Books & Literature
Colouring the shadows Thursday September 20 2007
M T Saju
The Autobiography of a Sex Worker By Nalini JameelaWestland books, Rs 150
Nalini doesn’t know English. She can’t even write her mother tongue, Malayalam, properly. But when she published her autobiography, Oru Laingikatozhilaaliyude Athmakatha, in Malayalam in 2005, the book became a bestseller. It went into six editions in one hundred days with a record sale of 13,000 copies. Westland has now published in English the revised version of her memoirs, The Autobiography of a Sex Worker, which portrays the life of a woman caught between prostitution and motherhood.
Nalini became a sex worker after her husband’s death. The two-and-a-half rupees she was earning from a local clay mine was not sufficient. Her mother-in-law also demanded a large sum from her to take care of her children. Frustrated, Nalini even thought of sending her children to an orphanage. But her friend advised her to meet one Rosa chechi of Thrissur who could help her get a reasonable income. “It’s moneyed men who come; they need women. If you go along with what they want, you will get paid,” her friend told her.
Nalini finally met Rosa chechi. She took her to Ramanilayam, a government guesthouse to meet a police officer. It was during the Emergency. The guesthouse’s full-length mirror and the luxurious bathroom decorations were new to Nalini. Soon a man in a gold-bordered dhoti, with a sandal mark on his forehead entered the room. “The man looked like an aristocrat, and not like a policeman. His behaviour towards me that night was very tender. It lasted just one night. This was the person I’d dreamt of, the lover who appeared in my fantasies,” Nalini writes.
But Nalini was wrong. A police jeep dropped her at the Mission Quarters in the early morning. But soon after the jeep left, another one stopped near her. The policemen rudely asked her to get inside and she obliged. At the police station, she was subjected to caning on the feet. She realised the truth that the same handsome man had handed her over to the police. “Men can be both tender and cruel at the same time. I learned that lesson from my very first client,” she writes.
Nalini, along with Rosa chechi, Sheela and Karthyayani rented out a house in Vavannur and established their Company House (small brothels) with the help of brokers and local gundas like Manukka and Kunhappa. Though Nalini couldn’t go back home, her mother-in-law accepted her earnings that were sent through a woman friend. But not for long, as she fell out with Rosa.
The Autobiography of a Sex Worker portrays the struggle of a sex worker and the various aspects of that life. So don’t think that it is a narration of Nalini’s sexual encounters with her clients. There are interesting “clients” and “chaps”. Velayudhan is one among them. He used to get her a sari whenever he visited her: “Once when I went to Chottanikkara, the famous temple-town, I had carried just one set of clothes. Velayudhan insisted on going back a second time to the temple. I draped the bed sheet around me, washed all my clothes, and hung them up to dry. Suddenly, the police knocked on the door. It was a dangerous moment, I could have been arrested stark naked. I escaped only because he rose to the situation. When the police asked him to call me he told them very convincingly that his wife was ill, that she had taken some medicines and was now resting. He was so smart; they swallowed the story of the illness. After that, whenever he came, he always brought me a sari.”
When Koyakka, a harbour worker who divorced both his wives since they had no kids, proposed to Nalini, she accepted on the condition that they give up the relationship if they don’t have children. They started living together and Nalini became pregnant. But she soon found out that Koyakka had been in touch with his second wife, who was also pregnant by then. Nalini was denied the status she desired in the house. So she moved to a rented house when she was six months pregnant. Her daughter Zeenat was born there. Koyakka’s second wife had already given birth to a baby girl. Koyakka was not able to accept Nalini’s child as she was a Hindu. So she decided to end that 20-month-old marriage.
The marriage that lasted was the one with Shahul Hameed who Nalini met when she was roaming around the Thrissur KSRTC bus station. Nalini had to change her name to Jameela to convince Shahul’s relatives that his wife was a Muslim. They rented a house and lived as husband and wife for almost 12 years with her daughter Zeenat. Unfortunately Shahul’s plastic board business faced a huge loss. He stopped coming home. Nalini fell ill suddenly with a swelling in the liver due to her drinking habits. “My right leg became inflamed and broke into an open sore. It started bleeding and I was back on the streets with 13-year-old Zeenat,” she writes. Then we see Nalini as a sex worker mother who had to struggle to protect her daughter from molesters. She ran from pillar to post to put her daughter in a safe place. And that’s the most touching part in this autobiography.
With the help of social activists Maitreyan and Paulson, Nalini travelled to Thailand to screen her first documentary in 2003. This opened a new horizon for her. She also participated in sex workers’ meets organised in various cities in India. She questioned the idea of ‘rehabilitation’ of sex workers, saying “Sex workers aren’t a group that stays the same all the time. These are people who keep changing. If some move out, others move in. What can be done about them?” she asks. Nalini has visited brothels in many places, and she says that the best run are in Kolkata and Karnataka. The brothels in Mumbai are the worst, according to her. “If two people want to have sex by common consent, if this is in no way a nuisance to others, then it should not be questioned. This is particularly important in Kerala, where there are no brothels,” she argues.
The book, which has seven chapters, presents a powerful account of a sex worker who seeks dignity and freedom in society on her own terms.
‘We want justice’
When I first published my autobiography in Malayalam, I never expected that the book will become a bestseller. But it did. It was more than what I expected. And it still remains a big wonder for me. I am happy to know that my book has now come out in English, a language that I don’t know. But I am thrilled. I don’t have words to express my feelings. I wrote my autobiography to show that we, sex workers, deserve a better place in the society. I have raised my voice for the entire community. We want justice. It was social activist Maitreyan who first asked me to write a book. But it was difficult for me to write. I tried but couldn’t succeed. One day Gopinath, another social activist, approached me and offered to write my autobiography. We used to sit for hours. He would note down what I told him. He also used to record our conversations. It took almost one year to complete the book. I will be always grateful to Gopinath for this. — As told to MTS
