Old-world charm

Red light areas are the most visible part of a city’s underbelly. Even a child’s curiosity would be aroused at the sight of a street lined with women — obviously poor and dressed in a tawdry and showy kind of way that their mothers and sisters and aunts would frown at — apparently doing nothing, but definitely waiting for something or someone. Beyond that, curiosity would turn into mystification and befuddlement, for it would be difficult for a child to figure out what is actually going on.

A child’s budding prurience is of little help when it comes to understanding the logistics of prostitution. But one thing is certain, most children would find the scene suspicious, for few, unless absolutely green, would ever talk about it to their mother. They would rather suffer the pangs of conscience in silence than reveal this guilty secret. It is their first taste of the apple of knowledge and they would instinctively realize that it was not something they could talk about with everybody.

I am speaking from experience. When we used to live in Howrah in the Fifties till the late Sixties, my elder cousins and I would often go for long walks to the Howrah maidan, unbeknown to my protective mother. On our way back home, we would sometimes stray into an alley behind the busy Grand Trunk Road. Here, next to a hole-in-the-wall cinema, I stumbled upon this shadowy world where love was up for sale, to paraphrase Cole Porter. At that age (I could not have been ten) I did not know what was being sold, but the bold stares, heavily powdered pock-marked skin, oily kiss curls, maroon mouths, worn-out bodies and soiled saris in lurid colours told their own unsavoury tale.

Prostitution is a crime in India, and the scene bore all the marks of illicitness, for although the lane was as crowded as a bazaar, these women seemed to exist in a world apart that people passing by were desperately trying to avoid. Yet it was impossible to turn one’s eyes away from them. It is in our nature to be irresistibly drawn to and be fascinated by something that is taboo.

It was only after some time that I got to know that this was the infamous Harkata gali of Howrah, and that there existed in Bowbazar, Calcutta, another such alley of the same name. In Bowbazar also, a similar business was being conducted in the maze of narrow lanes opposite the Calcutta Medical College. These lanes are regularly used by commuters either going to or coming from the Sealdah railway station.

As I grew up, I became acquainted with the secret life of Free School Street and heard all the stories of pimps-turned-snatchers from my precocious Anglo-Indian friends in school who lived so close to, as they say, where the action was. The girls were never visible, but when one walked down the pavement adjoining the Indian Museum, one was inevitably accosted by men who offered “schoolgirls who come first in class”. One could only guess the nature of their specialization.

Then there used to be this chalk-white bosomy lady in fiery red (“Alo boudi” in college parlance), who unfailingly stood in front of Chowringhee’s most famous footwear shop every evening, busily checking the time, as if she had been stood up by her beau. In those days, these night birds used to wait for the dark. Today, one sees them in broad daylight, painted women only in name. Closed factories have forced them to take to the streets. Indistinguishable from the housewife-next-door (many of them actually are so), they don’t bother to wear either a scrap of paint or even an eye-catching sari. After a few years, these faces are lost for ever. The human body burns out fast but human appetite is boundless.

Recently, not more than six months ago, I saw one of these ex-streetwalkers in the bus accompanying a tiny girl. I had seen her last about 20 years ago when she was darkly attractive. The woman had become matronly and her hair was grey. Had she turned into a maid who was chaperoning the kid to school, or was this her own baby? My blood ran cold as she got off at the petrol station next to Sonagachhi.

The increasingly visible she-men are perhaps the only ones who care for sartorial subtleties these days. They lurk on the darker stretches of Chowringhee, some of them looking elegant in stilettos and pant-suits. Only their falsettos and slim hips give them away.

In high school itself the boys would whisper the forbidden word, “Sonagachhi”. Ironically, it was the AIDS scourge that made this terra incognita more accessible to journalists like myself. The vast warren of lanes, dingy old houses with occasional glimpses of opulence and beauty turned into a market of women after sunset. As in Harkata lane in Howrah and Bowbazar, the homes of middle-class Bengalis (“This is the dwelling of a respectable family. Please do not disturb,” read the notices on doorways) exist cheek-by-jowl with houses of ill-repute. Further down Chitpur, next to Allen Market, the girls operate from a cage. This gated community is only visible through a small provisions store.

Bollywood knows no boundaries, and these days, as my bus rushes past Masjid Bari Street and Darjipara, one can catch sight of the girls shimmering like Christmas trees in spangled evening wear and low-slung jeans, their silhouettes blown out like a blimp. The neighbourhood Bangladeshi ragpicker had turned into a Kareena Kapoor lookalike before she was lost forever.

But the fly-by-night babes, who go to work well after midnight, are not fashion’s fools. Only saris for them. I could once see them from the window of my flat, dark shadows slinking out of the alleys. The bright sodium vapour lamps have driven them elsewhere. They hollered as they mingled with the drunken mob. They howled like animals as they were beaten up by customers. A female Falstaff would run for cover bellowing in delight as the men charged towards her. Perhaps she was a procuress. The other morning, when I was going to my bank in Dalhousie Square, I saw her selling cucumbers on the Currency Building pavement.