The Brave and the Beautiful In India

 

The moment I saw Roopa*—beautiful, dimpled and dusky—it was clear that playing mother to her son was her sole vocation in life. Sitting in the verandah in the mild winter sun, unravelling a sweater, she didn’t once avert her gaze from him as he, unmindful of her, doodled in a notebook. “Keechu kheye ne (eat something),” she pampered in their native language, Bangla. Chips, came the answer. Roopa sent summons and a packet was produced in no time. Mother carefully kept aside the ball of wool and what was left of the red sweater, ripped open the foil and started feeding her child.

I was witness to a textbook moment of mother-son bonding.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget. In that instant, I didn’t remember that this was not a typical mother; Roopa is a prostitute who lives, loves and works in one of the kothas (brothel-houses) of Delhi’s red light area, GB Road. Sleazy, filthy, and atrociously unhygienic, this road houses several kothas (marked as numbers for identity), each broken down into stuffy living quarters of unfortunate prostitutes, and puny, dingy rooms that serve as their ‘workplace’. Barely visible in the light of the low-watt naked bulbs is the sole furniture in each room: a wooden plank passing off for bed. Roopa’s son was conceived on one such plank seven years ago. He doesn’t know it, of course. But she remembers clearly. Everything. Including the man who impregnated her. “Someday I’d like my son to know who his father is,” she said, adding wistfully, “and who his mother really is.”

Roopa is fortunate as she knows who sired her son. Most others either don’t or prefer to forget. For these sex workers, existence is sodden twice over: condemned to a life of derision and, worse, of subterfuge, they play a game of hide-and-seek with their own flesh and blood. “My son believes I work as a cleaner in a school,” one told me. Paying a price for a crime they didn’t commit, they are the victims who rarely find empathy or support. Tales of deceit and heartbreak are commonplace—aunts who promised jobs and sold them to pimps, boyfriends who promised marriage and forced them to sleep with several strangers, men who faked love to swindle them of their hardearned money … Yet they plough on. “I want my son to be an honest, straightforward man,” Roopa told me.

How often in life can we—do we—eke out hope from utterly dismal situations? How many times do we find the strength to carry on regardless of failures? How often are we able to let go of our miseries and genuinely smile? My time with the sex workers—those beautiful, cheerful, affectionate and warm women—taught me that though life and its pleasures are erratic, the only way forward is to live chin up.

I can’t forget Roopa mollycoddling her son but I don’t want to recall her angst. Sometimes it’s easy to remember but best to forget. What is inerasable is the lesson I learnt: bravery is not always about machismo, heroism, action or overcoming fear; endurance is its far rarer and exalted form.

And me? My bravery is a work-in-progress. I didn’t have to travel far to recognise the truth.

 Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Inspiration Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

(* Name changed) 

Gratitude Travel Writing Contest

We hope you enjoyed this entry in the We Said Go Travel Gratitude Writing Contest. Please visit this page to learn more and participate. Thank you for reading the article and please leave a comment below.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

We Said Go Travel