by Amita Trasi
She came to me the next morning while I sat in my room mending a rip in my blouse. I could see the fear in her eyes as she closed the door behind her.
“There is this man, a customer who came along two nights ago,” she whispered as she bent down to sit by my side. “He was from an organization that saves women like us. That is, if we want to go, they will help us. Do you think it could be true?” She looked at the door afraid of being watched. We looked at each other with disbelief and considered the offer suspiciously.
“Who would want to save us?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I’ve heard that such organizations exist, but I thought it was false—a rumor Madam must be spreading to see what we do. If we escape, she could come after us and cut our throats.”
I thought about it as I watched Asha sleep beside me, just hours away from being taken away for the day. And I knew—I knew this was a risk I was willing to take.
“What do we have to do?” I asked Sylvie.
“Nothing, just tell the man. He will organize a raid one night—”
“Arrest us? That will cause more trouble. I cannot—”
“No, no. Shh, listen to me. These raids are organized by his organization. They will take us away to his shelter. That’s what he said.”
“Okay, tell him then—”
“Are you sure? It could get us into trouble.”
I nodded. I had no choice.
The rain began to fall a few hours before the raid was scheduled. It was a light drizzle at first, then a disturbing downpour. The man who visited me that night was wearing dark brown trousers and a cream shirt and had arrived straight from his work. He said he was a waiter at a small restaurant outside the railway station and wanted to spend the entire amount he made in a month on me because I reminded him of his wife, who he had left back in the village. I waited all night, listening to him, smelling the sourness of his breath, hearing his ragged moans in my ears, hoping that anytime now, my child would be free.
The raid never happened. When I finished work and my last customer left, I walked across to Sylvie’s room. She was still with a man, and I was about to leave when I saw drops of red leaking on the floor. I entered the room. The girl in the next bed, yelled at me, “Arre, don’t you know you can’t enter when we are with customers?”
I ignored her and walked closer to Sylvie’s bed. My heart seized at what I saw; my hands and feet went numb, and I collapsed to the ground without a sound. The girl in the next bed came yelling after me, then went silent when she saw what had happened, her eyes widening in horror, her screams surrounding us. There she was—my dear Sylvie—in an embrace with a man, a knife wound through his back and her eyes so wide open, so far gone, that there was no sign of life inside them.
I don’t quite remember how I managed to get back to my room. One of the girls must have pulled me up and helped me back, and they had probably given me something to sleep. When I came around, the police were knocking on all our doors. We lined up outside in the main area like we did on nights when men chose who they wanted to spend the night with. The policeman before us looked strict.
“I am Inspector Pravin Godbole,” he said, waving his lathi around. “So what happened here today? Who is this girl who was killed? Do you know where she came from?”
He walked up and down, pausing briefly before each one of us, noting the expression on our faces. Each one of us shook our heads and lowered our eyes as he looked at us.
Then Madam began to speak. “See Sahib, I am telling you. This man was in love with Sylvie and wanted to run away with her. Sylvie must have tried to tell him she wouldn’t escape, and he must not have been able to take the rejection. He killed her and then killed himself. Poor Sylvie . . . she . . . ” Madam made an attempt to sob.
Everyone knew that was a lie. The man was from an NGO, posing as a customer; he was trying to rescue us—all of us knew the truth. The brothel keepers had got wind of Sylvie trying to escape and had killed the man and Sylvie. Even the police standing there knew this. It was so obvious. The police inspector looked sternly at Madam.
“Now, let’s see what we can do for you, shall we?” Madam said with a smile. He returned her smile and accepted the bundle of notes she fetched for him.
“You have to do more than this if you want the case to go cold,” he said, slipping the notes in his wallet.
“Of course, you can choose any girl you want from them,” she told him, sweeping her open hand past our lineup.
I didn’t see who he chose that night; my eyes were too overwhelmed with tears to see anything. But within days there was a thirteen-year-old girl who occupied Sylvie’s bed and reprised the life that had once belonged to Sylvie, her screams dissolving in the terror of the night. Everything was forgotten, and everyone went about their work. It had become just another casualty of life.
Then the morning came that I hoped would never come. I waited for hours for them to bring Asha back to me, counting the number of times the ceiling fan made full circles. When I could wait no longer, I crept downstairs. Madam was sitting on the verandah with a glass of desi daru—country liquor—in her hands, a cigarette entangled in her fingers, the smoke rising from its end. I stood behind Madam, her back to me, as I collected my nerve.
“What have you done with her?” I asked.
She turned around and looked at me, her eyes red from the liquor and the smoke from the cigarette surrounding her.
“Wh-what . . . have you done with my child?” I repeated hesitantly. I tried to stop my face from revealing the deep fright clutching my heart.
She looked at me for a while, raising an eyebrow, then laughed and took a gulp from her glass. “She will be with you in a few days. Now go upstairs and get back to work,” she said, motioning her guards to come at me. I ran up the stairs, back to my room. I could have waited and insisted on knowing what they were doing with her, but the guards would have beaten me for days. I told myself I couldn’t afford to let my child see me that way—bruised and battered. Actually, it had nothing to do with my child seeing me that way. It tears my heart every day, more than anything else, that I wasn’t brave enough to endure those beatings for my child. So now I wait every morning, standing on that stool, watching outside the window, waiting to see her face in the alleyway. And now they are sending me away to Sonagachi for a while, because I am creating too much trouble by asking about my child.
Those are the events I told Andrew, the journalist, and my eyes began to water without my knowledge.
“Didn’t Arun Sahib do anything to find her?”
“Why would he bother? As far as he knew the child was never his; he wouldn’t believe it if I told him. All we are to him is a way to make money.”
“But he loved you, didn’t he?”
“Love?” I laughed. “If there is one thing I have learned in this brothel, it is that love comes in so many different shades that it is difficult to find. It languishes somewhere between like and hate and can change color as a person wishes. Why else would I have these knife marks, carved on my body—a gift along with all the other gifts he gave me?”
Andrew stared at my wounds.
“Will you help me find Asha? Actually, if you can contact Tara, she is the only one who can keep Asha safe after I die.”
“Yes, yes of course.” Andrew sniffled, then looked up at me, surprised. “What do you mean after you die?”
I sighed. “I think I have the same disease Amma had. The doctor had a name for it—HIV or something like that. They said I had to take some medicine. Sylvie used to get me the medicines by taking money from her customers on the sly, but after her death, I stopped taking medicines. Those medicines are expensive, and Madam doesn’t like to spend on us. I . . . I don’t think I have much time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have brought you the medicines.”
“Look for Asha and Tara . . . that’s all I want now.”
“I will do what I can.” He nodded, then turned his eyes away to th
e window.
No matter how hard I try, forgiveness will not come easy.
–TARA
Twenty-eight
December 2008
Raza and I sat back in the car, yet another night, and watched the chaos as it took over the brothel area, aware of lives stowed away in dark corners. I had been doing this for about four years now, believing the NGO knew what was best and could ferret out information about the complicated brothel trade. After my life-threatening encounter at Kamathipura, I had realized I probably had no option but to rely on them. Now, beside me in the driver’s seat, Raza lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke out the open window as I watched the confusion reflected in the side mirror.
“Navin came by the office yesterday and asked if he could be of any help. His son, Rohan, is almost five now, so he has more time on his hands,” Raza said.
“Oh?” I said hesitantly. In the rear view mirror, I watched constables with their lathis driving away the drunks and the shutters of shops closing in a hurry. Female social workers were comforting prostitutes.
“He doesn’t mean any harm. I think he just wants to make it up to you.”
“Make it up to me?” I stared at Raza.
He shrugged at my anger.
“As if that is possible,” I said.
“We all do things we regret,” Raza reminded me.
I looked out the window. Not very far away, I could see Saira exiting the brothel with a few girls they had rescued, her team of social workers helping them climb into the van, talking to them in soft whispers. I thought about what Raza said. It had been more than two years since Anupam chacha had confessed, but I still wasn’t able to forgive him. I couldn’t understand why Navin hid it from me. In my moments of fury, I wished Anupam chacha had been hale and hearty, so I could have handed him over to the police. That would have given me respite, watching him suffer in prison, being punished for the crime he had committed. But now that he was dead, all there was left to do was wonder about the desperation that might have prompted him to do something so evil. Was it similar to the desperation I had felt so many years ago when I had approached Salim to take Mukta away? Perhaps we were no different.
I saw Dinesh in the side mirror, walking to my side of the car.
“It will take some time,” he said, knocking on the half open window. “There is a girl in there who refuses to come out.”
“How old?”
“Not more than five or six, I think.”
“Why don’t you lift her?”
“It is not that easy.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer, but waved at me to follow him. I got out of the car to follow him inside the brothel. Standing outside, I was overcome by the same sickening feeling I had years ago when I had first entered a brothel. This time, I am stronger I told myself. I had watched many girls rescued from this hell. I had consoled them in their agony. But I was wrong. Walking inside was like stepping into quicksand, getting sucked into a swirling vortex of despair. I walked through the long hallway, stood by a windowless dark room, and watched the bare walls and leaking roof as I had years ago, still smelling sweat mixed with incense.
“This way.” Dinesh pointed.
It was dark, and the torchlight in Dinesh’s hand was leading the way. There were many social workers gathered around a wall, and I had to push past them to see what was going on. Torch lights whirled around us, tiny circles of light moving across the wall like glowworms, settling on a small hole in the wall the size of an animal burrow. It was then that I noticed it—the movement of life inside. The two women from Dinesh’s team—social workers—took turns lying supine on the ground, their face close to the opening, trying to coax a girl into taking their hand and coming out. This hiding place was too narrow, too small for any adult to enter. Even if one tried, one would barely be able to fit one’s head in. They must have pushed this girl in there, squeezed her in through the tight opening. That was the only way.
“Let me try,” I told them. The social workers moved out of my way. I told others to switch their torchlight off. It was scaring the little girl. I put my head to the floor, my face close to the hole in that wall, so she could hear me. I swung my torchlight in the distance, away from her face, but she shrank back farther into the hole, her eyes wide open and glistening with fear.
“Hi,” I said to her. “I am not going to hurt you.”
I could hear a whimper.
“I am not going to hurt you,” I repeated, the words floating dismally in the darkness around us. I could hear the whispers, the subdued alarm in the voices of the social workers behind me.
“You must be hungry. Do you like chocolate?” I asked, fishing for a candy bar in my purse.
I held it out for her, the torchlight shining on it from my other hand. She looked at it suspiciously but didn’t move.
“Tara,” Raza said from behind me, “we can probably break a part of this wall to get to her.”
“No, that will frighten her. Let me try.”
“Is your name Tara?” the girl asked weakly, her eyes now wide open with curiosity.
“Yes,” I said surprised. “Do you like my name? What’s yours?”
“My name is Asha,” she said excitedly.
“Hi Asha. Can I be your friend?”
She was quiet for some time, thought about it, then looked at me and asked, “If I hold your hand, will you take me to Amma?”
I clung to the opportunity, although I had no idea where her mother would be.
“Yes,” I lied.
In a minute her hand was in mine, and she was out. She threw her arms around my neck and collapsed in my arms as if the comfort of them were something she had always been familiar with, and even as I brought her out to the car, she refused to let go of me. Her arms were tightly entwined around my neck. Raza drove us all the way to the center, the girl in my lap in the backseat, her head resting on my shoulder.
At the center, she refused to unclasp her arms from my neck. A nurse pulled us apart, and I watched from the end of the hallway as she took Asha to the medical station to examine her. She wailed at being separated from me, and the corridors throbbed with her screams. She bit the nurse’s wrist, ran toward me along the hallway, her face stained with tears, and locked her hands around my hips.
I took her to the examination room and waited outside. Dinesh and Saira exited the examining room after a while.
“The doctor says she is suffering from the shock,” Dinesh told me, “of being separated from her mother, of being locked up in the dark for such a long time. He has prescribed some vitamins. But she hasn’t been harmed in any other way. I think it might be a good idea for her to stay with you for a few days.”
I was shocked when Dinesh suggested that she stay with me.
“It is better this way,” Saira added. “Once she is comfortable we can get her back here. She is in shock and seems very comfortable with you.”
“But . . . but I don’t know anything about taking care of a child. I—”
“It will be all right. You will manage well. You have been working with us for a long time,” Dinesh said patting me on the back. I looked around helplessly—at Dinesh and Saira’s encouraging looks, at the girl who looked at me pleadingly.
“It will be all right.” Raza smiled, standing behind me. His gaze, firm and reassuring, gave me strength.
“All right,” I shrugged and got her into the car with Raza and me.
It was a silent drive back to my apartment, the girl sleeping in the backseat, Raza concentrating on the street as he drove, leaving me to my thoughts.
“I am not sure I can handle this,” I told Raza as he parked the car outside my apartment complex and walked me up the stairs. The girl was sleeping in my arms, her chest falling and rising against mine.
“Yes, you can,” Raza said as he dropped us off at my apartment. “You have been doing this for four years now.”
I nodded my head as I let him in. I took her to my room and let
her rest in my bed.
“You will be fine. If you need anything, call me.” Raza smiled.
I was thankful for that smile. I watched him from the balcony as he walked down the stairs to the car. His tall form and broad shoulders grew smaller as he went farther away from me. When he was near the car, he stopped and looked up at me as if he had known all along that I had been watching him. He stood there waiting, as if he had always been waiting for me. I gave him a small wave of my hand. He waved back, slid into the car, and drove away. I watched the cars parked outside, the vacant spot he had parked in now as empty as the feeling in my heart. Raza had become such a constant in my life. We didn’t just work together day after day for his nonprofit; we also went to the movies, held hands, and took long walks on the Marine Drive promenade. I wanted to think we were happy that way, with no pressure of being anything other than good friends. But on days like this, when I watched him leave, an ache crept into my heart, warning me he might leave me one day. I sighed and dismissed the thought then went inside.
I watched Asha sleep that night. Bringing a child into this home was like inviting memories of Mukta back. In her sleep, she grabbed my hand, and I lay down beside her. As I watched the starry sky that night, I remembered another child. Asha—that was the name Mukta and I had given her—the baby wrapped in a white cloth and buried on that Diwali day. Did Mukta remember things the way I remembered them?
The next couple of days were hard. Every time I tried talking to Asha, she sobbed. “I want to see my Amma. You promised you would take me to her.”
“Well, do you know where she is?” I asked. Her eyes would fill up as she ran and cowered in a corner.
“What is her name?” I asked.
“Amma. I call her Amma,” she shouted.
She hesitantly allowed me to bathe her and change her clothes. At lunch or dinner I would catch her putting food in her pockets or stowing it away in her underwear.
“You can always ask for more food if you want,” I told her, but she looked at me and continued hoarding food in her pockets. I let her. At the center, I had learned it was the only way you could gain their trust.