“Only the rights can prevent wrong,” reads a poster inside the community center in the Durbar Mahila Samyam Samiti (DMSC) office in Sonagachi, Kolkata, West Bengalthe capital of. The poster is of the dates of 2001; It still carries the weight of an incomplete fight in the red-light region. An organization working for the rights of sex workers, the Darbar Mahailla Samanve Samiti (DMSC) celebrated 30 years of existence on 15 July.
DMSC began distributing condoms in 1992 to combat HIV/AIDS epidemic. Its formation Dr. Samarjeet Jan was based on a consent HIV-AIDS survey by the world, which was commissioned by the World Health Organization. At that time, high -risk population was identified and forced into testing; Dr. John sought permission from women. Over time, DMSC, which includes transgender people, has emerged as a sex worker rights organization, not let people tell their truth, refusing to do their profession.
Sonagachi, which turns into a golden tree – from men with funds spent in these northern Kolkata lanes – is not a signboard. The region and its people still carry the burden of stigma. Historically, sculptors have taken soil from Sonagachi to make idols of Durga, but sexual workers are not allowed in regular pandals.
In 2013, he tried to start his own Durga Puja festival, but met people with violent resistance. He transferred to the Calcutta High Court and obtained his rights. Although it was held indoors, the enjoyment of celebrating his own Durga Puja was a victory in his own territory.
Around 12,000 women in the area live through dense, layered history of Sonagachi. There are another 28,000 associated with DMSC in West Bengal.
In night folds
On July 15, a cloud morning, about 150 women from Sonagachi have gathered in a neighborhood park to celebrate their 30 -year -old journey. ,Gotor Khati Khai; Shrimikar Adhikar Tea ” (I work hard for my bread; I demand workers’ rights), a song streams in the background because women prepare music chairs and share a simple community lunch of rice, dal and vegetable curry.
Also read: The Supreme Court has recognized sex work as ‘profession’
Women tilt together to catch the daily gossip. Fatima Begum (name changed), 55, sits on the back of the gathering facing a platform. He is pleasantly surprised to meet a friend from another part of Kolkata after 23 years. “I did everything for my parents, my family; I spent my whole life for them. What have I left now? I am still alone,” Fatima tells her friend.
He is now a field worker for DMSC and stopped sex work after his son’s marriage. She says, “I had to change my lifestyle, so that she could get social identity,”
A rally by the Darbar Mahila Samyonve Samiti demanded their rights as workers. , Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
As soon as the evening descends, the women of Sonagachi are starting their workday. One of the city’s arterial roads, located in the center of Kolkata on Chittaranjan Avenue, the area begins with the progress of the night.
After her working day, a woman going to an office comes to her balcony in a multi-storey house in the area. A group of sexual workers stand across the road. They are barely 100 meters different. They look at each other – it is as close as women of both the world will get. Babus (Patron) Both live all over the world.
Layered violence
Sonagachi has been rolled with hundreds of multi-storey brothels, which piled on each other on each other such as matchbox, three or four floors high, narrowly narrow streets and Bilan. Many of these houses are centuries old, in some manufactured way before the British arrive.
Sonagachi sex workers go through a variety of violence in this profession, building their lives in the region. Workers say that violent and drunk customers are one of their biggest problems.
Also read: Love stories from Sonagachi
,Babus Get drunk or on high substances, get angry, and take it to us. Other girls have to intervene when the violence gets out of hand, ”says a young woman from Sonagachi. Most women say they are used for a certain level of violence and oral abuse – this is excessive violence that they are afraid of.
Through years, they fought to get the basics like ration cards, Aadhaar cards, bank accounts. When he was discriminated against, he made a USHA cooperative beginning one of the first financial cooperative societies in Asia, which helps women to control their own resources.
“It is a misconception that every sex worker is smuggled. Officers and society use this story to discriminate against us,” says DMSC Secretary Bishak Lascar. In the late 40s, Bisha says many women are involved in sex business to earn a living and feed their families. She insists that the only way to stop smuggling is to reduce sex work. “The smuggling is in every part of the society; even daily wages are smuggled by laborers,” Bishkha says.
To address the smuggling issue, DMSC has launched a group, where both sex workers and external members seek the advice of any new woman coming into the business. They say that they have saved and rehabilitated over 2,000 girls who did not come voluntarily.
In her office, Bishkha recalled her journey in Sonagachi as she mantra to each letter and gradually signs her name on official documents. He has learned to read and write under the guidance of his teacher, Sanjeeb Mukherjee, who has taught many women in the area. “We used to sit on plastic sheets for our classrooms. Whatever I have learned, I have learned from the head,” she says.
Traveling owner
Reema Mondal (name changed) came from Murshidabad to Sonagachi, when she was 15 years old. She has spent 33 years as a sex worker, although many people advised her in her early days that she was too young to enter the business. But she came from a poor family and she did not have other employment options to feed her family. ,Nun Ante Panta Furoto ameder ” (As long as I got salt, the rice is finished).
Reema’s family could not pay OW 7,000 for her dowry, but through sex work she married her elder brother, refused to take dowry from her sister -in -law. Reema says, “When I was struggling on an empty stomach, no one came to feed me. She now has no right to judge my life options,” Reema says, who works for DMSC during the day and returns to her regular job at night.
One reason is that she does not want to take a photo that her daughter married a person outside Sonagachi, and she is afraid that her daughter’s in -laws may feel ashamed in her profession. In the last three decades, she has only managed to open her profession for her mother, but the rest of her family still believe that she has a job in the city.
It is evening. The rains baffled Kolkata, washing dust from trees and converted the city into a Petrichor crucible. In Sonagachi, the smell of old cigarettes, pungent wine and fried food is now mixed with the smell of fresh rain water. Reema tries to duck with rain, runs into her building. She climbs the dingi, sting, narrow serpentine stairs of the building for the last 28 years, which she has lived for the last 28 years. He is home.
Reema sits in her 4×4-feet. Room on the fourth floor. She remembers that things were different when she came into business. “From sexual sex by customers and neighborhood goons, we have seen all this. During one of our trips to raise awareness and distribute condoms, the owners of the brothels put warm water on us because they felt that we would force women to stop working and lose business,” she says. “Over the years, violence has reduced because women have become empowered to say not to customers who refuse to use condoms or ask for things they do not want to do.”
She sits on her bed, holds a moment of rest before she prepares her dinner and her customers arrive at night. His kitchen spreads to the balcony. A single almira and refrigerator catch all their belongings; Everything is a place. There are two mesh windows that barely allow light or wind in the room, but keep the insects away.
His prizes and certificates were hanging on the green walls, the reminder of the fight and the milestones fought. Hundreds of such rooms crowded in these streets, each reflects the lives of its inhabitants, DidisAs locals call them.
Rights and mistakes
Priyanka Kar (name changed), in her 50s, calls herself as the daughter of Sonagachi as her mother was paid to be a sex partner for a police officer in the area. Kar is married and says that she has been doing sex work since she was a teenager. “I can’t be one Line-ar maye (Girls standing on the road here) Because the house of my in -laws is also here. So I had to hide and go to other places to do my work, “Priyanka says that her husband knew about her profession. She laughs and says that she has always been” mischievous “, and never away from taking lovers because it was a work that helped her to maintain her family.
Over time, her husband became derogatory due to her husband. “I tried to kill myself when my family questioned my morality and work,” she says. She got social recognition when her daughter’s in -laws fought for her dignity and respected her choice and said that she did not cheat anyone to earn wages and worked on her own terms. She smiles proudly saying that her daughter’s life will be less uncertain than her.
Sexual workers of the Darbar Mahila Samyam Samiti in Kolkata took their movement in 2006 demanding the rights of workers in Parliament in Delhi. Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
At the DMSC conference in January this January, Kingshuk Sarkar, an assistant professor at the Goa Institute of Management, worked for the Government of West Bengal as a labor administrator, said that lack of sex work as a work causes problems in the rights and benefits of workers. He insisted that sex workers need to include India’s existing labor laws to normalize their work and prevent human rights violations. “We all use our body parts to work, then why is sex work different? And why are some body parts tarnished?” The government said.
The women of Sonagachi say that they will also be protected by law in case of violence or harassment at the workplace. They can use public services without discrimination or stigma, and may join the schemes of other workers in the country.
Under the streets of Sonagachi, at least a dozen separate posters and local MLAs Shashi are the Women and Child Development Minister and the social welfare banners of West Bengal. She is a regular in DMSC events, taking some stigma away.
However, women refuse to publish their real names or take their pictures. They know that the decline can be serious.
