In the light of reality

AT 11, Malti is a stunner. She has a complexion that has been nurtured with cream and uptan - a paste of gram flour, turmeric, milk and other ingredients mixed by Sukhrani, masseur and beautician. Malti marvelled at the ethereal glow her skin acquired after every application of the uptan. Unlike in most Indian families, there were no regrets that she was a girl. In fact, her birth was celebrated for over a week. Her mother and aunts spent a lot of time and effort grooming her. By nine, she was an accomplished hostess. Although Malti could neither read nor write, a lot of money, time and effort went into her "vocational training." She was given an education that equipped her for life ahead. Malti had never been to a formal school. But she could dance like a nymph. She knew how to pout and flutter her eyelashes seductively. The dances were all to raunchy Hindi film songs, but that was what she would need, not aesthetic classical steps. She could serve a drink as intoxicatingly as the beverage itself and make the most pedestrian pakora seem like an aphrodisiac. Many a time, her mother dragged her to a strategically placed peephole to watch the experts at work, without the clients' knowledge.

This was the first step in her professional apprenticeship. She would soon have to take over as the prime earning member from her eldest sister, Basanti, who in her mid thirties, was already over the hill and would soon vanish into semi retirement.

To Malti and her family, prostitution was not a matter of shame. It was their traditional profession. The men they married, usually well after their best years were behind them, were merely guardians of the sons and family assets back home. It was the men who waited outside their doors who were not only their main source of income, but also sires to their future breadwinners - the next generation of daughters. If any of the girls born here did not meet the high standards of beauty, they were sold in the other streets of Sonagachi. No one was unwanted. Boys grew up training to be pimps and procurers, and often ended up as Babus to other women in the area adding to the family coffers.

Training started very young, catering to the clients, and netting them without seeming too eager. Thirteen year-old Sadhana, for instance, had two good dresses. She wore a garish red lipstick, a thick pancake of "face powder", lined her eyes heavily with kajal, dabbed some of the lipstick on her ebony cheeks and tied her well-oiled, hair into a pony tail, held together with a colourful elasticised fabric. As the sun cast its long shadows, she would be out in the street corner with other mannequins like her.

Sadhana had seen her mother do the same, while her father waited for her to bring him the money for his next bottle of cheap liquor. Both Sadhana and her mother knew that it was a matter of time before Sadhana joined the line of painted women on G.B. Road. One thing Sadhana was sure of was that she would not allow any man to live off her earnings. She had learnt not only what to do, but also what to avoid. She knew how to dodge the police, to don a mangalsutra and sindoor as an armour.

Vasandhi, 16, accompanied her mother to the Marina Beach in Chennai every evening where they sold flowers. Coming all they way from Porur, they usually sold off most of the fragrant jasmine by eight in the evening. By which time, the dark sands threw up silhouettes of couples in passionate clinches, hastily withdrawing when someone passed by. Vasandhi learnt to observe her mother, time her quick disappearances, look out for plainclothesmen out to harass them, make the quick getaway when she sensed trouble, strike a hard bargain, hide the money from her alcoholic father... all these she picked up almost instinctively by keen observation. But most important of all, she learnt to use her brothers to embarrass couples necking behind anchored fishing boats by demanding money not to make a scene - a ploy that she used to get money from men after sunset. By the time Vasandhi's mother would retire, the daughter would have overtaken her in skill and earning several times over.

Madhubala knew "Kamala Mummy" was not her real mother, but right now she was the closest relative she had. About five years ago, Kamala Mummy (then Kamala Mausi) had visited them in Meerut and taken an excited nine-year-old Champa with her to Bombay promising to give her a break in the movies. Lured by dreams of easy money, an actress relative and the glamour of movies, Champa's elder brother and brother-in-law had convinced her mother. In less than six months, the awkward Champa became Madhubala. She could judge a great deal about a client in almost a single glance - his eagerness, his age, the size of his wallet.

Her three-month long training with Mummy had prepared her well for the tough life. At fifteen, she was a veteran - she had been at it for nearly five years. She had learnt the ways of womanly viles, as Mummy referred to her skill, long before she left childhood, long before she attained puberty. She knew that for one so young, the ideal client was the well over fifty men who sought to acquire their lost youth by physical contact with a child. She knew that the older women around her were no competition when it came to sheer youth. Kamala Mummy had done her job well - Madhubala now helped Mummy trains the other girls. And whenever she was homesick, a movie or new clothes or jewellery were enough to change her mind. Mummy now owned her body, mind and soul and grooming had been a great success.

While a national programme to educate the girl child and make her financially self-sufficient is yet to notch up significant success, the likes of Malti, Vasandhi, Madhubala and Sadhana have already been through an elaborate apprenticeship, probably long before they even realised that there were other options too.

ANNAM SURESH

The author is a freelance journalist and this report is part of a Fellowship series for the National Foundation for India.

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