Lory Gaur
A dilapidated building. Probably a hundred years old. A colonial style wooden staircase leading up to a dark corridor. I had to be very careful while climbing up as the steps made a creaking sound upon walking and it felt that would break any minute. The stairwell led into a small house. In the lobby, there were found three men sitting shirtless. Some four women around them. One of the men was playing with a child who must’ve been about 8 months old. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon, and it seemed like a cocktail party in this brothel of Kamathipura.
We said pleasantries to an old heavy-set woman, who I assumed was the Gharwali (The Gharwali manages day-to-day operations of the brothel). Those women were the sex workers, and the men, their regular partners and pimps. Yet it looked like a Sunday afternoon leisure session with friends. There were other women present too. They were each in the rooms partitioned with wooden boards. Every room just big enough to accommodate a bed and there was little space to move about. The women live with their children and partners in these small dingy rooms. Some of the doors were shut. Women were servicing the customers. There are no fixed working hours in Kamathipura.
While we were in conversation with one of the women about her son’s school admission, there came a tapping from her. She stood there, inebriated. She kept saying, “Madam, mera bhi ek boy (son) hai. Usko bhi rakh lo na apne school mein. Paisa hai mere paas” (Madam, I have a son too. Keep him in your school too. I have the money). She smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. However, I found it difficult to decipher if the smell came off her, or was it the general rooted smell of the brothel. She could hardly stand straight. She had had too much to drink.
There had been some difference of opinion between her and her lover, which led to a furious argument and finally turned into an ugly fight. The outcome of the fight was very evident on her face. A black eye, bruises on her arm, swollen lips. But the most striking of all wounds was the one on her nose. And then she narrated the whole incident. It started off like a usual day-to-day argument about money. He would take all her money, sometimes denying her of even ten rupees of her own earnings. He would then spend it on alcohol and drugs, come back in the evening and demand for more, and if she refused, she would get beaten. And when it happened for the umpteenth time that day, she could not take it. She was drunk too and she gave it back to him. It might have really hurt his meek male ego and in his fit of rage he bit her, and pulled out a chunk of flesh off her nose. It was a horrible sight to see the bone of her nose, blood still oozing out of the wound. She had done little to patch it up either.
We offered to take her to the clinic and get her medical assistance, which she did not pay much attention to. Her request about her son’s admission was persistent. Almost tearing up she said that she had finally decided to part ways with her full time partner and stop being subjected to this violence. However, she did not forget to mention that it’s difficult to live alone in this strange world, and the man has been with her for a long time now. She might not leave him, but she definitely wanted all the beating and abuse to stop, though she didn’t know how.
A weird paradox is what life in Kamathipura is. Bodies are stripped and sold for the price of peanuts. But what about the soul? Can it be bought? What lies beneath the hardened exterior of these women? Is there love hidden underneath the sheets of lust? Is it even love or just the fear of being all alone in the swarming crowd? A woman here would sell herself, bear children of unknown men, dedicate not only her body, but her life for what she thinks is love. And seldom does she get what she asks for. Love for love. It’s a rare thing to find in these dubious lanes. Yet it is carried out like day-to-day business. Only, the shutter never goes down on this shop.
English
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