exodus

It's hard for me to write about the Gach. I don't want to further exploit the women in Kolkata's largest red light district. They are more than just stories, and I cannot do them justice. Yet I know the power of words, and just as I came here to learn and to share a bit of their lives, I also want to share what I see so that their realities will no longer be cloaked in silence. I've written about the women I meet and the time I spend in personal spaces, but I have yet to be able to put it here. I won't use the women's real names. I've used instead the translated meanings of their names. So here goes somethin'.

When you come upon the main lane, you find what you expect to. Girls standing in a row facing the road, like a fence on both sides. This is why they call it "working the line." Women are seated inside doorways in small clusters talking or waiting. The girls are wearing saris, salwars, or sequined mini skirts. They have beautiful eyes and painted red mouths, the likes of which you would only see at a classic car show. Some covered lips are lined with black, and it looks a bit like costume makeup. Or an ink drawing. They stare, of course, because I am white and wandering there. The ones who know us call out our Bengali names. We stop and shake hands, which actually turns into holding hands for the remainder of the conversation. How are you? What did you have for breakfast? Has marriage happened to you? No? Why not?! This is how our greetings go. Marriage here is not something you do. It is something that happens to you.

We stop into different brothels to visit friends. One of the numbered buildings is a mint green, and we go into this one first today. It has a cement staircase winding up the back. I'm afraid I'll trip because my eyes haven't adjusted to the pitch black. After the dark steps there's a mashi cooking fish in mustard oil on a coal stove in the hall. A man is smoking a bidi against the rail. He moves only slightly to let us past. Some doors are closed and locked. The inhabitants might be in or out. At the end of the hall four girls about my age, some a little younger, are sitting on the bed playing a game. In the gach your house is a room, and in the room life is lived on the bed. You sit and chat there. Dance to a Hindi song there. Sleep there. And of course, work there. Freedom is there today. We've been working on her English each Friday. She looks beautiful, as always. She has high cheekbones, not as round as the usual Bengali woman. And a mole on her cheek that makes you think not of a witch, but a movie star. She's still open, alive. She's been here only four months. Her friend is there also, she's been working in this brothel for a year now. She supports a father and four younger sisters in the village. She will work until the sisters are well married, she says. Then she will be able to look after her own future. We talk about dancing. Sometimes we dance for the customers, they tell me. They dance as a group of girls for a group of men. Or they dance until they are naked for one man. They grab us here, and here. She points. I'm sure my sadness is apparent in my eyes. They're really breaking my heart today, Sarah says to me. I'm relieved when the subject changes.

They take great joy in critiquing my appearance. I've passed today. The bari-walla's son asked why you don't live here, Sun asks me. You should come and work with us. You would take all the customers. How do I tell her no man can buy me, without suggesting she herself has a price tag? The girls in this brothel don't work the line, as they are for higher paying clients. Bottled up here, they make around 150 rupees a trick. About 4 dollars. They have an owner with whom the money is divided. Last week a man came in while we were painting each others' nails. He chose me. The girls laughed and told him I wasn't available. Wait for me, my friend said, as she got up to serve her "client," the one who had beckoned to me. For a brief minute I understood. And yet I understand nothing. I am a bideshi. A foreigner. I will get up and walk out untouched. I am free to go when I please. There's a bank account with my name to it, and my family supports me, rather than the other way around. Poverty is not my lover. Nor desperation my customer. Here in the sunny streets and dark staircases of this district 10,000 women live and work. It is one of 17 sex districts in the city. The women here are victims, many of them, and prostituted. But they have new identities in my mind, those of sister and friend. Slowly I watch an exodus. Some days it feels too slow. And the Egypt of money and circumstance and gender seems binding and unshakeable. It's a wild hope I cling to as I hold their brown and graceful hands.