A Night and A Day at Kamathipura

Planning to post memoirs of a few journeys which I made, many of which deeply moved me and perhaps influenced a personal transformation into who I am today. These may not be a travelogue in the ideal sense of the word but is a human story that I experienced when traveling. I also confess that many of these accounts will be corrupted by memory and some will be made dramatic to suit my poetic heart. These are also not chronologically ordered as you may expect and would often involve cases where one journey is split up into fragments as each fragment is equally important. Let me not waste my words on introductions, go on have a read...

***

Dedicated to the wonderful people who I lived these journeys with

***

For a long long time, Mumbai has been a dream city for me. This was primarily because of the fables, fragrance, colors, and people of this dynamic city which when put together always formed a sophisticated and overwhelming human story. Moreover, it was always a city that I loved going to. I had the opportunity to do so at a very young age as my mother's sisters both found themselves settling at Mumbai. One of my very early memories of travel was a train journey to Mumbai from my hometown Thalassery when I was probably six or seven. The faint memories I have of that journey is mostly dominated by tunnels and bridges and how I eagerly watched them through the window seat (the window seat which I had to fight and win). Every tunnel that the train entered as it cut through the Western Ghats provoked extensive excitement and fear - something which still grips me as I begin each journey. Looking back, it was perhaps that journey that gave my life a new track to follow; one filled with countless tunnels and rivers, twice as dark and with bridges longer than any I have ever traveled upon until then.

I always remember being awed at the contradictions that Mumbai throws upon any traveler - where you can find the richest and the poorest people of our country coexisting, where skyscrapers impose itself upon bordering slums, where you can find elevated highways and people living their entire lives underneath them. This would certainly have shaped my ideas of our society and with due course of time would ignite my insides and create a desperate hope within me to change these norms. Though the journey which I wished to write about happened many years later, and it happened at Kamathipura - that rather infamous red light area of Mumbai.

It was a cold winter's day and I came to Mumbai from Pune via a bus that went up to Dadar. Dadar may well be a representation of everything Mumbai - crowded streets, the local train station that had a natural rush at any given time of the day and a place where everyday life went on adhering to a strict routine which made a traveler like me feel a bit out of place. It was midday, I was hungry and I had a backpack that was eating its way into my shoulders as I traversed along the busy lanes of Dadar. I remember going to a movie theater which showed a Marathi movie just to have momentary salvation by keeping my bag at their ticketing office. I don't remember the name of the movie but the experience was worth reminiscing about. I would certainly suggest you visit local language movie houses to know more about the society you traveled into! The movie left me rejuvenated and with gulps of evening tea hitting at my empty stomach, I was ready to explore more of this place.

I began walking aimlessly and rather subconsciously. I had this impulsive urge to reach South Mumbai by nightfall. I always harbored the idea that there was a lot more Mumbai-ness in South Mumbai than anywhere else and this made me walk seven to eight kilometers with an angry stomach, tired limbs and a backpack which resumed its hobby of eating into my shoulders. I passed beside numerous alleyways, constantly guided by the elevated freeway which ran above my head. At some point, I found myself deviating from this path and into those cramped lanes. It was maybe a hope to lose myself in an abundance of life, or maybe to stumble upon a local peddler selling stash. Whatever be the reason, I was pretty close to Kamathipura and when I checked my map and saw that I was close, I had an intrinsic urge to go and see the place.

I spend a whole night wandering along the lanes of Kamathipura. A brief reading of the history and demography of the place made me know that there are 14 lanes in Kamathipura, each inhabited by sex workers belonging to a specific linguistic and regional background. Women with thickly painted faces and bruised bodies occupied alleyways, footpaths, and balconies of crumbling buildings. I felt my disturbed mind empathetically embracing their physique. They were the products of our society, the broken children of our system. A system that created child workers, bonded laborers, manhole cleaners and countless more human beings who sell their body to earn a living because of the caste and class they were born into. I slept in front of a small shop and was woken up the next morning at daybreak.

I walked back onto those lanes once again and it was then that it happened. Out of pure chance, this woman walked up to me in the hope of finding at least one customer. She introduced herself with those very careful choice of words that still echoes in my ears,

"Give whatever you have and you can take me!" 

It shook me. I have been approached by lots of sex workers the day before but none felt articulate enough to gather my attention.

"I am not interested" I replied.

"Then why are you here?" her displeasure was visible.

"Just to see.." I said rather sheepishly in a hope to end this awkward interaction.

"Will you take me with you as you see around?" she inquired.

I was certainly taken aback by her demeanor and how she interacted and couldn't say no to her request.

"I don't mind that if you want to see around too"

She laughed and said "You have to pay me extra for taking me out!"

I was perturbed and was beginning to think this was all a bad idea. I wanted to walk away from her but something within made me halt. She was wearing the brightest saree one could think of - dark violet and bright pink. She had a Bindi the size of a ping pong ball and her lips shone with cheap lipstick. She smelt of a piercing perfume which makes me cringe even while thinking about it. She was old but was trying, rather in vain, to hide her age. I imagine she would have reached that point where most people who walk into Kamathipura wouldn't take her even if she was rendering her services for free. I felt there was an island of broken-ness that hung around her; an island which she was trying desperately to swim out of but her tired body and hopeless aims could not muster the necessary assertiveness to do so. In that moment of indecision, I looked back and saw her standing haplessly and still watching me. It was then that I asked her to come.

We walked together. She tried holding my hand even though I resisted. I asked her if she wanted anything to eat. She said she would love to with a smile that for once broke everything she pretended to be. I smiled back and thought of something which I would never have thought on a normal day. I took her to a rather elegant restaurant looking out onto an adjacent street. Sitting there, you could catch a glimpse of how the biggest city in India commuted to work on yet another working day. The moment our breakfast came, she lost all the care in the world and began eating her way into it. I felt a strange unity with her and found myself enjoying every bit of that breakfast. Suddenly I had a deep desire to know more about this woman, who I presumed by then commanded the attention of almost everyone at the restaurant due to her rather deviant dressing sense.

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Juhi!" she said with a smile while still attending to the food.

"How long have you been here?" I inquired casually, perhaps with a curiosity to retrieve a moving story of suffering.

"I don't remember," she said rather scornfully. I understood that she didn't particularly enjoy the idea of her being interviewed and decided to break the topic altogether.

"Do you want to eat something else? Or maybe go somewhere else?" I asked.

"I want to see the Marine Drive!" she replied quickly "And drink rose milk!"

I felt she was shedding, even if fleetingly, what her life was until that instant. We walked on the Marine Drive with the 10 AM Sun warming our skin and felt a certain togetherness that people having deep meaningful relationships feel. I discovered a lot more about her through that moment of silence. While she drank her glass of rose milk watching how waves hit the tetra-pod rocks creating splashes reaching up to the walkway, she would have been consumed by the same curiosity I felt a few minutes before.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Anand" I replied.

"Why did you really come here today?" she was still confused.

"Just to see.." I said once again to which she gave out a hollow laugh.

After a few more minutes of watching the waves, I walked her back to Kamathipura. On our way back, I asked her how much she would make in a day and whether it was enough to survive.

"You have to survive anyhow" she replied at the end of that conversation in a fragile voice.

We reached Kamathipura and I searched my pocket to take whatever money I had to pay her for her 'service'. Realizing what I was up to she held my hand tightly, gave me a deep hug and said

"I can't take your money now, my love!" She walked away without saying another word.

In that strange moment, I couldn't look as deeply into her eyes as I wished to, I couldn't ask her for a number to keep in touch and I couldn't capture her image to carve it out in my memory so that I may never forget her. I wanted to remember her, but years later apart from all the details that disturbed me the most - her Bindi, her piercing perfume, her bright saree, and her broken body - I don't remember how she looked. 

There are days when I pass close to Kamathipura and I fruitlessly search for her. I doubt if I would recognize her even if I see her again, after all, our memory corrupts most of the images we have. I must say that when she hugged me I had a tear in my eye which would later come to dominate my emotions whenever I find myself amidst a human crisis, which would make me side with the people at instances of social division.

"You have to survive anyhow!" I would keep muttering to myself during days when I feel broken and depressed.