Mumbai's grey area

For the past few months I have been spending time at one of Mumbai’s most notorious red light areas, assisting a photographer friend on his book project.

The area that we have zeroed in on is one of the most squalid, forgotten and neglected — even by the standards of Mumbai’s flesh trade zones.

Here the girls stand on the street corners and solicit handcart-pullers, construction workers, junkies, pickpockets and petty criminals. Often it’s for not more than Rs 200 a go. Mostly, even less.

Because we have been such frequent visitors to the area we have been befriended by most of the area’s inhabitants and allowed into their homes and hearts.

 

I can safely say that 90 per cent of the women are addicted to crack or alcohol and cannot function without it. An alarming number are also HIV-positive, or have contracted herpes and tuberculosis.

At least two have died over the course of these past few months I have been visiting.

One has left behind a daughter who roams the streets alone at night — a child less than four years old — while her TB-wracked father lies on a string cot on the side of the street, watching her with glazed eyes, unable to help.

It takes a lot out of me to visit the place, as I always know I will be witnessing heart-wrenching, gut-spilling scenes.

Women come up to us with blood spilling from their skulls after encounters with men; they hold up their arms to show us their self-inflicted cuts and gashes; they speak of their pain and despair and loneliness and heartbreak.

Many have been abducted and sold here, others have been driven here by mind-numbing poverty, and the hours we spend there are full of high-dudgeon drama and a fair share of violence.

Yes the police presence is apparent: every now and then I see the girls run for their lives the way errant schoolgirls do at the approach of their headmistress. They take to their heels, crouching behind doors, giggling nervously until the police car passes.

Then they’re back to their positions on the streets. Many of them have mentioned that they have yanked a cheating pimp or customer to the chowkie down the road for a good thrashing, too.

From what I have learnt, the attitude of the police is one of complicity and exploitation. They are players in the high drama of the lives of these girls. Like everything else on the street their role is amoral, opportunistic and exists in an ethical grey area. It has to be so when life is lived on the edge.

But without being maudlin and trying to romanticise the street, I can say with hand on heart that I have encountered more nobility, dignity and strength of character here than in all my evenings in the rest of Mumbai — incidents of generosity and compassion and wisdom and humanity that have staggered me.

And whatever it takes to get me to visit the area, I have always returned edified and with my faith in humanity strengthened.

There are no easy answers here, but I ‘d like to point out that all this is taking place not even a few miles from the nightclubs and bars that Inspector Dhoble and his moral police are so noisily attempting to “clean up”.

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Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com