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Faceless survivors
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Bishakha Datta's "In The Flesh" gives an intimate glimpse into the lives of commercial sex workers, and raises several thought-provoking questions about their rehabilitation. ELIZABETH ROY writes...
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ORGANISATIONS AND individuals (albeit in small pockets) have, at long last, begun to rethink mainstream perceptions of women in prostitution. Given the fact that no woman or man actually wants to be in prostitution, they are looking for answers to questions like, What does it mean to be a woman in prostitution? What does it mean to sell sex?
At a screening of the film "In the Flesh" by a Chennai-based NGO, Nalamdana, some of these questions were raised, which set in motion a serious discussion. The documentary has been produced by Point Of View, a Mumbai-based NGO, which believes "that women have a point of view on issues that affect them".
Bishakha Datta, who directed "In the Flesh", says, "This is not a film on prostitution but on three different persons involved in it and their points of view." Precisely for that reason, the film was a brilliant effort. By portraying and sharing a particular reality, it showed the ordinariness of a group of people, who in the minds of society, are extraordinary, or somehow alien, different.
The documentary gives one an intimate glimpse of what it is really like to be in prostitution. It follows the lives of three sex workers and attempts to look at the world through their eyes.
Uma, now in her fifties, is a commanding personality. She tells her story wrapped in her own special sense of humour. She was married at the age of four. Abandoned by her husband, she was brought to the `line' at 14 by a female relative. She also had a stint in theatre and dance. Eventually, one of her regular customers, a thoroughbred Bengali `bhadralok' no less, became a special customer and then a husband of sorts and she gave up prostitution. Nothing really changed. When she was poor and young and looking for a place to live, no one would keep a single girl in their home. Later, at the end of her `career', no one wanted to associate with a woman with a stigma attached. So she was forced to live in the `red-light area' where she felt accepted and enjoyed her own space.
The police threw Shabana out of her hometown, Nippani, along with 30 other women in prostitution. The reason — they wanted to lodge a complaint against ruffians who threatened them with violence. The real reason — they belonged to an association campaigning for AIDS awareness! Now, she and her friends solicit customers on the highways and wooded areas. At least this way, she doesn't have to share what she earns with madams, dadas and pimps. Her daughter, who is "beautiful like Aishwarya Rai is in high school learning tailoring and will not follow in her mother's footsteps." Shabana now works with two organisations, SANGRAM and VAMP, distributing condoms to sex workers and organising them.
The third person the film took us to was Bhaskar — quite unique, in the sense that if prostitutes are invisible, male prostitutes are absolutely invisible. He comes from a middle-class family and lives with his mother and sister. There is not much else a hijra can do to earn a living. His customers, most of whom are married men, pay him handsomely. He has a special customer, who ranks as a `husband', and a couple of others he is really fond of, but they can never know. "They will use love as an excuse to walk away without paying."
We see these people as ordinary human beings living out their lives with problems, good times and bad times. The film provides a face to a community that is faceless, character to a community that has been marginalised into invisibility, a voice to a people that never had a voice. We see them deal with their fears and pains and emotions. "At times, one falls in love with the customer. It's scary... falling in love. Every dhandewali (woman in prostitution) has it in her mind." Or, "One has to live in fear. Even if I don't want to, I have to live in fear of the goondas and sleep with them. Military men also trouble us... They also use us for free," said Shabana.
Going out to a customer alone means fear of violence, like the time Uma was beaten up, which ended in surgery. The police add insult to injury — a `slut' cannot register complaints! They are expected to understand when their children are not given admission in schools.
Bishakha sees them not as victims but as survivors. "They've struggled physically and psychologically in their effort to negotiate and wrest some power for themselves." Another complex issue they have to deal with is, how do you live with yourself, when you are treating your body as a commodity, when your whole self comes into question? They seem to have evolved a variety of coping strategies, which they use to separate their professional self from their personal self. They have two names, one for their customers and the outside world, and their real name only for their family and lovers.
A by-product of the film is the book "Unzipped: Interviews With Women and Men in Prostitution", edited by Priya Jhaveri and Bishakha Datta. The translation into English has wonderfully captured the spirit of the speakers and the nuances of their speech. The film and the book together perfectly complete the documentation.
For Bishakha and her cameraperson Ramu Ghosh, producing the 53 minutes of reel footage took more than a whole year of hard work. They made the initial contacts through NGOs who were working with people in prostitution. Then they spent time building a rapport, trying to get them to understand what they were doing, and the need for documentation. The `cast', on their part, took as much time testing the waters, assessing the filming team and its intentions and trustworthiness. When they finally agreed, the memorandum of agreement was very clear. Their privacy was to be respected and the film was never to air on any TV channel accessible in India.
Point of View covered them for their loss of earnings due to filming. As favours returned, Shabana wanted a sewing machine for her daughter and Uma wanted an MRI scan taken to enable her to get her hip treated. Point of View has honoured these promises.
The discussion that followed the film was just as enlightening. Rehabilitation was seen as a possible solution — a typical moral, welfarist stance that goes around under the broad terminology of development. Bishakha pointed out that adults in prostitution know that their stigma will follow them so they do not want rehabilitation. The same society that suggests rehabilitation will be the first to object to integration. Besides, this is the only life and livelihood most of them have known. However, the very young, the minors should be helped to get out of prostitution. Some in the audience felt that children of women in prostitution should be taken away from their mothers in order to `save' them. Are we suggesting somehow that women in prostitution are mothers of a lesser quality and that they have no right to motherhood? Others wondered whether prostitutes feel guilty. Yes, they do when guilt is imposed upon them!
Incidentally, the rest of society doesn't seem to feel any guilt when they sell their souls and their ethics for minor benefits. These children of a lesser God are mildly amused by the benchmark used to determine morality and immorality by the same society that keeps this profession alive with its needs.
"In the Flesh" unavoidably causes perception shifts in its viewers and an accompanying discomfort. Perhaps they will not think about prostitution ever again in terms of statistics (after all we have two million of them) or in terms of morality. They are likely to think of them as the Umas, Shabanas and Bhaskars of our society, real human beings, struggling to lead ordinary lives.
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