Algren at Sea (56 page)

A light rain was falling, as the light of ordinary day was breaking, when I left Kamathipura. Suklaji Street, Falkland Road and Foras Mews were deserted but for a few taxis in which bearded Sikh drivers were asleep at their wheels. Even the pimps had given up. All the café tables had been taken in but one; and at that a woman slept with her head upon her arms.

As I passed her I realized it was my mute and mocking friend of the blue-lit café.

When Mahatma Ghandi came to the south of India he was met by four hundred whores of Bombay.

“How may we become good women once more, Master?” their spokeswoman, one Kalyani, asked the Mahatma.

“Go to the spinning wheel, my children!” the Master instructed Kalyani-of-the-Four-Hundred.

“How is the wheel to save us, whom the loom has brought such shame?” Kalyani asked The Master.

Kalyani's parents were weavers. They owned their own looms, upon which Kalyani's parents, her two brothers and herself worked. They also owned their own house.

When Kalyani was sixteen she married a man from Bombay, who did not have living space for a wife. So Kalyani went to live with her mother-in-law until her husband found accommodations.

Kalyani's mother-in-law mistreated her, as she had wanted her son to marry another girl; yet Kalyani could not go back to her own home. So she lived unhappily with her mother-in-law, hoping her husband would soon send for her.

After a son was born to her, an older woman advised Kalyani to take the child to its father in Bombay, and offered to accompany her there as Kalyani had never been to the great city.

When they reached the city the woman took Kalyani to a brothel and sold her for four hundred rupees. Kalyani at first refused to give herself
to men; yet she had no choice, for there was no way of getting out of the place. She gave in to the keeper at last.

Seeta was brought up by her widowed mother who worked as a farm hand. She had an easy childhood and was married to a farmer at the age of eleven. After puberty she lived with him for four years and bore him a son. Then her husband died. Seeta lived alone as she did not want to burden her mother.

She worked as a domestic for paid Rs. 5/- per month plus food and clothing. When the other members of the family went out, the master of the house used her sexually. This continued until her mistress found out and dismissed Seeta.

She was now a spoilt woman; she went to Bombay to become a prostitute.

Parvati's parents were very poor. Her father was a porter and her mother a blind beggar. She was the eldest child and had eleven siblings, all younger than herself. With her family she lived in a
Harijan
colony amongst the poorest people. Parvati picked wastepaper, rags, and bones from the garbage pails and sold them. She used to roam the streets alone at all hours. Men took advantage of her. Parvati had sex experience from the age of eight. At fourteen she was happy, with the approval of her parents, to join an aunt in a brothel.

Prema's parents were industrial workers and she was their only child. When the parents were away for work, Prema was left alone. When she was fourteen, Prema fell in love with a lorry driver and eloped with him to Bombay, where they lived together for four years.

The man started drinking and beat Prema every day. She ran away and came to Kamathipura, where she found shelter and an easy way of life.

“We are prepared to take any number of men, but they don't come,” Prema now complains.

Sarasa's family lived contentedly, as they had their own farm and house. Sarasa played a lot with the children of her locality and passed a happy and comfortable childhood. At the age of nine she was married to a farmer. Later, she lived with him. Two years passed happily. Then her husband died of a fever.

Sarasa continued to stay with her in-laws, who asked her to remarry; but she felt that her marriage had been broken by God. So it was no use marrying again.

At eighteen Sarasa returned to her own home. She worked on her father's farm for four years and then she saw women from Bombay who appeared to be happy and well-to-do. So she went to Bombay. At Victoria Terminus a
gharwalli
took her to Kamathipura.

“Why do you make me think of days that are now gone?” Sarasa wants to know.

Sheela was brought up by her widowed mother, a domestic. Her mother loved her and Sheela helped her mother; When Sheela was twelve her mother died of a short illness. She took up her mother's job.

Sheela fell in love with a young man of her neighborhood and married him at thirteen. Within a few months, her husband died. Sheela felt alone and lost. An elderly woman from Bombay persuaded her to return to Bombay with her, where the woman sold her. At first Sheela refused to work. When she found out she could not leave, she capitulated.

Anjana's parents died when she was ten. She and her sister started working as domestics. When Anjana was fourteen a man from Bombay showed the sisters sympathy, and they went with him to Bombay; where he sold them to a
gharwalli
for Rs. 500/-. The sisters cried but had to give in.

“Everything is left to God,” Anjana believes.

Usha was the only daughter of a sailor who died when she was ten; her mother was a domestic.

Usha's time was her own, and she spent it roaming with friends. By the time she was eighteen she was completely out of her mother's control. Tired of her incorrigible daughter, her mother no longer cared whether Usha came home or not.

The girl stole some gold ornaments from her mother and went to Madras, where an actor's agent obtained work for her in films, as an extra. He harassed her for sexual favors, but she despised him. She preferred to sleep with a film director. The agent began threatening her life, and the director no longer wanted her. Usha migrated to Bombay and became a prostitute.

Krishna's father died when she was six and her mother found it difficult to earn enough to maintain the family. The mother used to weep that she could not give enough food to her children. Krishna was married at the age of five, when her father was living, to a grown man who had a mistress. He refused to take the girl when she grew up because he was attached to his mistress. Her mother felt sorry that she could not get her married again because of poverty. Krishna came to know a woman from Bombay who explained to her about prostitution. Her mother gave her permission to go with the woman to Bombay and enter the business “because it is better to live comfortably at any cost than to starve.”

Nancy's parents died when she was an infant and she remembers nothing about them. She was brought up by farmers. They gave her enough food and clothes, but treated her like a servant. When she was ten, her guardians left her with a Christian family as a domestic. When her employers left Bombay Nancy was abandoned. She begged on the streets and slept in doorways until she came to windows where women sat with their faces painted. She served as a domestic in a house where most of the women were Chinese. At ten she began accommodating men.

A superstition was then prevalent that a venereal disease could be cured by making love to an under-age girl. By being put to the use of this superstition, the girl suffered several early infections. Although she has now, she claims, effected a partial cure, she has no doubt but that she has infected a number of men.

Padma was three when her parents died. An old friend of her father, a petty businessman who had no family of his own, brought her up as his own daughter. He was very affectionate toward her and fulfilled her needs till she came of age. She was fourteen when he died.

Padma was left alone. She was attractive to men and was without obligation to anyone. She took up prostitution of her own will, without being seduced into the trade.

“It is just as well not to marry,” she feels. “If a woman falls in love with her husband, and is foolish enough to let him detect it, he will deceive her. If she does not fall in love, then she is a slavey. I meet new gentlemen every night, every one of whom swears he loves me. Of course they are all lying. But then that is what I am being paid for—to pretend to believe gentlemen. I would rather be lied to by a variety of gentlemen whom I respect than by a husband I despise.”

Maya's earliest memory was of begging on the streets of a city she now thinks must have been Pandharpur. She remembers a railway station, and of begging through railroad carriages. She remembers a train beginning to move before she could alight and that she was not frightened.

The train came to Bombay and Maya came begging to Kamathipura. She was not yet ten, but a
gharwalli
took her in. She worked in a brothel, as an
ayah,
until she attained puberty. Her
gharwalli
then turned her over to the trade in young girls.

“Just you wait,” she stands at the bars of her cage and tells men who are passing, “just you wait, you child-killers.”

Girija lived in an abandoned hut and worked for her neighbors to have food. Girija had nobody in the world. She was grateful to a man who came to her and made love, though she was too young to feel or to understand the act. He used her regularly, sometimes giving her money, and was later replaced by other men. One of these brought her to Bombay and sold her for four hundred rupees.

Indira grew up tending younger children in a missionary orphanage. Her lot was the storing of water and cleaning of floors. She was nine years old when this routine was interrupted by a trip to Bombay. The child was so charmed by the city that she ran away from the orphanage to return there. Since she spoke only Kannada, it was inevitable that the friends she found were the Kannada-speaking women of Kamathipura. She has since picked up a number of other languages.

Sundari's parents were weavers who owned their own looms. She was an only daughter, and was brought up strictly. At sixteen she married a man from Bombay, but he did not bring her back to Bombay with him as, he claimed, he did not have living accommodations for her. When he finally brought her to Bombay she had to live there with his mother, who mistreated Sundari because she had wanted her son to marry a widow who owned property. Sundari's husband was afraid of his mother.

When Sundari gave birth to a son, the husband's mother began to beat Sundari at will while the husband stood by. The girl came to Kamathipura to avoid more beatings. The husband now visits her house regularly, and regularly pays the housekeeper for the privilege of sleeping with his own wife. He makes love to her passionately, Sundari says. But after he is through making love he reproaches her: “If I had listened to my mother I would never have married you.”

Sukla's parents were sellers of toddy, and Sukla was the youngest of several toddy-toddlers. She was married, at ten, to a farm-laborer, and began living with him when she was fourteen.

Six months after her first experience of sex, her husband took a mistress whom he refused to give up, although she begged him desperately not to abandon her for the other woman. To this he responded by refusing to have anything to do with her.

“How can I, a young girl, live without a sex-life?” Sukla thought, and left her husband for Bombay.

She has now been a prostitute of Kamathipura for three years, and confesses to be weary of the love of men. She has not practiced Lesbianism; but has felt herself tempted.

“I cannot say I will not drink of that well,” Sukla admits, “sooner or later, of that well I will
have
to drink.”

Kamala's father was a mill hand. After her mother died of tuberculosis he married Kamala to a farmer of their native village. Within a year of their marriage she had borne a son to her husband, and he had begun beating her. She carries the scar, on her forehead, of a blow he gave her that knocked her unconscious. When she recovered from this blow she walked out of his house with nothing that belonged to him, carrying her child and wearing only a house-dress, to return to her father.

Her father became wild with her, claiming she had brought a terrible shame upon her family. Kamala left her father's home and has never seen either her child or her father or husband since.

At 4 A.M. the landlord wakens her for his rent of one rupee. At 4 annas as per man, this means she has to take four men merely to make the day's rent. Then the brothel owner collects two rupees from her—eight more men. Thus Kamala has to accommodate twelve men before she has enough to buy food.

“A poor life,” Kamala says, “but better than no life at all. God has more than He has spent.”