Gangubai's Speech.

Bombay, 1957.

Ten in the morning on a Saturday is hardly a good time to visit prostitutes. It was Ashraf who dragged me here. Some prostitute he wants me to meet, who will speak at Azad Maidan today.

Already my fair chitpawan[1] skin is burning in the merciless blazing sun, and I cannot see Ashraf anywhere. A lot of women here. And men too. Mostly illiterate yokels—fisherwomen, vegetable sellers, your kaam-wali-bai[2], the utensil scrubbers, beggars, trash pickers. Then with dismay, I spot some middle-class housewives, college girls, teachers, and nurses too. How do their husbands, fathers, and employers let them waste time like this? Some youth have even clambered up like monkeys up the poles of an enormous billboard of Coca Cola—the real thing—to get a better view. Loudspeakers are strung on bamboo poles.

One grandma wearing a faded white and red cotton saree and an impassive, stern expression climbs up the stage and takes the mike. It makes me shake my head—this is what happens when you have too much democracy. Yokels begin to hold on to mikes and fancy themselves as leaders.

The grandma begins reading out the program. The noise and the jostling is worse than the local train. There is not a single known personality and yet this sea of people! “Nari Shakti” (Women’s Power) posters and banners flutter on the stage and the muggy, urine and sweat infused Bombay air seems even thicker and asphyxiating. Crude hand-written placards–in Marathi and Hindi—bob in raised hands of the crowd. The only sensible people here are the urchins—running between the bodies with iron buckets full of fresh coconut and jhal-mudi[3]—doing good business.

Where are the prostitutes? I want to ask someone. I cannot see any. I will have to teach that Ashraf a lesson. What was he thinking by dragging me here? Look here, I don’t have any issues with women’s issues. But prostitutes’ issues? By the way, no pun intended—it is effortless—this innate sense of humor is God-given gift. I am an educated, English speaking, progressive man. I respect my wife. I respect all decent women.  My daughter—I spare no expense in sending her to an English medium missionary school. I enjoy covering women’s issues in the Bombay Gymkhana ladies monthly meetings. Decent memsahibs first sip gin and Limca, then read out decorous speeches in the air-cooled hall. Save the girls, educate them, treat them better. They donate blankets, books, school uniforms, sometimes even their kitty for women’s education. You can always count on an excellent lunch with three kinds of starters and I just love the creamed coconut prawns they serve there, with fluffy rice, dahi, papad and pachdi on the side. The thought makes my mouth water and I curse Ashraf again.

I missed my morning tiffin today, chasing what he said was “a big fat juicy story”. All through last night, I had been on vigil—first my sister’s complicated delivery; then consoling my distraught brother-in-law for fathering a fourth girl in a row—when his urging made me rush here. I could be having a brunch in the Eater’s lane now or better still, I could have strung along to one of the high-class restaurants with the editor. Now it occurs to me, Ashraf had never actually given me any details. Sensing his excitement, I had casually asked him yesterday evening in a couldn’t care less tone—the way I ask the vegetable vendor the price of peas and cauliflower—“what’s on? Is it some big leader giving a speech or a film star doing shooting?”

“Oh, you couldn’t guess. Someone much, much more interesting than all of them. Want to join?” He had answered passing me the paper cone of roasted chickpeas he was munching.

He had my interest and he knew it. His voice had quivered and his pockmarked face had gleamed with sweat and something more—an avid vitality in their kind from centuries of over-indulgence, eating of red meat and whatnot, harems full of women—that I found distasteful yet intriguing. I knew from experience that the bastard could smell stories—dig them out from the warrens of the underworld, the labyrinths of Bollywood, and corridors of business. He needed me only for my command of English. Without which he would never get a copy in venerable English papers.  To make him talk, I had even munched his chickpeas. But he just said he wanted me to meet a prostitute, and on the local train, all conversation melted in the avalanche of human white noise overlaid by the clang and clatter of the train.

To tell you the truth, I feel revulsion standing so close to him in the train. My mother, back in the village would not even let a non-caste's shadow fall on her. And now I work in the same office and sit and stand next to the likes of Ashraf, Jadhavs and Shindes! Pressed against them on the local. This is Bombay, this is independent India where we are all equal in law, I keep coaching my wife. Nobody can take away our innate purity, but we must keep our views inside the house. It’s not polite to air them in the twentieth century. People take offense.

Now, I see  Ashraf tagged by that joker anglo-Indian vendor of rubbers, prophylactic Patrick (PP) as everyone calls him—in his hat and trousers and round glasses —making way towards the stage. I wave, I shout myself hoarse, but they don’t see me. That PP had once dared to knock on my door shoving his shameless leaflets at me—with graphic pictures of the thing and full explanation. Thank the Mahadev, the women in my house cannot read English. Still, I immediately tossed it in flames. He is a colossal nuisance. I have seen with my own eyes the performance. The innocent face with which he opens his aluminum case, smiling benignly, and takes out a model of the thing and begins in his soft, harmless, lower division clerk’s voice:

“See gentlemen, this is close at one end and is to be worn by the male to prevent conception–and in numerous cases to guard against venereal disease. Made with superior rubber with teat ends.”

Then unmindful of everyone’s embarrassment, he starts tweaking and stretching the ends of that rubber—again and again— to show durability and lubrication and stands beaming as if he has shown you the Kohinoor diamond.

“The multi-use is providing great convenience to persons of limited means, saving from diseases no matter where they visit. In three sizes-small, medium, and large. With full instructions for male use.”

It is impossible to dislodge him. Keeps saying please buy one dozen for a rupee. Great value—fully washable and last for a year. Which size do you want? I am sure medium will do. Chee! the cheek. I wished to never encounter him again but here I am, shouting for him. He turns, spots me, and tells Ashraf. They wildly gesture at me to come behind the stage.

###

The back of the stage is at least cooler. On a chair, in the shade of the pandal, sits a plump partially greying handsome woman who is the star attraction. In her diamond nose ring and red bindi; her nine-yard, thick gold-bordered green saree she looks like an upper caste, well-off Marathi dowager. Everyone hovers around her as if she is some kind of deity and we have to push around to reach up to her. PP seems to know her and is able to catch her attention. He introduces me and Ashraf as newspaper wallas. “This is Gangubai, the President of Kamthipura,” he announces. The prostitute! my ears prick. So these days red-light districts have Presidents? And what would this brothel madam tell us about literacy? Teach Kamasutra perhaps? Hahaha. My wit keeps getting the better of me.

Maybe she will do a mujra dance, I whisper to Ashraf. He snaps at me—“be careful. She has a Godfather— a don who is her rakhi brother and addressing her disrespectfully leads to consequences.”

Phew. I promise to stay quiet. I don’t like lafdas[4] with the underworld.

When she says Namaste, she does not bow. Or smile at us. Her fingers glitter with stone studded gold bands and an un-mistakable diamond. She speaks to PP in English and they laugh over some joke known only to them. She sips coconut water from a green coconut.

I gape at her while Ashraf manages to wedge himself next to her and begins writing down whatever pearls are falling from her mouth in a notebook. PP the idiot cradles his hands together and looks adoringly at her. Several other women—all prostitutes, I realize, disguised to look like normal women—fret around. Fetching glasses of water and fanning her with bamboo fans.  I feel so out of place there. Too much this Ashraf is—interviewing a prostitute. As if by naming herself after the holy Ganges she would get pure. And the pride she took in being president of red-light district and in being the patroness of PP the nuisance-making cartoon. It was all beyond me.  

###

When she took the mike that day, the crowd fell silent.

 “I am a brothel madam. I have seen it all. And I speak the truth. For that’s all that matters in the end.”

She spoke in a strong, gravelly voice in Marathi, her pronunciation perfect. She paused and the crowd roared in approval. All tentativeness went from her voice.

“Like you, I was a good man’s much-loved daughter but even the best father’s love is not strong enough to hold a daughter’s shame. My love became my shame when my man abandoned me in the lanes of Kamathipura. All my education, my caste, my wealth evaporated and I became a body part.”

There was rapt silence and she spoke in a trance, her nose ring flashing. Her kohl-rimmed eyes looking into every eye.

“People like you may see us as filth. But tell me, hasn’t this filth kept you clean by saving your chastity and morality?“

The crowd roared again.

“Therefore my loves, think again when you call us with all those filthy names you keep for us. We prostitutes, are doing as much service to society as any of the doctors and lawyers and soldiers and farmers here. We keep the streets safe for you genteel women. Of course, our Bombay police works hard, I respect them for it, but  I believe that the notorious ladies of Kamathipura too work equally hard in making the streets safe. We take the edge off the carnal aggression of rootless men in this big city and save you and your good women from attack and molestation.”

Rhythmic applause began. She waited for them to stop.

“You might think we enjoy doing it. I can see this query in eyes of many. But believe me, it is not easy for us. Most of us ended up in Kamathipura because there is nowhere else for us. No shelter. No recourse. Our lovers, husbands, fathers, men just like you sold us, left us, brought us. The shame of it was too big. It became ours alone to carry. And we needed to look after our children. Children fathered by people just like you. Only now, thanks to efforts of Patrick, do we have some means of keeping our girls safe and disease-free.”

She paused for Patrick to come up the stage and asked everyone to clap for him.

“Just like the soldiers of our country who fight battles on the frontline so that the rest of us remain unharmed, we too fight a different sort of battle—no less gruesome—in the back-lanes of society, so that your good women remain safe and your bad needs find an outlet. Then why are we called names and treated like pariahs? You have an answer to that?”

There was pin-drop silence.

“You have no answer. Because you all are responsible for creating this question in the first place. The only solution is to treat sex workers as equals. The day you manage to do this, the society will achieve women’s empowerment.”

The applause continued for several minutes.

###

The next day the Marathi speech she gave appeared not just in Ashraf’s vernacular edition. The editor wanted it in English. He wanted to send it to AP. He asked me to sit late translating it. It made no sense to me. Ok. I concede she was a good speech giver. But a prostitute all the same.

But the editor understood that prurient things sell. A bad woman always makes a good story, he said. And he was right. People seemed to love that Gangu Bai. And the next day’s edition of Bombay Times recorded the highest ever sales. Nobody wrote anything about who spoke before or after her. Hers was the word. Later, I heard they installed her statue somewhere in Kamathipura; and all the whores worship her with garlands and incense. Even Jawaharlal Nehru gave her an appointment! After all, this is our India. We are a gullible populace. Anything can happen. A prostitute president, a leader of whores—we love all curiosities, we clap for every trick.

###

The only good thing that came out of it was, it earned me my senior Editorship. Nobody knows Ashraf outside the Marathi press, but my English translation ran in every newspaper in India and several abroad. He too became some Marathi editor. But it was I who was invited to prestigious colleges to teach students ground level journalism, how to develop a nose for good stories.

.

[1] a very high Brahmin caste

[2] maid

[3] puffed rice snack

[4] fracas