Have you ever worked in a red-light area? Should you do so, the experiences you might go through can be hilarious...mostly.
Late night. One day. I board an auto-rickshaw. Have just finished my work. The rickshaw guy looks at me, and tells me with a straight face in broken English,"Saab, do you want an item?" (Item is a ribald way of referring to a sex worker). I tell him I work in the red-light area. Am a scribe. He replies,"I do two jobs. In the morning, I drive auto like anybody else. In the night, I do delivery. I thought you wanted item also." I say I do not, leave the rickshaw, and walk off.
Buddhahood, Chapter 1 over.
"Saab, you have come to this area at the right time,"one rick guy tells me another day. "Right time?" Am confused. Have to come daily for work. "Yes, right now it is the government's budget season. So, items are giving discounts." It is ten in the night. How can I convince him I am a journalist? I keep shut. He says nothing too. I reach home.
Buddhahood, Chapter 2 ends.
In front of my house. Another day. A third rickshaw guy asks me,"Do you get girls here also?" "How the hell do I know?" I shoot back. "I thought you had gone to a red-light area, so you would know."
I stare at him, and leave the place.
Buddhahood, Chapter 3 complete.
A festival. I am walking on the crowded streets of the area to write an article on the atmosphere, the celebration to be precise. Families are enjoying every moment of the celebration but, at a distance, I see some plastered faces. A bunch of girls have put on what seems like cheap talcum powder on their faces to look attractive. The red lipstick they have applied seems to accentuate the pain on their faces. They are looking for work when people are enjoying.
Is this life?
Budhwar Peth Buddhahood. Last chapter ends.
4 comments:
Life can be so exciting:) Liked this one really.
Mmm, Buddhahood suits you, my man. The last time I visited Budhwar Peth was about a quarter century ago, when I was covering the painfully young escape artists of Iran's Left Tudeh Party as they were being tyrannised by Ayatollah Khomeini's cohorts and had taken refuge in Pune. So many of these friends of mine were butchered when they returned to Iran for various reasons that Budhwar Peth became a diversion for our small bunch of Tudeh Party journos then, a place to go to to regain our sanity, a watering hole we went to to touch reality, however sleazy it was, again. None of us screwed the sex workers, who became, over time, fond of us because we were all so full of angst and lost, and old beyond our years - we just talked to the sex workers, and they spoke to us: about their lives, why they had come into the profession (and the cliche is true: most of them came into it because they were coerced into it), what they did with their not-so-innocent children, whether they aspired to a more stable life. After our communal dinner at the Tudeh Party safehouses, Budhwar Peth became de rigueur. I don't know if it's any different now: I imagine not - the reasons for their turning into fuck machines couldn't have been altered by our rocketing Sensex. But at least you had a glimpse of what we saw every day - the humanity behind the mottled walls and the squelchy mud and the stained bedspreads.
...but Time will make you insulated too to the living hell that is Budhwar Peth as this fervid city has done so for so many years...
This area is the commercial nerve of the city, flesh trade the biggest business, jostling comfortably with stationers, bookshops, theatres, mithaiwalas, deparmental stores,temples....
Ref: Kajal's post
Nothing has changed. I had a glimpse as you rightly said, and that transient moment conveyed a package of grim realities, making me feel I was so lucky not to be one of them.
I can see the face of one such girl as I respond to your post. Her face was absolutely white and she, at perhaps 19, was trying her best not to look 29 as she looked at me invitingly. All around me, Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations were going on. But she was completely indifferent as she waited for her man for the night.
As I walked past, I could not help thinking: don't these girls have normal needs and desires like all of us do? What stops them from being one of us for a day in a year?
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