by Penny Jaye
The woman lowered Meena’s knitting and tilted her head to listen.
‘Go back, to the brothels?’ Meena continued.
‘Did you leave a child behind, like Manju?’
Meena shook her head. She didn’t know about Manju’s child.
‘What do you mean then?’ Didi asked. ‘Do you want to return to prostitution?’
‘No!’ The thought of it spun Meena’s gut. ‘I had ... my friend ...’ Meena could barely say the words. ‘She’s still there.’
Didi nodded slowly. ‘And you would like to find her?’
Meena barely nodded.
‘As you know, sometimes Maa works with partner organisations to conduct raids. Particularly if there is reliable information about the location of trafficked women and girls. Do you know which red-light district you came from?’
‘Kamathipura.’
Didi looked disappointed. ‘That’s one of the largest red-light districts in Mumbai. Do you know the name of the brothel you were in? Or where it was? Kamathipura is an enormous place, a whole suburb really. Without reliable details about the brothel, it’d be impossible for us to organise a raid. And far too dangerous for you to return on your own. Girls aged thirteen to sixteen are in the highest demand, and you still fall into that category. What other details do you have?’
‘Her name, I know her name,’
‘Well, that’s a start. Maa could contact other organisations and see if they’ve found a girl by that name. Stop Trafficking Nepal might know—’
‘No, they gave her photo to Maa. I saw it.’
Didi pursed her lips. ‘In that case her name won’t be very useful. Names change frequently in the red-light district, you probably know that more than I. Sex workers often change their names. I know Purna did and we don’t even know what her real name is now.’
‘But I know where she was sold. I can’t remember properly, but if I go back, I might be able to find her. I might be able to—’
‘No, Meena.’ Didi held up an empty knitting needle. She shook her head. ‘Kamathipura changes every day. Hotels are painted, rebranded. Pimps walk the streets on the look-out for vulnerable girls to sell and resell. And you were most likely drugged when you arrived there. Your memories are probably nothing more than a slide show of an area you never suspected was a red-light district. Unless you have clear and specific details about where your friend is, it would be foolish to even consider returning.’
Meena shook her head. She knew what Didi said was true and yet ...
She stared out the window. A bird with grey wings darted from a tree and out of sight.
‘I don’t want to discourage you, Meena. But thousands of girls are trafficked each year, and many of them are from Nepal like you and your friend. Of those that find themselves in brothels, it’s only a very few that ever get freed. The fact that you are here is a miracle, and you’re already asking for another one?’
Meena swallowed. She groped her mind for memories, details that might prove she knew enough to find the hotel. To find Putali. ‘The hotel had grilled cages over the lower doors, and bars across the balconies ...’ Meena stammered.
Didi shook her head again. ‘Like I said, Kamathipura is enormous. You could be describing any number of streets.’
Didi handed Meena her knitting and guided her fingers for two rows without speaking. The phone rang. Didi answered it. She spoke using Hindi mixed with thick English. Meena stared at the stitches on her needle. Hopelessness crowded the room. Meena crushed her knitting into the plastic bag and stood up to leave.
Memories chased Meena back to the dorm. Hopscotch, Fanta, hot tea and stale rice donuts … Mohan’s smoky breath. She paced into the dorm and threw her knitting onto the bed. The bag slid onto the floor, the needles clacking against the concrete. Purna hovered at the doorway.
‘What would you do?’ Meena asked. As expected, Purna didn’t answer, but neither did she leave. She just watched as Meena gathered the knitting from the floor, tugging the needles from where they had pierced the plastic.
Didi said keeping busy would help calm her mind, but right now her mind felt as skittish as a new kid. Meena perched on the edge of her bed and took a deep breath to slow her fingers. She looped the wool and began to knit a new row. She counted the growing stitches in Hindi. Then she tried counting in English, which some of the girls used when they were trying to show off, ‘Wun, tooo, treee, pour, pive.’ Her mind raced over the stitches, dropping them, picking them up again, counting, and counting again. Where was Putali, the girl who used to count with her when they played hopscotch drawn with stones on the road? Meena opened her mouth. Gingerly, for the first time in years, she tasted the subtle differences in sound of Nepali on her tongue and counted the next five stitches in her native tongue. No one came to beat her. No one bellowed for her to shut up. No one warned her from the other room. But behind her, someone was moving. It was Purna, her eyes, from across the room, were on Meena’s needles. As Meena worked, Purna’s mouth stumbled with her over the Nepali words.
‘Ek ... dui ... teen ...’ Purna walked closer. She sniffed and dragged her wrist across her nose. ‘Chaar ... panch ...’ She came so close Meena could smell her body odour. So close the breath from her counting touched Meena’s forehead.
Meena’s fingers stopped moving.
Purna frowned, her eyes on the work, ‘Ek ... dui ...’ She tried again.
Meena made a stitch.
‘Teen ...’
Meena looped another.
‘Chaar ... panch ... ek ...’
Meena looked up, Purna had returned to one again. One, two, three, four, five, one?
Tears started falling from Purna’s eyes. She let them roll unchecked. The girl’s tears dropped from her chin to Meena’s knee, but she didn’t make to move away. Meena continued knitting.
‘Ek, dui, teen, chaar, panch ...’ Purna whispered through her tears, ‘After panch? What comes after panch?’
‘Chha,’ Meena said. She kept looping stitches.
‘Chha?’ Purna looked at her. ‘Chha? No, I have nothing.’
Meena stared up, Purna was speaking Nepali. The word for the number six is the same as the word for ‘I have’. She had stopped counting at six because she thought she was saying she had something.
‘Chhaina,’ Purna continued, ‘I have not. Aama chhaina, baa chhaina, sister chhaina, brother chhaina, grandmother chhaina—’ Her voice caught. She climbed onto the bed beside Meena and curled into a heap, her eyes ever on the moving needles. ‘Meri saathi pani chhaina,’ she cried softly. ‘I don’t even have a friend. But you ... you have.’
Meena can’t see Putali anywhere. The Sitting Room is full of men. Shiny men with bulky jewellery and polished shoes. Men from different countries, some white—like Americans—and some dark—like Africans—and all the skin tones in between. These men sit silently, some smoking, others sipping alcohol from small glasses. They wear shirts and haircuts and belts that whisper of money. And they are all looking at her. A contained interest lurks on each man’s face.
Zeshaan prods her forwards. She trips on the long skirt they’ve made her wear. One of the men chuckles softly. Another frowns. Meena feels herself watching them from behind the mask of make up. Does she look as beautiful as Putali had? Is that why they are staring at her?
Zeshaan speaks to the men. He speaks firmly as if explaining the rules of a detailed game the men already know how to play.
‘Turn around,’ he instructs Meena, and then softly, in Nepali, so the men can’t hear, ‘the way I told you to’.
Meena raises her arms and twirls her wrists. He has told her to dance, but there is no music. He told her to sway her hips, but the skirt feels too long for that. Her feet catch again and she stumbles clumsily. Zeshaan scowls. The chuckling man laughs aloud. The frowning one looks away. Then Zeshaan says something in Hindi, a term
she doesn’t understand and the men begin listing numbers. Large numbers. The white-skinned man, using a disinterested tone, offers ‘yu ess dollars’, which make two of the other men grizzle and increase the amount they’ve originally quoted.
Eventually the bargaining, for that is what it feels like, peters off. Zeshaan motions for her to leave the room and Ganga leads her along a hall and into a very glamorously decorated room.
‘You do what he tells you,’ is all Ganga says before she locks Meena inside.
Time drags on, like mud heavy off a plough. Finally the lock on the door makes a gentle click. Zeshaan and a man walk in. One of the men she had danced and stumbled before. The frowning one. Zeshaan holds out a syringe, but the man waves it away. So Zeshaan leaves, locking the door behind him.
The man eyes her, a small, soft, sickly smile reaching only as far as his lips. His eyes burn like a starved dog’s, focusing on her neck, her shoulders, her waist, the new bumps on her chest. Meena feels her stomach knot. Back home, when she’d seen that expression on a drunk man, she’d known how to fight him off. But this man isn’t drunk. He is entirely sober and it frightens her. He removes his jacket, lying it carefully over the back of a chair, then motions for her to sit with him on the edge of the bed.
Meena takes a step backward.
The man’s smile dissolves. He steps towards her. In a swift, practised movement he snatches her hand and yanks her forwards, off balance and into his arms.
She wrestles free. Stumbling backwards, she trips on her skirt again and sprawls onto the floor, trapped in the skirt’s silken, slippery lining. The man walks towards her, confidently, as if he’s done this many times before, and steps on the skirt pinning her down. Then he reaches his long, thin arm down and unzips it.
Meena skitters suddenly backwards, free from the skirt. She clambers to the door. Pounding, clawing, willing the lock to give way. But the man just steps after her, without rush. A pair of footsteps approach outside.
‘Guhar, help! Let me out!’
The footsteps pause. Surely they had heard her? But they don’t stop. Meena spins to face the man. His eyes are hot now. His words ugly in a language she doesn’t understand. But she knows enough to realise what this man is wanting. That he thinks he can have it because he’s paid for it. That she has been fattened up, made beautiful, bargained for and sold. She feels him reach for her, the touch of his hand on her shoulder. She cries out once more. And this time the man hits her. He drags her towards the bed. Images flash through her mind—blurring, choking together. Her surroundings fade, and the face of the frowning man goes fuzzy.
Instead she sees Mohan tucking an envelope into his pocket.
Her uncle, ordering food at the border town restaurant.
Her aunt tossing soap sachets into the bathroom.
Rajit and Santosh leaning over their bikes.
And Putali, little Putali, hesitating by the river …
***
Meena’s body is stinging. Burning. Blood, not her own, is foul in her mouth. Hair, his, in her fists. She retches, crouches, cries. The image of Putali beside the river, her eyes full of dreams, slams against her heart.
She curls herself as close to the wall as she can, away from the bed, away from the man. He slings on his jacket, sloshes water on his face from the little basin against the wall, and smooths his hair. Without another glance in her direction, he unlocks the door and strides out, leaving the door wide open. Zeshaan looks in and takes in Meena’s battered nakedness, the mess around the bed and the expression on the frowning man’s face. He waits only until the man has disappeared down the hall before coming in and kicking Meena so hard she sinks into darkness.
Twenty-eight
Meena tried to concentrate. Sharmila’s voice droned on, lecturing about rights and freedom and strength from weakness, but Meena wanted to curl up and ignore it all. She felt the space beside her ache with emptiness.
Suddenly Sharmila paused. Her eyes widened in surprise as someone entered the meeting room late. Meena turned to look, half expecting Nahita to slide down the wall to her spot beside Meena. But it wasn’t Nahita. It was Purna. She walked with her arms wrapped about her loose T-shirt, as if they were a sweater against the cold. Her dark eyes were wide, cautious and uncertain.
‘Come in, Purna. Come and listen.’ Sharmila switched to her sweet, coaxing voice. Purna barely responded. Her eyes roved the room in darts, stilling only when they found Meena. Then she shuffled over and knelt down.
‘You have,’ Purna whispered.
Sharmila opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. Her eyebrows raised towards Meena in a question. Meena shrugged. She hadn’t done anything. Sharmila resumed the lecture. Her bossy tone softer now, wavering nervously, as if she expected Purna to panic. But she didn’t. She just sat, and rocked, and occasionally bumped into Meena. It must have been the first educational seminar Purna had ever attended.
Sharmila flicked a new image onto the screen. It was a copy of a newspaper clipping showing two policemen holding onto a man with a short beard.
‘This man’—Sharmila pointed—‘was a trafficker.’
There was a general murmur of approval from the girls. A trafficker in the hands of the police was certainly more interesting than blabber about human rights.
‘Most girls who escape from the brothel, either by running away or by the freedom offered by their madam, don’t ever think they could help to put traffickers in prison. But it can be done. This man’—Sharmila motioned to the screen—‘sold his two nieces to a brothel in Pune. One of them escaped. She attended a rehabilitation home, received health care and participated in vocational training. She returned to her village. One day she saw her uncle walking through the bazaar. He had a fancy motorbike helmet under his arm and very expensive shoes. His niece was very angry that he should benefit from her experience, so she left the village and returned to the rehabilitation home. There, she contacted lawyers and filed a case against her uncle. It took four years, but finally he is being punished for his crime.’
The girls murmured again.
‘Unfortunately, this is a rare story. Most traffickers get away with it. They continue to lure the vulnerable and sell them without being held accountable. But, as ex-trafficked women, we can help. By telling our story, we raise awareness. By taking those who sold us to court, we show the community that human trafficking is not acceptable.’
Renu spoke up, ‘I know the woman who trafficked me. She told my mother I was going to school in America. She deserves to go to prison, but I wouldn’t want to go to court. They’d take my photo and put it in the newspaper. Then everyone would know I’d been a whore in Mumbai. So much for starting again!’
Sharmila agreed, ‘It can be very frightening, but Little Sister and her partner organisations have lawyers who know the system. They work to bring these criminals to justice and protect your dignity at the same time. That’s what they do.’
‘And what do they want in return?’ Leela called out.
The girls around Meena murmured. Sharmila shook her head. ‘Many donate their services. It may surprise you, Leela, but there are people with integrity in this world.’
‘There might be two,’ Leela muttered.
Kani laughed.
Someone else called out a question: ‘So, these lawyer men—’
‘And women,’ put in Sharmila proudly.
‘Will they help anyone?’
‘If you have evidence against the trafficker, then the case can be pursued. Sometimes criminals get away, there is a lot of corruption, but our lawyers don’t give up easily. Until the community knows human trafficking is a punishable crime it will continue.’
Sharmila switched the projector off. ‘Let’s do a role play,’ she suggested. ‘We’ll need a trafficker, a victim, her family, a lawyer, some policemen, a judge, and some onlookers.’
; ‘I might as well be the trafficker, no one likes me anyway,’ Leela called out, though not with her usual bitterness. ‘Renu, I’ll sell you.’
Renu scowled, but agreed. Manju opted for the role of Renu’s mother.
‘Meena?’ Sharmila looked at her, some of her animosity gone now that Purna was present, ‘What would you like to do?’
Meena hesitated. ‘I’ll be the lawyer.’
Sharmila left the girls discussing their roles for a few minutes then returned with a Lay’s chips box, which she dumped in the centre of the room. Renu laughed and tipped the box up. ‘Oohhh look at this!’ She held up a sparkled sari skirt and matching blouse as Maa entered the room. ‘I guess this is my whore suit?’
‘We don’t talk like that here, Renu,’ Maa said, disapprovingly.
Sharmila began handing out the other pieces of clothing. There were several large scarfs, a Nepali topi cap, a T-shirt with Britney Spears on the front. There was even an old police officer’s shirt that Rupa and Kani fought over. Meena found a creased men’s jacket. She slung it over her shirt and then knotted Sarita’s scarf as a tie around her neck.
‘Okay,’ called Sharmila from the front. ‘Are you ready?’
The girls laughed their way through the drama. Renu played her role with such realism that the room fell silent and Purna began to cry. Maa came over and sat with her, stroking her hair as Leela took the stage. Leela’s role suited her vocabulary, especially when Sharmila, who they had roped in to play the madam, wouldn’t give her as much money as she was wanting for selling Renu.