Nalini’s Story

Despite mixed reactions from various circles, Njan, Laingikatozhilaali went through six editions and sold 13,000 copies in 100 days. She later withdrew the first version of the memoir and rewrote it. Today, as Westland Books brings us J. Devika’s English translation of the memoir, Jameela shares space on the webpage of Kerala-based DC Literary Agency with such eminent names as O.V. Vijayan, Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Mukundan himself, and Kamala Das. In the ’70s Das caused a furore by making audible the voice of women’s sexuality; Jameela speaks as a sex worker, a description deliberately defined by her profession.

She also speaks as a daughter, wife, mother and friend; and as a public figure, with a name and a face, rather than remaining anonymous. The photograph on the back cover shows a pleasant, firm and faintly smiling face — this is the tone of the memoir as well. In brisk and matter-of-fact sentences filled with nouns and verbs rather than adjectives, Jameela shares her life story. Her first memory is that of her 90-year-old grandmother crawling towards her grandchildren on all fours, a factor that must have contributed to Jameela’s deep fear of helplessness and victimhood, and her strong need for independence. Her communist father, casteist and patriarchal at home, would often beat his wife. Pulled out of school after Class III, nine-year-old Jameela begins to work in a clay mine; at the age of 18, thrown out of the family home by her tyrannical father, she gets married. This marriage lasts only three years; after the death of her husband, Jameela is compelled to begin sex work in order to find Rs 5 a day needed to provide for her two children and her mother-in-law.

Her first client is a police officer; but with the beatings that follow in the police station the next morning, she experiences the double standards of life as a sex worker. These include gold-plated mangalsutras, hotel check-ins under married names, and clients who want to be treated like husbands, with the sex workers even carrying their suitcases for them. After two more marriages and with two more daughters, Jameela finds herself back in the profession — but this time with a house of her own in Kozhikode’s Bangladesh Colony, and, at least to some extent, on her own terms. She joins an organisation of sex workers, speaks out in public, and makes documentaries on their lives.

The book is not a salacious account of sexual exploits — even while writing of an encounter with a tantric, she only says that he wanted “the standard sort of sex” — nor is it a story of victimhood. Jameela is firm about her need for dignity, and about setting the rules: “I wouldn’t wiggle my hips or arms to catch anyone”. Yet, beneath the calm surface of the prose, there is a quiet anger against the hypocrisy of a system that criminalises sex work and punishes the sex worker while letting off the client; against the new misogyny that comes masked as moral outrage against sex workers; and against the so-called “rehabilitation” that does not recognise that sex workers also have families, personal lives and struggles that are as real as anyone else’s. A powerful, courageous memoir.