The red stains of betel juice, the sickening stench from the dimly lit alleys, songs from popular b-grade Hindi films trying to overdo the loud murmurs of several casually uttered abuses it all seemed to allure us with its inexpensive vulgarity.
Men with bulging bellies, torn ‘loongis’ and lecherous glints that made no attempt to conceal their lusty stares… and women with their freshly starched drapes barely covering their unrestrained bosoms , colored in the brightest of pink, gold and green, reeking of cheap perfumes and strings of ‘gajraas’ waiting to appease their sexual appetite…
Amidst the several objects of deal there stood the traders… the ones who had once been quibbled over too…the ‘pimps’ who seemed to enjoy, even revel at now being the perpetrators of the deed that seems horrendous to our suave eyes. It seemed to ease their agony, their slur; they are perhaps avenging themselves, making up for their long stolen pride… ‘Ijjat’ as commercial Hindi films often refer it as, defiling the term and the meaning, giving it a touch of contemptible humor. Human sentiments are often degenerated and commercialized and ‘ijjat’ fucked both figuratively and literally.
However, what certainly is surprising even shocking is the fashion in which these negotiations take place without the wink of an eye in an almost untailored style as if its not flesh and blood being purchased but mere items without sentiment or emotions…
The deliberate seduction captivates and defeats many with their loose hanging wrinkled moralities… the customer varies in size and shape… but all with one common impulse ‘inadequacy’… the desire to be desired…
‘jouno palli’… perhaps the only alcove where ‘jounango key keo hridoy bole bhul kore na’…where even the curse of impotency is eradicated by the orgasms that are so meticulously faked by the professionals to gratify their clients… rich and poor alike.
Where a human is no longer bound by logic or the morality imposed by the society and ‘jounota’ is not an object of disdain or contempt…


Dedicated to the sex workers around the world. Kudos to the professionals…who have had the guts to struggle against the atrocities inflicted upon them as also the stigma attached to their very entity.

written and sketched by ananya chatterjee