Mumbai, July 23: Already on the brink of penury, prostitutes in Mumbai’s red light area find the going tough with hardly any customers in sight
As if business was not bad enough already for the prostitutes at Falkland Road in Mumbai Central’s red-light district, heavy rain yesterday seemed to have dealt a body blow to their trade. Dozens of sex workers were still on the streets well past midnight, soliciting customers.
“Hardly any patron has turned up because of the rains. I hope I find a customer so that I can buy something to eat,” said a sex worker who called herself Gangu. Another sex worker had an equally pressing need. She needed to pay her daily rent of Rs 150 to the gharwalli (brothel owner) so as not to be evicted. However, she had not found a single client since morning.
The rooms in these age-old chawls were claustrophobic, and a dank stench from the beds clung in the air. The roof was leaking at most places, and the floor was damp.
Business was brisk before AIDS cast a deathly shadow over the trade. Prostitutes made a decent living at that time. Even the gharwallis would borrow hefty sums from moneylenders to buy girls.
“The AIDS scare reduced our business by at least 25 per cent. We now have more prostitutes than clients,” said 60-year-old Shobha, who runs a small brothel in the area.
Caught between development and AIDS scare, flesh trade in the area is dying a slow death. Most of the expensive property in the area is up for grabs. The situation is such that prostitutes are driven to the brink of poverty. Many sex workers do not even manage to solicit two clients in a day, and some times earn as little as Rs 20 a day. They have to share their day’s income with the gharwalli (brothel owner).
“There were around one lakh sex workers in 1991. The number could now be just 20,000. Almost all of them live hand to mouth,” said I S Gilada, who had once campaigned for the use of condoms in the red-light district.
The 1993 riots sounded the death knell for sex trade in the area. Of the one lakh prostitutes, 30,000 went back to their home towns, while 50,000 succumbed to AIDS in the last 17 years.
——Agencies