“She was little more than a prostitute with an entrepreneurial flair,” said Nisha. “She had succeeded in networking with several powerful politicians whose perverted needs she served. It was because of her political clout that the charges against her were subsequently dropped, much against my wishes.”
“How did she leave behind the brothel and become a member of the legislature?” asked Santosh.
“She claimed that she was protecting the girls and offering them shelter,” replied Nisha. “A massive cover-up exercise was undertaken to reinvent her profile. I remember reading a newspaper report that referred to her as a social worker, someone who helped poor and downtrodden women.”
“And you think that it was all a cover? That she was actually encouraging prostitution?” asked Santosh.
“Oh, absolutely,” said Nisha, nodding her head vigorously. “The transformation from prostitute to brothel owner, then from social worker to politician, was a gradual one. At each stage she was careful to erase as much of her past as possible. I would never have made the connection if I had not seen those old photos of her on the news. Over the past few years she’s consciously cultivated a different—more mature—look. Shorter hair, traditional sarees, spectacles … but the photographs of her in her youth gave her away.”
“I still find it hard to believe that a mainstream political party would accept her as a candidate, given her past,” objected Santosh, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“Stranger things have happened in Indian politics,” argued Nisha. “Over thirty percent of Members of Parliament have criminal cases pending against them. The figure is even higher in the state assemblies. Phoolan Devi, the famous Bandit Queen, who had killed twenty-two villagers in cold blood during her life as a dacoit, was subsequently elected to parliament even though she had thirty criminal cases conducted against her. Ragini Sharma pales in comparison.”
Chapter 65
IT WAS LATE and Mumbai’s oldest red-light district hummed with activity.
Kamathipura had begun life as a “comfort zone” for British troops in the 1880s and was now a fourteen-lane district densely packed with dilapidated buildings and precariously balanced hutments, almost every one of them a brothel. They teemed with young girls, many kidnapped from country villages or sold into the sex trade by their own families. Drug addiction, alcohol abuse, STDs, and HIV—they all abounded in an area that over fifty thousand prostitutes euphemistically called home.
“Do you recall which one it was?” asked Santosh, as they weaved through a street overcrowded with vendors, tea stalls, and beggars.
“I shall never forget it,” Nisha replied. Some of the girls that she had rescued that night had been less than twelve years old. She pointed him in the right direction.
“I know that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but in this area any woman who makes eye contact with a male is considered fair game. Walk quickly and keep your head down,” instructed Santosh. They hurried toward the premises Nisha had already pointed out.
A few minutes later they entered a near-derelict building and began to climb a precarious staircase that creaked with each step they took. On the landing, a group of gaudily dressed women stood with dubious male companions waiting for bedrooms to be vacated.
“Hey, babe, how about a blow job?” asked a drunk with bloodshot eyes. He reeked of sweat and alcohol and ogled Nisha with a smirk. He held a bottle of cheap liquor in one hand, and as they passed he reached to grab Nisha’s behind with the other …
Nisha whirled, brought her knee into his groin and stepped away as the boozehound doubled over with pain, groaning on the bare boards. She shot Santosh a look, as though to say, “How’s that for fair game?” and he just managed to suppress a smile in return, hurrying her on instead. There wasn’t time for all this.
Now she led them to a room where, seated on a large red artificial-leather sofa, was the brothel’s queen bee, busy stuffing a mixture of betel nut and tobacco into her mouth. She looked suspiciously at Santosh and Nisha as they approached, then raised painted eyebrows as Santosh delved for his wallet and placed five crisp thousand-rupee notes into her hands.
The madam looked at the cash. She looked back at Santosh and Nisha, standing before her, and slowly smiled, revealing betel-nut-stained teeth.
“What sort of girl do you want?” she asked Santosh. “Someone to provide a threesome along with your girlfriend?”
“I’m not here as a customer,” he replied. “I just need a few simple questions answered.”
The madam looked at him distrustfully. “You a cop?” she asked. “If you are, you can have your money back.”
“I’m not a policeman,” said Santosh. “My colleague and I are writing a book about women who made it big but started out in the world of prostitution. I was wondering whether you could tell us something about Ragini Sharma.”
The madam eyed them both as though she didn’t believe a word they said, but even so she tucked the cash into her blouse. Leaning over the arm of the sofa, she spat chewed-up betel nut into a brass spittoon on the floor then wiped brown slaver from her mouth.
“That bitch!”
“I take it you knew her personally?” said Santosh, resting on his cane to ease the pressure on his bad leg. He wished his head would stop pounding. That his mouth wasn’t so dry.
“You could say that,” blurted the madam. “She took extra pride in getting her thugs to ‘inaugurate’ the new girls. I was one of the girls broken in by her goons. She may show herself off as being a mighty respectable politician these days, but she’s just a dirty whore! She used to fuck her clients; now she’s trying to fuck the entire country!” The madam had obviously not watched the evening news or read the news reports regarding Ragini Sharma’s death.
“Why didn’t you leak her story to the press?” asked Nisha. “Why did you keep quiet?”
She curled a lip. “When I first came to Kamathipura, I was fifteen. I was abducted, caged, abused, beaten, and raped repeatedly until I was broken in. There was nothing that I wanted more desperately than to be reunited with my family. Each night I would sob uncontrollably as I remembered my parents, my siblings, and my home in Uttar Pradesh.”
The madam took another betel leaf and delicately layered it with lime, catechu, betel nut, cardamom, and tobacco. She placed it in her mouth contentedly and continued: “One night, I was able to escape from my imprisonment. I ran to Mumbai Central railway station and boarded a train for my home village. But when I reached home, my parents refused to acknowledge that I was their daughter. They said I was a woman of loose moral character—a liability. I realized that I had not been kidnapped. It was they who had sold me into prostitution. I took the first train back to Mumbai and returned to the very establishment that had pimped me. There was no looking back for me after that.”
“Ragini Sharma accepted you back?” asked Santosh.