Tags:
Journalism of Courage
I saw Sangharsh the other day. Nothing unusual, you would say, considering I was seeing the movie almost a year after it had hit the silver screen. I agree. But it wasn8217;t the movie or Akshay Kumar that made me catch an early morning local train and run into the theatre at 9 a.m. It was the audience I was going to watch the movie with a hall packed with commercial sex workers CSWs accompanied by their favourite clients.
Watching Priety Zinta and Akshay Kumar with me were the residents of Kamathipura, one of the largest red-light districts in Asia. Madams with their entourage, bais with children and their special clients settled into their seats next to mine and were soon engrossed in the movie.
It was all fun till the interval. Priety Zinta had been greeted with lusty hooting, Akshay Kumar with quot;mast actor haiquot;. Midway through the movie the lights came on and the organisers got down to business. Non-governmental organisation Population Service International PSI works at promoting AIDS awareness. And the movie show is one of their innovative ideas to reach out to this high-risk group. Once every couple of months they give out free passes to CSWs and ask them to bring a client along. The group came up with the idea when they realised that the decision to wear a condom is made by the client, not the CSW.
The audience was restless, but PSI workers went ahead with their awareness programme, even demonstrating how to use a condom correctly, much to the amusement of the men in the audience. And then Mahesh Bhatt and director Tanuja Chandra took centrestage and said the same thing. The audience was listening now. Star power always works, PSI workers explained, adding that what takes them years is achieved in five minutes by a Bollywood celebrity.Sitting right next to me, listening to the speakers was, well, I didn8217;t get a chance to know her name. Her skin wrinkled, she was looking around, just like me. She glared at the sniggering men, encouraged a few others to go to the organisers and pick up more information and checked to see if the women were paying attention.
Then she turned to me and said: quot;It is important, you know. I have seen girls suffer because of the men. Today if someone says he will not use a condom, an increasing number of girls are telling them to go elsewhere. It has taken years for this change.quot; She then explained the hierarchy in a brothel, explaining why life was easy for some, difficult for others. A child started crying. Shhh, went the audience and she clucked in disapproval. quot;Poor child,quot; was all she said before turning back to the screen. I had ceased to exist. Twenty minutes later, she looked at me again.
She wanted to know who I was. I quickly explained, and she burst into a long monologue. When she finished, I said I didn8217;t understand. She slowed down.quot;We have been reduced to tourist attractions,quot; she said. quot;Every year around this time, everybody wants to talk to us, hear our story. After that it8217;s the same story.quot; With that, she walked away. I just blinked.
But the very same thing was told to me by so many more later. Every group I met, every AIDS victim I spoke to, everybody concerned about the disease, told me the very same thing. I was repeatedly asked why AIDS found a mention only around December 1, World AIDS Day. An HIV-positive widow said: quot;All the 365 days, I suffer, silently. Nobody cares. I wish they would because nobody should have to battle this virus ever.quot;
