An editorial meeting is on in a cramped room on the first floor of a building near the Park Circus crossing at Topsia, central Kolkata. The girls sit around on the floor, some with notebooks and pens. The musty air is filled with ideas that are aired, shot down and debated.

“I think the topic for this month should be ‘community’,” says Nazia, a senior member of the group. As Kohinoor quickly jots down the idea, some in the group intervene to say that they want to write on their dreams.

This is the editorial meeting of the Red Light Despatch, an e-magazine, with write-ups from sex workers from brothels across India. “We should write about our local club that gets all the grants from NGOs but passes on little to the slum dwellers,” says Shagufta. At the end of it, every girl has a brief. Kohinoor and Nikhat are excited about theirs—they have been told to do a movie review.

Launched on October 2, 2006, Red Light Despatch serves as a mouthpiece for women who are brought together by Apne Aap, an NGO that works for sex workers. The magazine got its registration only last month and held its first editorial meeting after the registration on June 26.

“Women, girls and men trapped in prostitution from the red-light areas of Bihar, Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal write for the Despatch. They write for each other and share stories of their dreams, struggles and hopes,” explains Ruchira Gupta, a former journalist who founded Apne Aap and who also edits the magazine. “Without a registration, the girls would mostly write on their personal experiences. But now they can work like mainstream reporters and we can get the magazine printed,” she says.

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