Sex workers in Kolkata’s Sonagachi | Only rights can stop the wrongs, says DMSC community

“Only rights can stop the wrong,” reads a poster inside the community centre at the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) office in Sonagachi, Kolkata, West Bengal’s capital. The poster dates back to 2001; it still carries the weight of an unfinished fight in the red-light area. Durbar Mahila Samanway Committee (DMSC), an organisation working for the rights of sex workers, celebrated 30 years of existence on July 15.

DMSC began distributing condoms in 1992 to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Its formation was based on a consensual HIV-AIDS survey by Dr. Samarjit Jana, who was commissioned by the World Health Organisation. At the time, high-risk populations were identified and coerced into testing; Dr. Jana asked for the women’s permission. Over time, DMSC, which includes transgender people, has emerged as a sex workers’ rights organisation, refusing to let people not from their profession speak their truth.

Sonagachi, which translates to golden tree — from the amount of money men spent in these north Kolkata lanes — has no signboard. The area and its people still bear the load of stigma. Historically, sculptors have taken soil from Sonagachi to make the Durga idols but the sex workers are not allowed into regular pandals.

In 2013, they tried to start their own Durga Puja celebration but were met with violent resistance from people. They moved the Calcutta High Court and got their rights. Though held indoors, the joy of celebrating their own Durga Puja in their own locality was a victory.

About 12,000 women in the area live through the dense, layered history of Sonagachi. There are another 28,000 associated with DMSC across West Bengal.

In the folds of the night

On a cloudy morning on July 15, about 150 women of Sonagachi have gathered at a neighbourhood park to celebrate their 30-year-old journey. “Gotor khatiye khai; sramiker adhikar chai” (I work hard for my bread; I demand workers’ rights), a song streams in the background as the women prepare to play musical chairs and share a simple community lunch of rice, dal, and vegetable curry.

Also read: Supreme Court recognises sex work as a ‘profession’

The women huddle together to catch up on daily gossip. Fatima Begum (name changed), 55, sits towards the back of the gathering that is facing a stage. She is pleasantly surprised to meet a friend from another part of Kolkata after 23 years. “I did everything for my parents, my family; I spent my whole life for them. What do I have left now? I am still alone,” Fatima tells her friend.

She is now a field worker for DMSC and stopped sex work after her son got married. “I had to change my lifestyle so he could get social recognition,” she says, adding that it’s something she herself craves even though she has earned her own bread since she was a teenager.

As dusk descends, the women of Sonagachi are beginning their workday. Located in the heart of Kolkata on one of the arterial roads of the city, Chittaranjan Avenue, the area starts bustling as the night progresses.

After her workday is done, an office-going woman comes onto her balcony in a multi-storeyed house in the area. A group of sex workers stands across the road. They are hardly 100 metres apart. They look at each other — that is as close as the women from the two worlds will get. The babus (patrons) live across both worlds.

Layered violence

Sonagachi is lined with hundreds of multi-storeyed brothels which have rooms stacked on each other like matchboxes, three or four floors high, amid narrow meandering lanes and bylanes. Many of these houses are centuries old, some constructed way before the British arrived.

The sex workers of Sonagachi have lived through various kinds of violence while building their lives in this area, in this profession. Workers point out that violent and intoxicated customers are one of their biggest problems.

Also read: Love stories from Sonagachi

“Babus get drunk or high on substances, get angry, and take it out on us. Other girls have to intervene when the violence gets out of hand,” a young woman from Sonagachi says. Most women say they are used to a certain level of violence and verbal abuse — it is extreme violence they fear.

Through the years, they have fought to get the basics, like ration cards, Aadhaar cards, bank accounts. When they were discriminated against, they started the USHA Cooperative, one of the first financial cooperatives in Asia that helps women control their own resources.

“It is a misconception that every sex worker is trafficked. The authorities and society use this narrative to discriminate against us,” says Bishakha Laskar, secretary of DMSC. In her late 40s, Bishakha says many women join the sex trade to earn a living and feed their families. She insists that the only way to stop trafficking is to decriminalise sex work. “Trafficking is there in every section of society; even daily wage labourers are trafficked,” Bishakha adds.

To address the trafficking issue, DMSC has started a group where both sex workers and external members counsel any new woman coming into the trade. They say they have rescued and rehabilitated over 2,000 girls who did not come in voluntarily.

In her office, Bishakha remembers her own journey in Sonagachi as she spells out each letter and slowly signs her name on official documents. She has learnt to read and write under the guidance of her teacher, Sanjib Mukherjee, who has taught many women in the area. “We used to sit on plastic sheets for our classes. Whatever I have learnt, I have learnt from Sir,” she adds.

Owning the journey

Rima Mondal (name changed) came to Sonagachi from Murshidabad with just ₹20 when she was 15. She has spent 33 years as a sex worker even though many had advised her in her early days that she was too young to get into this business. But she came from an impoverished family and did not have other employment options to feed her family. “Nun ante panta phuroto amader” (By the time I got the salt, the rice was over).

Rima’s family could not afford to pay ₹7,000 for her dowry, but through sex work she got her older brother married, refusing to take dowry from her sister-in-law. “No one came to feed me when I was struggling on an empty stomach. They have no right to judge my life choices now,” says Rima, who does field work for the DMSC during the day and returns to her regular job at night.

One reason she does not want to be photographed is that her daughter has married a man outside Sonagachi, and she fears her daughter’s in-laws may feel ashamed of her profession. In the last three decades, she has only managed to open up about her profession to her mother but the rest of her family still believes that she has a job in the city.

It is the evening. Rain lashes Kolkata, washing the dust off trees and turning the city into a petrichor crucible. In Sonagachi, the smell of old cigarettes, pungent alcohol, and fried food is now mixed with the smell of fresh rainwater. Rima tries to duck from the rains, running into her building. She climbs up the dingy, dank, narrow serpentine stairs of the building she has lived in for the past 28 years. She is home.

Rima sits in her 4x4-ft. room on the fourth floor. She remembers that when she came into the trade, things were different. “From forced sex to violence by customers and neighbourhood goons, we have seen it all. During one of our trips to raise awareness and distribute condoms, brothel owners poured hot water on us because they thought we will force women to stop working and they would lose business,” she says. “Over the years, the violence has reduced as women have become empowered to say no to customers who refuse to use condoms or ask for things which they do not want to do.”

She sits on her bed, catching a moment of rest before she prepares her dinner and her customers arrive at night. Her kitchen spills over to the balcony. A single almirah and refrigerator hold all her belongings; everything has a place. There are two netted windows that barely allow light or air into the room, but keep the pests away.

On the green walls hang her awards and certificates, reminders of battles fought and milestones achieved. Hundreds of such rooms crowd these lanes, each reflecting the lives of its residents, the Didis, as locals call them.

Rights and wrongs

Priyanka Kar (name changed), in her 50s, calls herself a daughter of Sonagachi because her mother was paid to be the sex partner to a police officer in the area. Kar is married and says that she has been doing sex work since she was a teenager. “I cannot be one of the line-er meye (girls standing on the road here) because my in-laws’ house is also here. So I had to hide and go to other places to do my work,” Priyanka says, adding that her husband knew about her profession. She laughs and adds that she has always been “naughty”, and never shied away from taking lovers because it was this work that helped her sustain her family.

Over time, her husband became abusive because of her profession. “I tried to kill myself when my family questioned my morality and work,” she says. She found social recognition when her daughter’s in-laws fought for her dignity and respected her choice, saying that she did not cheat anyone to earn a wage and did things on her own terms. She beams with pride while saying this, hoping her daughter’s life will be less precarious than hers.

At a DMSC conference this January, Kingshuk Sarkar, an assistant professor at the Goa Institute of Management who had worked for the West Bengal government as a labour administrator, had said that the lack of acceptance of sex work as work causes problems in getting workers’ rights and benefits. He insisted that sex workers need to be included in India’s existing labour laws to normalise their work and stop human rights violations. “We all use our body parts to do work, then why is sex work different? And why are some body parts stigmatised?” said Sarkar.

The women of Sonagachi echo this, adding that they will also be protected by law if there is violence or harassment at the workplace. They can access public services without discrimination or stigma, and be included in other workers’ schemes in the country.

Down the lanes of Sonagachi, there are at least a dozen different posters and banners of the local MLA Shashi Panja, the Minister of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare of West Bengal. She is a regular at DMSC events, taking away some of the stigma.

The women though, refuse for their real names to be published or their photographs taken. They know the fallout could be severe.