Unguarded in Kamathipura- 1

First job in the red light area of Mumbai.

Hello everyone! This feels like a little milestone in my head because today I successfully complete 10 blogs. Thank you for all the love and responses, it has truly kept me going. Also, a very Happy Diwali and Chhath Pooja to you all! 

Do you remember your first job? Was it through placements? Or you mastered the art of converting your internship into a job? Or was it some “jugaad” commonly known as networking in adult life or did your father know someone who knew someone else who had a job for you?

I was actually hoping for all the above while spending my break post Xaviers. The course was overwhelming and the work on the ground was really unique. All my projects, specially the success at Dharavi had made me quite confident. I used to imagine myself solving difficult problems at various parts of the country. To be frank, it felt like I had the mantra to change this world for better. The enthusiasm was unmatched and I couldn’t wait for the challenges ahead. I actually remember googling - “what are the most challenging jobs in the social sector” and a large list flared up on my screen. Meanwhile, I got a chance to watch Mardaani starring Rani Mukherjee where she plays the role of a Senior Inspector who is a strong dedicated officer of the Mumbai Police force and works hard to uncover a Delhi-based child trafficking cartel. It’s a good watch. But that’s not what I took away from that film. I re-checked my list and trafficking was one of the top three most challenging issues in the social sector. I looked up three organisations that worked with sex workers and applied for 2 in Mumbai. Things moved fast and in a week’s time, I got through one of the oldest organisations that worked directly with the sex workers, their adolescent girls and children. They had their office in the red light area of Mumbai, known as Kamathipura. 

The next step was to tell my parents about it! I was a bit scared, for sure. Because its kind of a taboo to say anything related to sex, isn’t it? Plus, I was more concerned about the thousand follow up questions like how will you travel? Will it be safe? Beta, It’s not a good area no? Aren’t there any other jobs in the country? I had 15 days to convince them! At home, we always have dinner together and that’s the best time to really have tough conversations. I told Maa and Papa about my interview and how I got through as the highlight. And when I could see the happiness on their faces, I dropped the first bomb- I will be working with the sex workers. To my surprise, my Dad asked me about my job role and the kind of work I would do. I answered those questions with all my honesty and told him everything I knew. I could feel my Mom’s discomfort from 2 feet away and she waited impatiently for me to stop. I knew this was my only chance to drop the second bomb- I will be paid mere INR 25,000 per month and then the reality hit me that the rent of my flat in Mumbai back then was INR 24,000!

There was silence for a while. My dad asked me about my joining date and with that the dinner was over. My mom finally spoke that she was super concerned for me. She told me everything I expected and I could feel her genuine uneasiness. We had the longest discussion where I told her, that I might always end up doing these weird unsafe jobs because that’s where the need is. I explained her that money wasn’t my primary concern and for atleast a couple of years I just wanted to try everything there was. My dad took care of everything at first and as usual my mom followed through with all her love and support. 

To reach my office, one was supposed to take a train till the Grant Road station and then take a sharing cab till the main road of Kamathipura and then walk almost 700 meters. On my first day, I decided to take a cab till the address as I did not know the route and as we approached towards the lane, my cab driver started to question my presence in this area and there was a sudden shift in his behaviour. After a while when he could not control, he asked me, “Madam, aapko kisi ne galat address de diya hai, mai aapko wapas le chalta hun. Ye area thik  nahi hai.” (Madam, someone has given you the wrong address, let me drop you back to the station as this is not a good area). I smiled and I told him that the address is right and we are going to my new office. He literally turned back and with a lot of shock he said, “Per aap to ache ghar  ki lagti ho!” (You seem to belong to a good house!)

I reached my office which was basically an old school building which was in shambles. There were high ceiling fans that never solved the purpose, broken toilets with no locks and no water purifier (at first). We had an anganwadi on the ground floor, our seating office and a big hall for trainings and recreation activities on the first floor. We were a small all-women team of about 25 people in two of our centres (both in red light area) that included our CEO, Program Managers, Outreach workers, Anganwadi teachers and admin.

The organisation focussed on three major programs: Ummeed for helping women in prostitution maintain their physical, mental, and economic well-being; Udaan to empower girls aged 6-18 years in the red light area to know their rights and go for diverse and dignified career options, by developing their skill sets and Umang to help toddlers aged 2 to 5 to develop physically, cognitively, emotionally, and socially in preparation for formal schooling. My job as a Senior Manager was to manage every day activities for each of these programs like ensuring that a nutritious food kit reached all the women everyday through our outreach workers who also taught them how to manage their finances or write alphabets, checking that all the girls came for their tuitions and completed their home work and supervising the anganwadi that looked after toddlers -their studies, food and snacks. I was also responsible to make monthly road map of activities that helped us meet our yearly targets to ensure more and more women, girls and children joined our organisation and benefitted from the same. 

One of the first things you notice about Kamathipura or I guess any red light area are the lanes. They are different from the ones we normally use everyday. The women work in three shifts and so the lanes are never empty. The frequency of their customers is lowest in the morning (which was our office time) but you will still see women with loud make up standing on the gates of their brothel, announcing their rates. The make up shouts for attention and the flowers in the hair is their stubborn desperation to still showcase an unadulterated side of their life. The lane has more cosmetic shops than usual, every paan wala is either a confidant of the women or the pimp depending on who pays them more and the chai wala also sells fresh gajras. The lanes are also divided for women, gays and transgenders and no one crosses their line, ever. There are more than 50,000 lanes in Kamathipura alone that spread out like a branch in every possible direction. There are also secret routes for the workers to run away from the police in case of a raid, to be used only under the supervision of the pimp or the brothel owner. 

When I started visiting the area as a part of my outreach, I realised we were catering to almost 8000 sex worked aged between 22 to 55 years. Most of them were trafficked from various parts of the country like villages of Kerala, Assam, Bihar, Rajasthan and countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. Almost 80% of them were sold to the brothel owner (the one manages the sex workers) when they were just 10-12 years old.  Some were brought under inappropriate conditions like fake promises of marriage to a good man or for a desirable job in a big city.  The remaining became Devadasis (mostly from South India) who  are nothing more than sex slaves or child prostitutes who are dedicated to temples when they are as young as four or five years old. Almost all of them are Dalits, with a majority belonging to the Madiga and Valmiki castes, two of the most underprivileged castes in India. 

Just to give you some context on the working inside these brothels, you’ve to remember that the brothel owner (mostly women) is the head of the brothel and manages approximately 40-60 women and is helped by pimps. The women are sold to the brothel owners and the rates are decided basis their age and skin colour or their virginity which ranges between 3 to 6 lakhs. We worked with the lowest category of brothels in Kamathipura, hence the rates were low. These deals are mostly identified by the pimps. The money spent by the brothel owner is then recovered by the sex workers from their daily earnings. So, if a woman charges 500 to a customer, she will be left with a twenty rupee note and rest will be taken by the owner and the pimp. The workers are never told how much they were sold for so they spend their whole life paying the owner and live in the worst of the situations. A small room has atleast 10 women staying together and their life is divided merely by curtains. They receive their customers in that limited space one after the other. Also, from what I know, there are thousands of high level brothels in Kamathipura that cater only to minors and till date I haven’t been able to get one person who can share relevant details about that because of the security they get from the police and the government.

With the women we worked, almost 90% of them were HIV positive, 88% had TB and almost all of them had an addiction of alcohol. The irony is that the alcohol kept them sane from their horrific routine everyday. We worked with various hospitals to provide them with medical insurance so they could survive some years more. I had never seen anyone in my life who had no desire to get better. And then I saw thousands of them. We literally had to drag them to hospitals so they could get free medicines. Most of these women had live-in partners who visited them once or twice the year and the women trusted them with all their heart with almost no expectations and had their children to bind their partners forever. We worked quite hard to ensure that the adolescent girls did not fall into inter generation prostitution and kept them away from the brothel owners by sending them to various boarding schools. We were able to get 96% girls out of Kamathipura and the sole reason for that was the support of their mothers. They might not give a damn about themselves, but they all wanted a bright future for their daughters. And then there were some children who were just 2-6 years old. They were in the worst situation because just like their mothers, their life from the other women was also divided by curtains. On my second day to office, I visited our Annganwadi on the ground floor only to realise that the children were imitating positions they saw their mothers do last night. These were 3 year old kids. I don’t think anything had shook me as much as this scene. So, we tried our best to work with these kids to take them away from this nightmare and prepare them for formal schooling. 

I worked there for one year, and looking at the situation of the place I often wondered if I was prepared for it? All my mantras of changing the world came to a long halt because the place tested me to change even one person. I would see women constantly on drugs, I would attend funerals of women who left their children and no one to look after them, I saw girls bruised and sexually assaulted by their own fathers and I saw kids doing nothing like kids. And this my friends, was one of the first lasting failures of my life. The type of failures that make you feel relevant and stupid at the same time. The failures you knew existed, but you never were able to contemplate that they may happen to you this soon. The failures that take you away from what you’ve formally learned because they take you back to the fundamental questions like what is this life? Why does so much helplessness exist? Why do people do what they do? Does God really exists? Can he see all this and still let this happen? Xaviers did not prepare me for this. My privileged life did not prepare me for this. 

The story is to be continued till we meet again. A lot more failures on this job and some small wins that motivated me and kept me going. Can’t wait to tell you the incident when my father came to see my office in the next blog :) 

Also, keep liking and subscribing? Sometimes that validation is super important for keeping the dedication on point. 

May the good always win over evil, EVENTUALLY. 

Love,

Ankita 

PS: Can’t add pictures for this and the next blog because whatever I clicked was submitted to the organisation I worked for and now I do no have any authority over them. The organisation also uses blurred images as the identity of the sex workers and their children cannot be disclosed.