17 July 2020
Dearest Fazal,
Hidden. This is the word that comes to mind with this image of the child facing a plaid curtain. Hidden. You tell me this is a child of a sex worker in India. I want to know more. I do my research and find the numbers of women working in the sex trade varies wildly. One site says there are as many as two million sex workers in India. Another source says it is closer to ten million. And still another more conservative organization says there are roughly 700,000 women working as prostitutes, though that word is now being retired.
Hidden. This profession. Legal and illegal, at once, in every town, city, and country around the world. Who draws the line on the map of a woman’s body?
Here is a story: Manju Biswas was a prostitute from Calcutta. She did not enter her profession by choice. She was 13 years old. In a 1999 Newsweek interview, “She says an unscrupulous neighbor lured her to Calcutta and sold her for $30 to a brothel keeper. The child was drugged, raped and put to work in the sex trade.” She went on to describe how, “These men, 10 to 15 a day, would come visit me.” Whenever she managed to scrape up a little cash, a gang of local punks would bully her, rough her up… “If I protested they would not only take away my money but stub out cigarettes on my face and arms.”
The interview revealed that in time, Biswas joined with other girl sex workers and they fought back on the streets, sometimes brutally. They won respect. They organized themselves. The women of Sonagachi formed a cooperative which enabled and empowered the girls to keep half their wages usually taken by a madam or pimp. Together, they advocated and lobbied on behalf of their “health and welfare.” Respect came with a change in terminology from prostitutes to sex workers. Twenty years ago, there were 30,000 sex workers in their organization. Today, I can only imagine how their coalition has grown as there are now chapters throughout India.
I find this story hopeful but it, too, was hidden. I had to look for it.
Manju Biswas spoke. When one woman speaks, other women speak and follow. They organize. It is isolation that is withering. An inner room dark without windows.
Women. Children. A child turns her back. What does she understand of her mother’s work? Will she choose the same profession, or will it choose her by fate or necessity or both?
What is the price a sex worker pays regardless of the money she earns each day, every night for her services? And what price does every woman pay regardless of who she allows to touch or enter her body? Tell me when does pleasure turn to violence? When does violence force a woman to leave her body and watch from afar a woman who shares her same name cry out in terror?
I wonder, Fazal, if I had not turned the photograph over to read your hidden script, what story would I have imagined from this child’s gestalt?
The pigtail. The story mothers and daughters know well: the morning ritual of a mother combing her daughter’s hair that leads to the fight over who is in control. My mother pulled my hair so tight when she was twisting it into a bun, sometimes my vision would blur. Sometimes I cried because I wanted it one way and she wanted it another. Sometimes I won, but mostly, I lost. It was my mother who decided if I would wear a ponytail or pigtails or braids, one or two. I see this same tug of war in my granddaughter Malka when her mother takes the time to braid her hair into cornrows or a make a little knot on top of her head. Malka will resist. Her mother decides. But when it’s done, Malka looks adorable. The child in this photograph whose name is Rani has a mother who cares. Her singular pigtail tilted to the side is an act of originality.
What can art tell us that facts cannot?
In this portrait, I see a child who knows how to inhabit the hours she is left alone. Poise becomes her. Her back may face you as a photographer or me as a viewer, but her focus is on what her hands are doing, that only she can see. Hidden. Hidden to us—just as what is behind the plaid drapes is hidden to her.
I can imagine Rani’s dangling feet which are bare, swinging back and forth at times as she sits dutifully on a plastic stool. Though she may feel restless, she remains in control of her body. She is not solitary. Her imagination is her companion directing the activities of her hands, as she waits for whomever will come out from behind the drapes.
But what makes this picture threatening, Fazal, is your gaze, even as a kind and respectful artist with an eye on our shared humanity. You have her back—until she turns around. Then suddenly, the encounter becomes what it always becomes between a man and a child or her mother: Power.
Always,
Terry