am trying to document how this community lives. But is there a point to that? Who will care?

An unpleasant memory from a couple of weeks before I’d embarked on my reporting creeps back into my mind. At a literature festival in North India — one of the most exalted opportunities for journalists to rub shoulders with writers and other famous public figures — a fellow reporter laughed when I told him I’d quit my job to write about sex workers. “No one wants to read that stuff, and no one’s going to publish it,” he said, each word dipped in condescension. He had three years of reporting experience to my zero. And with his clipped British accent and impervious confidence, he appeared infinitely more in the know about what editors wanted.

At the time I shrugged off his comment, and with a lot of bravado said I was going to do it anyway, because it meant something to me. Now his words come back like an eerie premonition.

As the summer heat intensifies, my energy drains. Am I the fool who missed the memo?

I am close to quitting when a friend emails me an article from a local website with the headline “Escaping Mumbai’s red light district: Shweta’s inspiring story.” It’s about a girl from Kamathipura who made it to
Newsweek
’s list of “25 Under-25 Young Women to Watch” and is applying to elite U.S. colleges.

I am stunned. Girls from the red-light district rarely make it to college in Mumbai — America would be impossible. Something must be off, blown out of proportion, a typo, or even a lie. I rush out the door for another tiresome afternoon in Kamathipura.

The story gnaws on my mind, though. A few days later, I see Shweta’s name again, in another article. Could it be for real? And what about this NGO credited with helping her?

My first email to the address listed on the Kranti website goes unanswered. Days pass, and more news about Shweta appears. I grow increasingly anxious over tracking her down.

Finally, luck strikes — a post about a Kranti fund-raiser appears in my Facebook news feed. A source I met while reporting an unrelated story is connected to Kranti, a Hindi word meaning “revolution.” I ask her to introduce me to Robin, Kranti’s co-founder. Several emails later, I am on my way to visit the organization behind this girl who seems to have completely defied the odds.

*****

I eat a heavy lunch, stocking up for the long train ride, which will be followed by an afternoon of interviews. I’m always exhausted and starved after days like this. It is monsoon season, and a wash of sultry air engulfs me as soon as I leave my apartment. My clothes cling to my skin.

I’ve never been to Kandivali before. I don’t even know which stations it falls between. I find it on the map at Churchgate Station. It’s not a stop on the express train — it is a stop on the slow train, the one that trudges along through the city, gasping to a halt every couple of minutes.

I tell myself for the umpteenth time during these past months that I’ve been reporting on the women and girls of Mumbai’s brothels, “This is for a good cause.” But the repetition has worn me thin. “Yes, it’s a good cause,” I’ve begun to answer myself. “But is it worth this?”

On the train, I find a seat by the window in the women's compartment and settle down to call Robin at Kranti. I loathe doing interviews on trains. It’s impossible to scribble decent notes. My elbows are always bumping the person next to me, and even if the train is empty, it’s not a place where I can concentrate. There are too many distractions outside. The tracks’ rumble is too loud. Everyone around you eavesdrops. I always lose reception.

But Robin has proved difficult to pin down, and after numerous attempts, she told me this is the only time she can talk. I believe she’s very busy, but I also sense she’s less than enthusiastic about dealing with another journalist. While she did do lots of interviews when Shweta was accepted to Bard College — and I imagine her organization benefited from all the media clamor — her curt replies to my emails convey a disinterest bordering on annoyance.

Maybe she’s just burned out. Or was it something I said? Does she think I’m insincere, or that my reporting is trivial? I’m trying not to overthink it, but I have to brace myself before I take my mobile phone out of my purse.

I dial Robin’s number. She wastes no time with pleasantries, launching right away into a critique of other shelter homes, like the ones she’d volunteered at when she first came to India years ago.

“The NGO staff themselves treat the girls as if they’re dirty and wasted, not capable of anything but learning how to sew or work at a beauty salon,” Robin says. “They think the best lot for one of these girls would be if she could get married. No one asks these girls what their dreams are,” she says.

This lines up closely with what I’ve seen at every nonprofit home I visited.

The train lurches from one station to the next — a man selling hairclips and nail polish gets on, a woman selling peanut brittle gets off — as Robin puts into words the frustrations I’ve felt for ages.

I think back to those girls I’d taught as a volunteer with Apne Aap four years ago, how the staff treated them with an air of trepidation. The effect was clear enough. Every time I’d ask the girls to draw, to create, to express their own opinions, they would hesitate.

They’d hold back because they were constantly being held back. But what does Robin do differently to help them dream, and then reach their dreams? The line breaks before I can ask.

I call back. It’s difficult to hear above the rattling train tracks. “Can you repeat that?” I say again and again.

Robin explains, in between querying whether or not I’d heard her, how the girls at Kranti are kept busy with school, extra tutorials, Bollywood dance classes, art lessons, yoga, and a seemingly endless array of other activities.

What she does not mention, which I notice and admire, is anything about sewing or candle-making, the go-to occupational therapies for girls who have been written off as incapable of anything more.

My fingers ache from writing so fast. Unfamiliar parts of the city, bleached by the midday sun, stream by through the train’s grilled windows. My head races faster. Maybe Robin really has a radical way of doing things. At this point, it’s hard for me to tell if she’s just talking Kranti up or if she’s able to practice what she’s preaching.

“At the end of the day, they’re typical teenagers,” Robin says of the girls, letting out a small laugh. “You’ll see when you meet them.”

Typical? None of what Robin has said is typical. Not in Mumbai. Not for girls like this. Halfway to Kandivali Station, we end our conversation. I am more uncertain than ever of what to expect.

*****

The shared auto-rickshaw abruptly halts in a cloud of dust at the final stop. I don’t need to ask for directions to the school, the only landmark Robin has given me, because children in their uniforms are strolling down the lane. At the end is an unremarkable apartment complex, whitish with green trimmings.

I ride the elevator to the third floor and ring the bell at apartment A-33. A young girl opens the door to a sparsely furnished living room. I step inside, and my eyes dart from a bright purple wall with the words “social justice” painted in the center to a whiteboard with a grid filled with bold lettering in red, blue, and purple dry-erase markers. And then to the girls, six of them, huddled on brightly covered cushions along another wall, chattering excitedly among themselves.

Unlike the other homes I’ve visited, there’s no hawk-eyed social worker watching their every move. They’re all dressed differently. One is wearing denim shorts and a snug black tank top, another a red T-shirt and black leggings. They’re aware a stranger has entered their midst, but they’re unperturbed. One looks up at me expectantly and says, “Where’s your camera?”

I suddenly realize how unimportant I must look with nothing but a notebook in tow instead of microphones and a web of wires. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing Robin or one of Kranti’s other staff members will suddenly materialize to introduce me: “This is Shanoor. She’s a reporter who wants to speak to you. Please tell her about your lives.”

Six sharp pairs of eyes are now trained on me, sizing me up, taking in the loose, faded salwaar khameez. My attempt at propriety clearly backfired here. These girls are dressed to defy the mantra of modesty imposed on sex workers’ children. I start to explain the absence of a video camera. “I’m Shanoor. I’m a writer.” It sounds hollow.

The girls rapidly introduce themselves, too many names for me to take in at once, and I know I’ll have to ask again. Their circle starts to open up to include me, and I take a seat on one of the low square cushions on the floor. “Passionate,” “curious,” and “confident” are painted onto the wall in front of me, all below “revolution.” There are photographs of the girls, traveling in the mountains of North India, dressed up and hugging at a birthday party. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve wandered into a girls’ boarding-school dorm. There is none of the stale, depressed air I am so used to from other nonprofits.

Interrupting my chain of thoughts, Shweta asks, “So, do you want to speak to all of us one by one?” I recognize her from the photos I’ve seen in newspapers. She’s smaller than I’d imagined, but she makes up for it in the way she commands the rest of the girls without saying one word. She tells me the girls are happy today because Sheetal, after several attempts, has finally received her official identification card, one of the first keys to being treated like a citizen.

Shweta takes charge, ushering the other girls into one of the bedrooms so we can speak in private. I sit down with her and ask if I can switch on my recorder. Shweta, dressed in a faded purple V-neck T-shirt and jeans, doesn’t bat an eyelid. Before I can ask any questions, she’s already begun to tell me about the chain of events that led her from Kamathipura to Kranti.

She starts with memories of her childhood, when she had no friends at school. “Because of my dark skin, my classmates used to call me cow dung and
kala
bamboo,” she says coolly.

At home, she shared a matchbox-size room with her mother, sisters, and stepfather. She tells me about being sexually abused by her stepfather in the same tone I’d expect her to remark on what she’d eaten for breakfast. I’m shocked by the openness. Most Indian girls would rather die than admit a family member abused them.

After her grandmother passed away, Shweta started arriving after school to an empty home, with no one to look after her but the sex workers who lived next door. They spoiled her with cups of sugary chai, chocolates, and Indian sweets, and allowed her to watch television with them instead of doing her homework.

“They were so caring and loving. Whenever I had to dress up for something at school, they used to get me ready and braid my hair. In some way, they are my inspiration. People never saw their lives, but they make judgments and say they are bad for society. I have lived with them, I have seen the lives they go through, and still they are doing it to feed their families.”

Shweta jumps forward to the day she moved to Kranti. I could picture her emerging from the stifling, dank hallways of Playhouse, the brothel where she lived, to this airy apartment. Things were not going well at home. Shweta was fighting with her mother, and she didn’t have a quiet space to study for her exams.

At first, she was hesitant to go. She’d never lived away from her mother before, and she’d heard rumors that Kranti was “a bad place.” She became uncharacteristically embarrassed when I asked her to elaborate. “I’d heard that girls from Kranti wear small-small clothes, they’re lesbians.” I’m surprised and mildly amused. She quickly rushes to defend the organization.