WUNRN
India – Prostitutes of
Bombay (Mumbai) – Photos – Falkland Road
By Mary Ellen Mark
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Bombay |
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First Edition published 1981 by Alfred A. Knopf
First reprinted edition 2005
Copyright © 1981 and 2005 Mary Ellen Mark for the images and the texts
Copyright © 2005 Steidl Publishers for this edition
I
thought about Falkland
Road for ten years. I had gone there in 1968 on my
first trip to India. I went back on each of my succeeding trips.
Falkland Road is lined with old wooden buildings. On the ground floor
there are cage-like structures with girls inside them. Above these cages the buildings rise three or four stories, and at every
window there are more girls–combing their hair, sitting in clusters on the
windowsills, beckoning to potential customers. They vary in age from
eleven-year-old prostitutes to sixty-five-year-old ex-madams.
At
the same time it is like any other busy lower-class street in Bombay. All day
long there are enormous traffic jams, with horns constantly honking, hundreds
of taxicabs, and unwieldy two-story buses. Vendors sell brassieres, fountain
pens, magazines, and medicines. Water-carriers haul goatskins filled with water
into the houses, unloading them from a huge tank truck parked on the street.
And always in front of the three movie houses there are long queues of men
waiting for the next show to start. (Movies are an important part of Indian
life.)
And
then there are the customers walking up and down the street, surveying the
girls. The customers range in age from thirteen to seventy-five. Some are
handsome and some grotesque. They are lower-middle- or lower-class Indians–the
area is too poor to attract foreigners, though once in a while some Arabs come
by in long white robes. (Arabs are considered very important because they have
money and will sometimes even rent a girl for a few days.) The cage girls do everything to attract the men: they beckon and
shout and grab at them; sometimes they pull up their skirts and make obscene
gestures.
For
ten years I tried to take photographs on Falkland Road and
each time met with hostility and aggression. The women threw garbage and water
and pinched me. Crowds of men would gather around me. Once a pickpocket took my
address book; another time I was hit in the face by a drunken man. Needless to
say, I never managed to take very good photographs.
In
October of 1978 I decided to return to Bombay and try somehow to enter the
world of these women and to photograph them. I had no idea if I could do this.
But I knew I had to try. The night before I left I had a vivid dream: I was a
voyeur hiding behind a bed in a brothel on Falkland Road
watching three transvestite prostitutes making
love. I awoke amused and somewhat reassured. Perhaps my dream was a good sign.
Once
in Bombay, I started out by just going to the street. It was the same as
always–crowds of men around me and the women alternately hurling insults and
garbage at me. Every day I had to brace myself, as though I were about to jump
into freezing water. But once I was there, pacing up and down the street, I was
overwhelmed, caught up in the high energy and emotion of the quarter. And as
the days passed and people saw my persistence, they began to get curious. Some
of the women thought I was crazy, but a few were surprised by my interest in
and acceptance of them. And slowly, very slowly, I began to make friends.
My
initial friends were the street prostitutes, who were the first to approach me
because they are the most free and least inhibited. That is why they are on the
streets and not inside a brothel–they are too independent to accept the
restrictions imposed by a madam. When they find a customer, they take him into a cage or to a bed in a brothel room rented out by a madam in return for half their fee. Some madams will also allow them to wash and change inside their
house. At night these prostitutes sleep out in the street with the beggars.
Sleeping in the street is not a disgrace in India–many people prefer to sleep
outside–but the fact that they are entirely alone and have no one at all to
care about them is the sign of their true homelessness.
Soliciting
in the street on their own, these women are often arrested, and without a madam to pay their fine, they have to go to jail. They are often
sick with fever and hungry. Many of them have boyfriends who are pickpockets
and who, when they are not in jail, beat the girls and take their money. These
girls only have one another; they form close friendships and are very
protective of each other. Their favorite refuge and meeting place is the Olympia
Cafe, the largest and most beautiful cafe on the
street with its mirror-lined walls, and full of potential customers. It also
became my favorite place on the street, and it was here that I made friends
with many street girls.
I
spent hours there, drinking tea and listening to Qawwali (Muslim religious
verses) and Hindi film songs on the juke box. My companions were Asha, seventeen, Mumtaz, seventeen, and Usha, fifteen. Asha is one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen. Her
parents are dead. She has a boyfriend, Ragu, a local pickpocket who is
constantly in and out of jail. Once Asha
disappeared for four days. I found out that she had been arrested for
soliciting. I got one of the local men to bail her out. Whenever I came to Falkland
Road at dawn, I would see Asha curled up with one of the other girls, sleeping in the
street. I would wait until 8 a.m.; then I would wake her, and we would have
tea.
Asha hates being a prostitute, but she doesn’t know how else to
survive. She dreams of being a servant. I asked friends of mine whether they
would hire her, and they told me that, while they themselves wouldn’t mind,
their other servants wouldn’t tolerate her being in the same house with them. Asha charges ten to twelve rupees to customers–a much higher
price than most of the other women in the street. She told me, “I wouldn’t
do it for less. It’s not worth it. I don’t have to: when people see my face,
they will always give me some money for food.” Once she said to me,
“What kind of a god is this to give me this face and then to put me in
these surroundings?”
The
next group of people I got to know on Falkland Road were
the transvestites. It is in their nature to be
exhibitionistic; seduced by the sight of me pacing up and down with my camera,
they ultimately came out and asked to be photographed. The transvestites tend
to live clustered together in a block of cages
and small brothel rooms right next to each other. My closest friend in that
community was Champa, a transvestite madam. Like all madams–female as well as transvestite–he doesn’t solicit customers for himself, but like many madams he does have a very close relationship with a boyfriend,
Yamin, a taxi driver who is very handsome and very masculine. Champa and I drank beer, and he let me photograph him dressed as
“an English lady.” He introduced me
to other transvestites, and I would arrive
early in the afternoon to photograph them putting on their makeup and their
elaborate dress for the evening. I learned that many of them are eunuchs,
castrated at an early age. Most of their customers are homosexual and seem to
find their fullest sexual satisfaction with transvestites.
Champa also has some female prostitutes in his house. One of them
is Munni, fifteen years old, small, and
beautiful. She was once a beggar on the street, and I think she chose Champa‘s house because transvestite brothels allow more freedom
than female ones. Champa told me, “She is
like a daughter to me.”
It
was much harder to get to know the cage girls on
display on Falkland Road. They are considered
very low class by the interior brothel girls and suffer abuse and ridicule from
customers and other prostitutes. At first glance many of them look outrageous
and obscene as they pose and gesture from behind their bars, with their madam sitting on the step in front like the keeper she is. But
as I got to know them, I saw that many were very beautiful and all–even the
most seemingly aggressive–very vulnerable.
Fatima,
a madam, allowed me to stay with her and her girls for several
nights. She sleeps on a huge bed with a bright cover on it in the tiny front
room of her cage. Most of the socializing is done in this room. It is separated
by a curtain from a very small, dark back room with two beds in it, both with
curtains around them; behind the beds is a cement drain and an enormous vat of
water. In this space her three girls work, sleep, and bathe.
Fatima’s
sister is also a madam. She has a cage across
the street. One night her sister brought one of her girls to Fatima, who
dressed her up in an expensive blue burqu and sent her away. I learned later
that a pimp from a more expensive area in Bombay had come to Fatima’s sister
with a commission from an Arab customer who was willing to pay a lot of money
for a girl from a good Muslim family. So the pimp had come to the cheapest
street in Bombay to find a three-rupee girl with whom to cheat the Arab.
Fatima’s
favorite girl, Abida, had once been rented by an Arab for a week. Fatima showed
me a studio photograph of Abida with the Arab. She is nineteen years old, very
attractive, and very successful with customers. A merchant on the street was in
love with her and he wanted to take her away. There were terrible fights
between Abida and Fatima, since Fatima didn’t want her to leave. Abida couldn’t
decide what to do. About two weeks before I left Bombay, Abida disappeared.
When I asked Fatima where she was, she was silent. One woman on the street told
me that Abida had been stabbed, another said that she had run away with the
merchant. I never found out what had happened to her. Three days later Fatima
sold her cage and left. Her two remaining girls were sold to another madam, who took over the cage
and repainted the interior a bright blue. I never saw Fatima or Abida again,
and I felt I shouldn’t ask any more questions. There were many secrets among
the women on Falkland Road.
The
most elite brothels on Falkland
Road are the interior rooms that rise above the cages. They are not in the same class as the numbered houses in
other areas, but on this street they are the best. At first when I visited them
I was embarrassed and felt like an intruder. Whenever I climbed the stairs, the
women would run out of the hallways into their rooms and hide behind the
curtains, and a madam would start screaming at
me. I decided to concentrate on one house, in the hope that the people in it
would get used to me. It was right next door to the Olympia Cafe, and I felt I could always run down and take refuge there
if necessary.
Number 12 Falkland Road is typical of the
other brothels. Three or four stories rise above the cages on the first floor. One enters through a wooden door and
mounts steep wooden stairs. Directly to the left is a small brothel room;
farther down the hallway is a landing with three more brothel rooms. Each room
is a separate “house” with its own madam and her own girls. The madams normally own anywhere from three to ten girls, with five
about the average. The girls go only into the hallway. They never enter rooms
other than their own, or go upstairs or downstairs, or–apart from visits to
the doctor or brief errands–go out into the street. During the day they stay
in their rooms, cook on the floor, sleep, sew, play with the children. It is
all very much like normal Indian family life.
Saroja, a madam, has two rooms
on the third floor of this house. Since my attempts on the second floor had
been so frustrating, I felt inhibited about climbing up another story. But Saroja said to me, “Welcome. Come on in.”
Saroja is twenty-six years old but looks forty. Like all madams, she has complete control over her girls. The relationship
is one of master and slave but also of mother and daughter. The girls worship
and fear their madam. One night Putla, Saroja‘s youngest girl,
allowed a drunken customer to have her for only three rupees. Saroja grabbed her by the hair and pounded her with her fists. Putla didn’t utter a sound. The other girls stood by and watched
silently. Five minutes after her beating Putla
was ready for work again, her face washed and her dress changed. Later that
night I saw Putla embracing Saroja and giving her a back massage.
In
Saroja‘s house all the sex takes place on two beds with brightly
patterned curtains around them. In the same small room there is another bed
used as a waiting bench for the girls and their customers. At the end of the
narrow room is Saroja‘s bed, a dresser, and a
window overlooking Falkland Road. The girls
from Saroja‘s house, along with the girls from
the other brothel rooms, solicit customers at the doorway and in the hall.
Sometimes there is a bit of competition among them, but there is also a strong
feeling of solidarity–especially when it comes to protecting one another
against the customers.
At
the beginning of the evening, when the first customer arrives, the madam blesses each girl. At the end of the evening she divides,
fifty-fifty, the money that each girl has collected and placed in her own
little wooden box with a small lock on it that hangs on the wall. At 1 a.m. the
lights are turned out and the “all-night” customers come in. To spend
the night with a particular girl they pay from thirty rupees on up (ordinary
customers pay five rupees). One night while I was there the police came into
the house and arrested several girls for soliciting in the hallways. The madams went out to bargain with them, and one Nepalese madam hid me under her
bed until it was all over.
I
don’t mind paying money to the police,” she told me. “After all, they
have families to support too.” I felt very safe under her bed: safe and
protected and accepted.
Saroja had been kidnapped from her village in South India at the
age of twelve and taken to Bombay. She worked as a prostitute, gradually saving
and borrowing enough money to have her own girls and become a madam. She told me: “My dream is to have my own house–a
bungalow like the numbered ones on Foras Road, with separate rooms for my
girls. I could have a refrigerator and sell alcohol and cold drinks. I could
have a guard in front to keep the police out. I could have a better class of
customers–even foreigners.”
Saroja is very attached to her girls. One of them, Kamla, fell in love with a waiter and ran off with him. Huge
tears fell from Saroja‘s eyes, and all the
other girls wept too. One day Saroja told me about one of her girls:
“Rekha is actually my daughter. I had her when I was thirteen. See how
much we look alike. She just got her period one year ago.
When
the girls get pregnant, it is up to them whether they have the baby or not.
Abortion is legal in India, and there is a local abortionist who is also a
sex-change doctor. He told me: “I can’t understand why men go to
prostitutes. I have only one woman, my wife. I say to men all the time, ‘Don’t
put your cock inside a dirty prostitute–if you make love with your wife and
close your eyes, it is all the same.'”
There
are many children running in and out of the brothel rooms. In the same house as
Saroja there lives a beautiful twenty-two-year-old girl, Sharda,
with her two sons, Yellapa, eleven months old, and Mari, three. Mari is an
extraordinary child. He is beautiful, intelligent, and sensitive. He is in love
with Saroja, and she adores him. He spends
hours sitting on her bed, and when she has a headache he rubs tiger balm on her
temples. When he has fever, which is often, he sleeps with her. One of the
brothel jokes is for Saroja to say to Mari: “What does Putla
do? What does Kamla do? What does Rekha
do?” Mari answers by making a fucking
sign with his fist, and the whole house roars with laughter. Whenever Saroja or one of her girls is upset, Mari is upset too.
Saroja and I became closer and closer. Sometimes I stayed in her house
until the lights went out and the all-night customers came in. We ordered tea
from downstairs and sat and talked. Once I went to a street fair with her and
her girls.
One
night I invited her to a restaurant. I wanted to take her someplace special, in
another part of town. But as soon as we arrived I knew I had made a mistake.
She was overdressed and felt uncomfortable and out of place. The only place
where Saroja really felt relaxed was sitting on her bed in her brothel
room.
Saroja never asked me anything personal. No one did. They wanted
to know only my age, why I didn’t wear a brassiere, and why I wasn’t married. I
think the reason I was finally accepted was that I was single–alone in the
world like they were. One madam told me,
“We are sisters. You and I are fated for the same life. Every night I say
my prayers and I sleep alone.”
Saying
goodbye was painful. Saroja and I hugged, and she presented me with an enormous
garland of flowers. We all cried. Mari came
in, and he too started to cry. Women waved farewell from their windows. I went
by the cages, and some of the women came out
to shake my hand. Champa, the transvestite madam, ran across the street: “Send me a wig from America,
sister, and every time I wear it I will think of you!”
One
last tea at the Olympia
Cafe. Asha and Usha
and many other friends gathered around the table. I started to cry. “You
shouldn’t weep,” said Asha. “You
should say goodbye with your head up and proud and then leave.” She walked
me out into the street to find a taxi. “You’d better not forget me,”
she said.
I took
the photographs on Falkland Road in the late 1970s. Documentary
photography in magazines was different then. Certain magazines acted
almost as sponsors supporting serious photography. I suggested Falkland
Road to GEO magazine. They sent me to Bombay for three months. In
the end, the photographs were not published in GEO because the editors thought
they were too explicit for the American market. Their sister magazine in
Germany, Stern magazine, published 13 pages instead.
Today, no
magazine would sponsor a project like Falkland Road. The real everyday
world is—for the most part— no longer seen in magazines. The only
documentary photography we see is of war, disaster, and conflict. Most
everything else has been replaced by fashion and celebrity photography.
Access
to the explicit and personal world of Falkland Road would be much more
difficult today. Because the world has been connected by the Internet and
cable television and everyone is much more aware of the power of media. I often
wonder how the women of Falkland Road would react to me if I approached them
now. Would they be afraid to be labeled or sensationalized? Would
they ask me for money? They never did before.
Falkland
Road remains one of the most powerful and rewarding experiences of my
photographic life. Not only because of its visual richness, but also
because of my extraordinary friendships and adventures with these women.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the people that I met on Falkland
Road. I wonder how many are still alive. This book was done a few
years before AIDS became a known phenomenon.
Vicky
Wilson and Robert Gotlieb at Knopf believed in the work and published Falkland
Road, which was released in 1981. About a year after the book was
completed, I returned to Bombay to visit Soroja, the madam who first welcomed
me on Falkland Road. I brought a Falkland Road book with me to
give to her. She had hit hard times and was living and working in a slum
area that was much poorer than Falkland Road. She gave me a big
hug. She looked thin and frail and very sad. It occurred to me
later that perhaps she had contracted AIDS.
About
15 years ago, I again returned to Falkland Road with my husband, Martin Bell
and the writer, John Irving. They were doing research for a film
project. The street had changed a lot. It seemed much tougher and
more dangerous. There were many more pimps around. We went into
several brothels. Most of the people were too drugged to even notice
us. No one remembered Soroja or knew where she was, but we did find the
madam that I knew. (Pulabai, page 102). She remembered me fondly and
talked about the very hot chicken biryani she made for me one afternoon long
ago. She, too, had hit hard times. Her rent had increased, and
business was not as good. She had lost a lot of weight and had red sores
on her arms. The first thing that came to my mind was that she also had
AIDS.
I
haven’t returned to Falkland Road in 15 years, but the men, women and children
I met there are always with me.
I
dedicate this book to all of them who welcomed me into their lives, especially
Soroja. I will also always be grateful to Vicky Wilson and Bob Gottlieb
at Knopf for publishing the original Falkland Road book. I am also
grateful to Gerhard Steidl for appreciating the book and publishing this second
edition.
Mary
Ellen Mark
July 18, 2005
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