Taking up a task at Mehboob ki Mehndi, a red light area in Hyderabad

 

There were risks involved. They were for real. Not imaginary. I stood near the bend into the lane at Mehboob ki Mehndi near the High Court. Do I make my way into the area or refrain?

The safest answer option was: refrain. Why go there? Why take a risk?

Why get into trouble? Why suffer shame? Why face embarrassing questions? And why end up in jail?

Getting arrested and ending up in jail was a definite possibility.

As a journalist working for Deccan Chronicle at that time, I had regularly reported about the police raiding the place. From time to time, whenever the raids happened, I also reported about the arrests of women engaged in prostitution, their "sethanis" who ran the business, and the house owners who rented out places for prostitution activities.

I would also report about policemen getting arrested as they too would visit the red-light area and get caught. Like others, cases would be booked against them and they would be sent to jail. The law was the same for everyone.

It would be the same for me too.

But I had a reason to visit Mehboob ki Mehndi during this time in 1994-95. I was not going there for reasons that many went there for. I was going there to understand the women who were engaged in prostitution. If I was caught by the police, would my office come to my rescue?

The police who would swoop down and carry out raids could give out details to the press. And in that note would be a line which would read: A journalist was also arrested in the raid in Mehboob ki Mehndi.

I was not on an office assignment. I was not assigned the task of doing any story on Mehboob ki Mehndi. So one possibility was that my presence there was 'not official'. If the police could arrest their own men for visiting Mehboob ki Mehndi, I saw no reason why they would let me go.

I was adamant. I understood the risks.

Mehboob ki Mehndi was a much-talked-about place during that time. There was opposition by people in the vicinity to organised prostitution taking place in their area. The sethanis and those involved in running the brothel houses faced the law but came back to run the business. It would be business as usual.

If I reported about the existence of a place called Mehboob ki Mehndi as a red-light area, it would be nothing new. After all, it had gained such a name for decades.

My intention was to write a news report. I did not know what I would find to write. I was not sure if I would be able to do what I intended to do to get a clear picture.

Apart from the police and arrest angle, there was also the possibility that I would be viewed with suspicion when I entered the area and become a target of the sethanis, the women involved or the goons who ran the business.

There were other risks too. I was unmarried then and if I were to get arrested in a red-light area, the stigma that I would carry for a lifetime would affect me greatly. How many people would really want to listen to my side of the story? To how many could I explain myself?

So I resolved the matter in my own mind. Come what may, I would enter the area and carry out the assignment I had given myself.

I wanted to understand the lives of the women involved in the prostitution activity taking place there. I had many questions to ask them. Would they even be willing to open up for a chat and waste their time? Would they not view me with suspicion if I asked them so many questions? And why should they answer?

The odds were stacked against me.

Nevertheless, I entered the place.

When I dared enter the area, I got glances. I walked on. I approached a house. A woman was sitting there. She was unmoved. There was curiosity on her face. I did not appear like a client.

"I am a reporter and I want to talk to you," I said to her.

"And make our life more miserable?" she shot back.

"It could also possibly alter your situation for the better but I am not saying that it will," I said.

"What is it that you want to know about us that others already do not know?" the woman said.

She was rude. Or she appeared rude to me. But at least she was willing to talk.

I told her I knew about the opposition to the running of the red-light area and told her in so many words that the demand from those living in the area was not unjustified. I also told her that they already knew what they were doing was against the law and that was the reason why the police raids took place at regular intervals.

"Then where do we go and what do we do? Does anyone understand us? Does anyone understand our problems? Does anyone care for us?" the woman said in response.

By this time, there were offers by the police to rehabilitate the women but they had resisted them. They had their reasons.

"If you have your reasons, you must definitely be feeling that they are valid," I replied.

"I have two children. My two sons are being sent to school. I send money home to support my family," she said.

"When I told my family that I was in Hyderabad and was working here to send them money, do you think I would have told them what I was doing?" she asked me.

"The fact that I did not tell my family means that I myself am not happy about what I am doing," she said.

She told me about how life had treated her. I listened.

"Why only me? The lives of all others here are as miserable as mine," she said.

Noticing the conversation taking place, some other women too came to the house. I noticed a 'client' emerge out of a room and leave the place in a hurry. He clearly seemed rattled by the gathering.

"Why don't you sit?" one of the women suggested.

"We would also like to tell you about how difficult life has been for us," another woman said.

"Tea or coffee?" one of them asked.

I declined politely. They would not take 'no' for an answer. Another woman returned after a little while and placed a bottle of Limca in front of me.

"Please have it. We understand the reason why you have come here. We are convinced that you are here with a genuine interest to understand our lives," she said.

One woman's mother was sick back home and she needed to send money regularly for her treatment.

Another woman said her husband had abandoned her.

Somehow, everyone had landed there without really knowing what they were getting into. What they had entered was a problem. If they got out of it, they felt they would run into more problems.

The fact that they had trusted me enough to tell me how they landed there and what kept them there despite not wanting to do what they were doing was clear.

"Our only request is that you do not write our names in the newspaper. What will our families think if they come to know that we do what we do in a red-light area? Write about our miseries but not our names," they said.

They trusted me.

I had ventured into a place that I had hesitated to enter. And now here I was, after spending hours with the women, having gained their trust and understood their lives, heading back to the office to write more news reports. With new insights.

More media houses wrote more reports. The High Court, the police and NGOs had already begun efforts to rehabilitate the women. Prajwala founded by Sunitha Krishnan gave many women a new lease of life.

Bygones would be bygones for them. A more dignified life awaited them.