I met Zeenat at a meeting in Chennai four months ago. Her face still haunts me. In her mid-40s, she was attractive, with expressive eyes filled with a quiet intensity. We were having a discussion with a group of women in sex work on the kind of violence they faced.

Zeenat had many stories to tell of unspeakable violence, sexual abuse and exploitation. Her voice broke as she recounted how someone took her to Goa with the promise of a job. It turned out that she had to work as a barmaid, and often had to face repeated sexual assaults.

When she tried to quit, the bar owner asked her to return the Rs 25,000 he had paid for her. Golden goose under house arrest. She earned Rs 3,000; the agent who ‘sold’ her, Rs 25,000; and the bar owner, perhaps a couple of lakhs. Survival spirit unbroken, she managed to escape with the help of some money collected as tips.

She told me how her mother was her father’s second wife and how she herself ended up marrying her mother’s partner. How looking after her 27-year-old disabled son is her priority now: “otherwise God will not forgive me”. There is the pain of losing her elder son who refuses to be with her ever since he came to know that she makes a living selling sex.

How can someone’s life go so horribly wrong, I thought. How did Zeenat cope with rejection from all quarters: parents, husband, children. Do the men who come to the bar and who pay to have sex with her know the dark, untold side of her story? If they knew, would they act differently?

... contd.