“Only the rights can stop the bad,” reads a poster inside the community center in the Durbar Mahila Committee office (DMSC) in Sonagachi, Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal. The poster dates back to 2001; It still carries the weight of the unfinished fight in the red light area. The Durbar Mahila Committee Samanway (DMSC), an organization working for sexual rights, celebrated 30 years of existence on July 15.
DMSC began to distribute condoms in 1992 to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Its formation was based on HIV-AIDS consensual survey Dr. Samarjit John, who was entrusted with the World Health Organization. At that time, high -risk populations were identified and forced to test; Dr. Jana asked for permission of women. Over time, DMSC, which includes Transgender people, appeared as an organization of rights of sex workers who refused to let people speak their truth from their profession.
Sonagachi, who translates into Golden Tree – from the amount of money spent in these northern streets Kolkata – has no sign -up shield. The area and its people still carry the load of stigma. Historically, the sculptors took the ground from Sonagachi to make idols of Durg, but sex workers are not allowed in regular pandals.
In 2013, they tried to launch their own Durg Puja celebration, but met with the violent resistance of people. They moved the High Court in Calcutta and gained their rights. Although she stayed inside, the joy of celebrating her own Durga Puja in her own locality was a victory.
About 12,000 women in this area live a dense, layered Sonagachi history. DMSC is associated with another 28,000 in West Bengal.
In the folds of the night
In a cloudy morning on July 15, about 150 Sonagachi women gathered in the neighboring park to celebrate their thirty -year journey. “Gotor Khatiye Khai; Sramiker Adhikar Chai” (I work hard on my bread; I require workers’ rights), a stream of songs in the background when women prepare for playing music chairs and share a simple community lunch of rice, gave and vegetable curry.
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Women are snorting to catch up with everyday gossip. Fatima Begum (changed name), 55, sits towards the back of the assembly that faces the scene. After 23 years, she is pleasantly surprised to meet a friend from another part of Calcutta. “I did everything for my parents, my family; I’ve spent my whole life for them. What have I left now? I’m still alone,” Fatima says to his girlfriend.
Now she is a field worker for DMSC and after her son married, she stopped sexual work. “I had to change my lifestyle to get social recognition,” he says, adding that she is something she wants, even though she has earned her own bread since she was a teenager.
Assembly of the Durbar Committee Mahila Samanwaya requiring their rights as workers. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
As dusk descends, Sonagachi women start a working day. Chittaranjan Avenue is located in the heart of Calcutta on one of the arterial roads in the city, the area starts with busy, as the night progresses.
After completing her working day, she comes to the balcony in a multiponed house in the office woman. A group of sex workers stands across the road. They are barely 100 meters apart. They look at each other – it is as close as women from both worlds get. Babus (patrons) live across the two worlds.
Layered violence
Sonagachi is lined with hundreds of multi -storey brothels that have stacked rooms such as matches, three or four floors tall, in the middle of narrow meandering stripes and bystans. Many of these houses have been over the centuries, others built in front of the British.
Sonagachi sex workers have experienced various kinds of violence and built their lives in this area, in this profession. Workers point out that violent and intoxicated customers are one of their biggest problems.
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“Babus gets drunk or high on fabrics, angry and take it to us. Other girls must intervene when violence gets out of hand,” says Sonagachi’s young woman. Most women say they are accustomed to a certain level of violence and verbal abuse – it is extreme violence that they are afraid of.
Over the years, they have tried to get foundations such as rations, Aadhaar cards, bank accounts. When they were discriminated against, USHA began cooperation, one of the first financial cooperatives in Asia, which helps women to control their own resources.
“It is a misconception that every sex worker is traded. Authorities and society use this story for discrimination,” says Bishakha Laskar, secretary DMSC. At the age of 40, Bishakha says that many women join sexual trade to earn a living and feed their families. It insists that the only way to stop trading is to decrimine sexual work. “Trading is in every part of society; even everyday wage workers are traded,” Bishakha adds.
In order to solve the problem of trading trading, the DMSC has set up a group where sex workers and external members advise any new woman coming to the store. It is said that they saved and rehabilitated over 2,000 girls who did not come up with.
In his office, Bishakha remembers his own way in Sonagachi when he explains every letter and slowly sign his name on official documents. She learned to read and write under the guidance of her teacher Sanjib Mukherjee, who taught many women in this area. “We sat on plastic leaves for our classes. I learned anything, I learned from Sir,” he adds.
Own
Rima Mondal (changed name) came to Sonagachi of Murshidabad with only 20 ₹ when she was 15. She spent 33 years as a sex worker, although many of them advised her that she was too young to get into this business. But she came from a poor family and had no other job options to feed her family. “Nun Ante Panta Phuroto Amader” (at the time I got salt, the rice ended).
The Rima family could not afford to pay 7,000 GBP for their dowry, but thanks to sexual work she married her older brother and refused to take the dowry from her sister -in -law. “No one came to feed me when I fought on an empty stomach. He has no right to assess his life choices,” says Rima, who works for DMSC during the day and returns to regular work at night.
One of the reasons why she does not want to be photographed is that her daughter married a man outside Sonagachi and fears that she can be ashamed of her professions. In the last three decades, she has only managed to open her mother’s profession, but the rest of her family still believes she has a job in the city.
It’s in the evening. The rain of algae, the mistake of the dust of the trees and turned the city on a crucible of Petrichor. In Sonagachi, the smell of old cigarettes, pungent alcohol and fried food is now mixed with the scent of fresh rainwater. Rima is trying to duck from the rain and crashed into her building. It will climb to a dirty, dirty, narrow tire stairs of the building in which it lived for the last 28 years. He’s at home.
Rima sits in its 4×4-FT. Room on the fourth floor. He remembers that when she came to the store, things were different. “We have seen all this from forced sex to violence and neighborhood. During one of our travels to raise awareness and distribute condoms, the brothel owners poured hot water on us because we thought we would force women to stop working and lose business,” he says. “Over the years, violence has decreased when women have become justified to say not to customers who refuse to use condoms or ask for things they do not want to do.”
She sits on the bed and catches the moment of rest before preparing dinner and her customers arrive at night. Her kitchen spills on the balcony. The only Almira and the refrigerator hold all its things; Everything has a place. There are two mesh windows that hardly allow light or air to the room but protect the pests away.
On the green walls hang her awards and certificates, reminiscent of battles of fought and milestones achieved. Hundreds of such rooms will give these stripes, each of which reflects the lives of their inhabitants, didis, as the locals call them.
Rights and crime
Priyanka Kar (the name changed), in her fifties, is called the daughter of Sonagachi because her mother was paid for a sex partner to a police officer in this area. Kar is married and says she has been doing sexual work since she was a teenager. “I can’t be one of the line-Er Meye (girls standing on the road) because there is also a house of my sister-in-law. So I had to hide and go to other places to do my job,” Priyanka said, adding that her husband knew about my profession. She laughs and adds that she has always been “naughty”, and she never avoided her to take the lover, because it was this work that helped her keep her family.
Over time, her husband has become abusing because of her profession. “I tried to kill myself when my family questioned my morality and work,” he says. She found social recognition when her sister -in -law fought her daughters for her dignity and respected her choice and said she hadn’t cheated anyone to earn wages and do things according to his own conditions. When he says it, rays with pride, she hopes that her daughter’s life will be less uncertain than hers.
Durbar Mahaila Sexual Staff Mahaila Samanwaya in Calcutta in 2006 took the rights of workers in Delhi in 2006. Photographic credit: Special Arrangement
At the DMSC conference in January this January Kingshuk Sarkar, a professional assistant at the Goa Institute of Management, who worked for the government of West Bengal as a labor manager, he said that the lack of acceptance of sexual work as work causes problems with the acquisition of rights and benefits of workers. He insisted that sex workers must be included in the existing Indian work laws to normalize their work and stop human rights violations. “We all use our parts of the body to work, so why is sexual work different? And why are some parts of the body stigmatized?” Sarkar said.
Sonagachi women reflect this and add that they will also be protected by law if there is violence or harassment in the workplace. They have access to public services without discrimination or stigma and be included in the systems of other workers in the country.
On the streets of Sonagachi there are at least a dozen different posters and banners of the local MLA Shashi, the Minister of Women and Children and Social Security. It is regular on DMSC events and takes part of the stigma.
However, women refuse to make their real names published or taken. They know that the fall may be serious.
(Scrabana.chatterjee@thehind.co.in)
