Jigmi

HOPE briefly raised its head in the form of one of Radhika’s clients, Jigmi. A

night customer, Jigmi immediately stood out from Radhika’s other regular

customers not just because he was so handsome, but also because at 21, he was

so much younger than the normal clientele, who tended to be middle-aged men.

At 1.88m (6ft 2 ins), Jigmi was tall, dark – his shiny, black shoulder-length hair

was always freshly washed and tucked neatly underneath a baseball cap – and

lean. He also had good dress sense, favouring freshly laundered smart cotton

shirts tucked into modern, low-slung jeans. The young man could easily have

found a girlfriend to satisfy his needs, but for some reason, Jigmi had set his

sights on Radhika instead.

It was late summer 2006 and Radhika had been at the Sonagachi brothel for

about nine months. She was a popular worker and had got to know the needs and

wants of her clientele well.

They were mostly lower-caste men, who liked to drink cheap liquor, usually

spirits or the home brew made by the brothel owners. Most would come after

work, in the early evening, and begin drinking. By the time they got to the

‘catwalk’, they were often so drunk it was a miracle they were able to stand up,

let alone attempt to have sex.

For the most part, their appearance was unkempt and their personal hygiene

poor. But by now Radhika had perfected the art of the zoning out when she was

forced to have sex with these strangers.

‘I would focus on a spot on the wall and transport myself into another world,’

she says. ‘That way, I didn’t have to think about the clients’ hideous body odour

or the pungent alcohol vapour seeping through their spotty pores. I didn’t have to

worry about their two-day old stubble scraping against my cheekbones or being

thrown around the bed like a rag doll. I didn’t even have to worry about being sexually exploited in the worst ways possible. After all, it wasn’t me on that bed

it was someone else.

‘But with Jigmi it was different.’

Jigmi arrived at Maya Tamang’s rundown brothel one Friday evening. The hard-

faced Madame immediately began fawning over him, offering him a chair and

the standard shot of house whisky. She hollered at her girls to form a line in

front of him. For Radhika and some of the other girls, the ‘line’ or ‘catwalk’ was

always a humiliating and nerve-wracking experience. Each prostitute was

required to dress up in her sex-slave uniform and sell her particular wares. In

Radhika’s case, this meant donning a tight, lime-green mini dress and garish red

heels, which showcased her slim figure and long legs. She was also required to

apply heavy and full make-up (usually lots of black kohl and red lipstick) before

joining the line and adopting a provocative pose.

Like animals brought to sell at a market, the girls waited, some self-

consciously, others wearily, to see who would be ‘bought’ first. In some cases, a

collective sigh of relief could be heard when a particularly cruel-looking

customer dismissed them all and staggered out of the brothel, muttering some

expletive or other under his breath. Most times, however, the girls weren’t so

lucky and one of them would have to suffer the violence eked out by such a man,

while the other girls did their best to shut out the screams.

On the night Jigmi appeared, Radhika was feeling more vulnerable than ever

before. Some days she could just about get through, but mostly she couldn’t get

Rohan out of her head and the thought of what was happening to him. On days

like these, she felt like killing herself so acute was her pain, her anguish and also

guilt at the fact she had let him down by not being with him, not being able to

hold him, not being able to protect him.

It was weeks since she had been granted a 15-minute visit with her little boy

and she had no way of receiving any word of his well-being. Knowing she could

not leave this sordid world without him meant that she was in a constant state of

purgatory. She lived for the day that they would get out of here but on days like

this she wondered if that time would ever come. If this was her life forever,

would they ever be able to escape this living hell?

While all these thoughts whirred around in her mind, Radhika waited in line with the rest of the girls while Jigmi watched them. What finally got through to

Radhika was the fact that Jigmi appeared as uncomfortable in the brothel as she

felt. Unusually for a customer, he refused the complimentary whisky shot and

instead stood up, shifting nervously from one foot to another while he glanced

apologetically at the women in front of him. Eventually, he nodded his head

gently in Radhika’s direction and asked Maya Tamang how he should proceed.

As Radhika led the way up the narrow stairwell to her fourth-floor bedroom,

Jigmi told her it was the first time he had visited a brothel. He apologized for his

ineptitude. Even so, Radhika wasn’t so sure: ‘I’d heard other men say that,

thinking I was stupid enough to swallow their lies.’

She also wondered if this were true, why such a handsome man would want to

pay for a woman when he could get one so easily for free. What was his

particular perversion?

‘I wasn’t ready to believe Jigmi straightaway but there were certainly signs

that pointed towards him being more decent than most other men I’d

encountered. He told me he had always harboured a fascination [about] sleeping

with a Sonagachi prostitute and liked the idea of becoming more sexually

experienced before he settled down to marry. He may well have been lying to

me but I didn’t really care. It was just a relief to be in the company of a sober

man.

‘I began to go through the motions of taking off my dress to reveal my pink

lace pants and bra before lying back on the bed, but he told me to keep my

clothes on and said he’d prefer to chat.’

No client had ever said this to Radhika before and her previous misgiving

arose to the afore. ‘I couldn’t help thinking he was about to do something

terrible to me … kill me. But he was true to his word.’

Jigmi told Radhika that he lived in an apartment near Sonagachi and worked

in a call centre. He explained that he wasn’t interested in a quick sexual fix but

would prefer to pay the extra rupees required for a ‘night customer’ rate. So

Maya Tamang charged him double the standard 200 INR (£2.80) rate and he was

given permission to stay the night with Radhika. He told the young woman that

he was captivated by her beauty and gentle nature and wanted to know everything about her.