“The happy days are gone, now there are horrors in store. Tomorrow, after tomorrow, each day will be worse. The earth has lost its youth.” -Mahabharata Mumbai, the city of dreams. This city is a manic tornado of oppressive heat, frantic traffic and legions of humans panting down your neck. Where there is no time to mind anybody’s business but your own. For many, Mumbai is truly the maximum city. In the heavy, bustling streets of Mumbai, there exists a notable change in the size and magnitude of activity that takes place each day. Right from the streets of Dadar to Chor bazaar, every business is supplemented by a hundred other activities that sum up to provide this city and its people with their ‘rozi roti’. However, there is one corner of Mumbai, where’ rozi roti’ comes from a completely unexpected source. In an area called Kamathipura, synonymous with prostitution, fallen women and lost honor, more commonly known to be Asia’s largest red-light district, the pleasures and fantasies of thousands of depraved men are satisfied night after night by over lakh young women. But who knows the stories of these women? Have they been asked before? Do those young girls have a voice in this nation that boasts of being the biggest democracy of the world? Kamathipura is a business. A business that feeds the stomachs of not just the brothel owners but also the local goons, the local policemen, the paanwallahs, the restaurant owners, their families and so many others. While showing light to the lives of so many families that lead their own mundane, everyday lives here, the lives of these women get darker by the day. The legal regime that governs the daily routines of these people meanwhile continues to feed off the long-held and often unexamined ideas as to how and why women of Kamathipura engage in their work, and what their existence means to the wider world. In a recent conversation some social activists had with a few rescued sex workers, not more than 17 years in age, details of their dinghy living conditions and gruesome treatment were exposed. These conversations made it clear that this was not a business that employed or filled the stomachs of the 3 lakh sex workers, but of so many other peripheral characters. Stories of ill-treatment meted out to girls by customers and brothel owners emerged, stories of such brutality, that some have perished to this treatment. Any attempt that the girls made to escape from these miserable conditions resulted in them being brutally beaten up or raped. The question as to, how they landed there brings the girls to tears. They could only wish that the poor families and relatives that sent them, to the big city from their villages to earn some honest money were a little smarter and less selfish. Some were kidnapped whereas; some were lured with the promise of a rich lifestyle. The only
solutions they have, to leave their brothels, are by repaying the owners a debt that they owe for the housing, clothing and food that the girls received. A sum that amounts to something the girls cannot dream to earn in their entire lifetime. An alternate solution is also suggested where they are expected to falsely lure two or three younger girls from their villages into the dismal lives of a forced sex worker. This is how the business sustains. The question of legalization of this kind of a business is raised over and over, but is that question even right? Kamathipura is an endless web of lust, lies, and hunger for money that circles around a powerless gender. This story repeats in every corner of the country. These lives are shared by every 4th or 5th young girl. It is a huge blemish on the face of a country that worships the same gender that it tortures, rapes, humiliates and leaves to die. This kind of supply will only end when there is no demand. In a world where the pleasures of a generation are said to be a burden on another, here is a country where the insatiable pleasures of a gender have become a burdensome yoke on the other.