Social Contract

MALE urges haggle with female flesh in the labyrinthine squalor called Bagerhaat. Stinking mouths and sweaty bodies buy sexual release and a woman in this dark, dingy slum in the outskirts of Calcutta for anything between Rs 5 and Rs 10. Purchase of a mother or daughter is sometimes less expensive than a bottle of fizzy drink. And the Customer becomes King here every other minute. But not today. Not now. Because nothing can keep the sex workers here from attending their meeting at Mamuni di's windowless hut. To discuss how to best protect their wares, their bodies.

Screechy interaction ignores humid heat and deprivation. The meeting is not about some theoretical notion of equality; more significantly, it is a meeting among equals. The meeting's agenda seems to be the meeting itself. The meagre space can barely contain the crowding numbers and their peculiar problems. Fat, frumpy, frustrated Renu kakima screams toothless curses upon daughter Rani for stealing her clients. Bony Srilata shows her festering disease to the elders in the group and solicits advice. Three younger women demand the boycott of some regular clients who are chronic cheats. And Mamuni di alias Protima Saha shouts for order in the vociferous meeting. Her booming tone belies her physical frailty. Her indubitable authority over the crowd belies her status in the sex market where she too is bought by customers every other day.

Thirty-two-year-old Mamuni di might be unique but she's not alone. She's among the growing tribe of activists from within the sex workers' communities in various parts of the country. Pushed into a leadership role by an NGO movement that's attempting HIV/AIDS rehabilitation strategies for sex workers through peer group interventions.

A worn-out signpost says Mamuni's hut houses a health clinic for prostitutes and a drop-in centre for their children in the Bagerhaat and Amtala slums. But those aren't the only indications of influence she has amongst the slum's prostitutes. A peek into one of these regular meetings at her house reveals the extent to which she has been able to weave in unity among sex workers who, she says, "would only fight amongst each other over clients till recently."

For their part, those at the meeting recall the day when along with some NGO didis Mamuni participated in a roadblock to protest against the vested interests who'd tried to evict them from the slums three years ago. "That day we realised how much she's prepared to risk for us and how much it means for us to be together. Hiding shamefully in our house wouldn't do because that is how society wants us to die. So we came out on the roads as vaishyas and protested," observes one chirpy young teenager.

Unable to disguise her pride at being at the receiving end of such adulation, Mamuni ferrets out crumbly, yellowing clippings from obscure corners of her seemingly shapeless room. Old newsitems that had reported the road blockage. "I have lots of identity cards too. I get them whenever I go to functions. I have one that says I was a health worker," she flaunts. "Once my brothers saw me on TV and said I brought shame to the family. That's when I showed them the identity cards. The job they find so despicable, I told them, got me this place among respectable people. Today the bada sahib at our chowki knows me by name and is so civilised whenever we meet."

Strange immodesty? Stemming from understandable pride in a newfound identity. The 'shame' of the sex worker has been absolved by the dignity of the social activist. For Mamuni is an activist only because she's a sex worker. Media attention, a place with the bhadraloks, participation in seminars, foreign junkets and the opportunity to be more than mere commodity in the sex market—have all added to the paradoxical personalities of women who continue to be both sex workers and activists. And who have outgrown their scripted roles as peer educators to become leaders amongst peers.

Sadhana Mukherjee, 38, is a study in what it takes to have become bigger than the role life charted for these women. Today secretary of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a forum that claims to represent about 40,000 sex workers in the country, Sadhana's initial tryst with leadership had found her very alone.

Fear and frustration play havoc with Sadhana's robust features as she recalls the day, some years ago, when she had reported a local 'mastan' in the Rambagan red-light area to the police. Weary of the torture that girls in the area, including herself, and their clients had to face at the hands of the goon, Sadhana had him picked up by the police. This dissent, community heads warned her, would provoke punishment no one was willing to share with her.

And then it happened. More goons and threats. Cornered and lonely, Sadhana refused to surrender. "They had sickles. I nothing. So I sat in front of my house with a pot of water on the boil. I thought I'd at least burn one face before they killed me," she reminisces. "But they were so frightened when they heard me hurl abuses at them instead of being mortally scared that they started pleading with me to have the goon released." She chuckles: "It was absurd. There I was with these terrifying characters, their pleas and a pot of boiling water. I'd been so tense for so long, I refused to budge. I told them I'd go to the police station but only after some tea and put in a handful of tea leaves into that same pot and drank up!"

SADHANA continues to have the last laugh. And continues to grow into leadership every single day. Just last year, she seemed to be a hesitant, unsure participant in the Manila AIDS conference in the Philippines. Languishing in the peripheries of a Cause that was more hers than those teeming, talking hundreds from the world over who seemed to have claimed it as their own. She had insisted on sitting lower than the reporters who had sought her out from the list of delegates. "What have I got from this conference? Well...I know now that AIDS is a bigger problem than we think it is," she had said humbly. Later, she had confessed her amazement at having discovered that sex workers from Thailand speak English.

"Initially, I used to be so scared. They'd speak in English. I didn't know the issues they'd discuss. I'd just keep handing them our pamphlets. But now I demand an interpreter, I speak my mind. I have been to Delhi, Mumbai, Siliguri, Kathmandu, Manila and California!" she exclaims.

But once at home, in the evenings, she continues to be part of the profession she represents in these seminars. "I'm too busy to entertain many clients, so I have negotiated deals with two or three regular customers. I have a daughter to bring up and social work alone won't feed her," says she.

As it doesn't 28-year-old Jaya Ghosh who runs a drop-in centre for the children of sex workers in the congested Boubazar red light area. Reticent to the point of being evasive, Jaya's happiest with her mob of children who love her without any questions asked. But patient prodding has her releasing bit information about her life, as she buys guavas for the noisy mob. A stint in Calcutta's main red light locality Sonagachi, at the brothel called Nandarani's Badi, an addiction to alcohol, now at Boubazar with an out-of-work tailor turned bootlegger (who others say is her pimp), a toddler in her lap and her school Boubazar Sopan.

"Ekhane kyo abhabe ashe, kyo swabhabe ashe (some come here because of need, some out of greed). So, it's for us, no matter what, to take care of each other. Why should others bother with rehabilitating us if we aren't bothered about ourselves," Jaya says simply. The women's conference she attended in Ranchi some months earlier, Jaya admits, provided little to her in terms of how to help her students. "But there must be some logic to it all. And I quite liked seeing a new place."

 Hardly surprising then that Jaya dismisses her role as a community leader with characteristic calm: "We work to feed ourselves and help each other to survive. Since when has helping oneself become leadership?"

And yet it is. Sometimes it is almost heroic, this attempt to help oneself. Years ago, Asha Sadhukhan's decision to help herself had been the beginnings of a movement in the cluster of 14 brothels in Shethbagan. She had somehow summoned courage to confront a local goon who had been known to loot and rape in the open. She had to pay for her rebellion with open wounds on her head that had required 12 stitches to be hidden. And then she had declared a battle.

They came to attack her with bottles in their hands and alone she stood on her terrace with stones in her hands. Her absurd bravery had others joining her lone struggle. "For 30 hours we fought. Without assistance. With torchlights in the night. We maintained vigil," recounts Asha di. And then they formed Shethbagan Mahila Sam-iti, which continues to remain till today.

But Asha di's story and this story aren't just about unhappy beginnings and happy endings. Asha di complains of others taking over her "territory" once she'd conquered it. And here the greys begin. The complexities of these stories, in fact, stare back all too evidently at any outsider who steps into these red light areas. Bickerings among rival groups and the sheer dependence of the sex workers on the NGOs for sustenance to their movement often peak to their ugliest.

I belong to the HIV party and Trinamul Congress," says one sex worker in Amt-ala, referring to the STD/HIV Intervention Programme (SHIP) of the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health. Another picks up the cudgels for Sanlaap, a Calcutta-based NGO working for the rights of women in prostitution and rescued children from the flesh trade. Abusive allegations ensue, work done by the two NGOs flaunted by supporters of both groups. Ending with a dramatic proclamation by an irate, young sex worker: "They've done so much for us that I'd cut my head for Sanlaap if need be. Just let the HIV party come in front of me."

 Indrani Sinha, secretary of Sanlaap, is deeply anguished by such shows of loyalty. "We're aware of the fact that whatever we do for the sex workers, we're still outsiders. Part of the same society that has cheated them into selling them their bodies to feed themselves. The idea is to encourage leadership from within and then wean them off our support as a necessary condition for their mobilisation. We just want to give them options to choose from, not dictate their choices." Dr Samarjit Jana, project director, SHIP, is less disturbed by such reports. Confusion, the activist feels, is a part of all social change. "In 1992 when we were interviewing sex workers for peer educators, our criteria were—someone with one year in the sex trade, with communication skills and leadership qualities. Soon we realised how farcical these criteria were. We decided anyone who could look us in the eye while talking to us would be given a job. So low was their confidence level and self-esteem. And look at them now. They're fighting for their territory, their leadership, their rights. Things, hopefully, can only become better."

 A view Asha di shares. Buildings need masons and architects, she explains. Rehabilitation and relief need peer groups and NGOs. "Finally, they have to know our problems are goons, police and customers who refuse to pay up. And we have to know that legalisation of prostitution is what they're debating about in functions. Because the debate is about us. Otherwise we'll be tortured by goons and they'll be discussing legalisation to death. And we both have to jointly ward the sufferings of STDs and AIDS."

So jointly the battle is being fought. With Mamunis, Jayas and Sadhanas refusing to be just the Cause. They are the Leaders of the Cause.