India in Love Read online

  Man: Where do you live?

  Me: Near Connaught Place.

  Man: We can’t do home service. But we can offer a five-star hotel.

  Me: Which hotel?

  Man: Where are you calling from? (Suspiciously.)

  Me: Near CP, I found the ad in the newspaper.

  Man: When do you want the girl?

  Me: Now.

  Suddenly, apropos of nothing, the man got nervous.

  Man: Please don’t call this number. (In a rush.)

  He hung up the phone. I dialled again.

  Me: Why did you hang up the phone? I just saw the ad in the newspaper and want service!

  Man: Woman, right? (With hesitation.)

  Me: Yes.

  Man: You will have to come to (he mentioned the name of a five-star hotel). I have a girl there.

  Me: What is the price?

  Man: 10,000.

  Me: Does this include the hotel room?

  Man: Yes.

  Me: Okay, I want a choice of girls though.

  Man: I will give you a choice of girls, just reach the hotel and call me.

  Me: I will reach in thirty minutes.

  Man: Are you alone?

  Me: No, there is a friend with me.

  Pause.

  Me: Hello?

  Man: Boy or girl?

  Me: Boy. (Pause.) He is my boyfriend.

  Man: (Doubtfully.) Okay, reach (the hotel).

  Thirty minutes later, outside the hotel, I SMSed the man. I did not receive a reply, so I called him.

  Me: I am outside the hotel. Where should I meet you?

  The man sounded nervous and hesitant. I heard a susurrus of sounds on the line.

  Man: Come to (he mentions the name of another hotel), CP, Inner Circle.

  Me: (I am beginning to get irritated.) Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I have been waiting here.

  Man: Just come to (the hotel).

  Me: (Sigh.) I will be there in five minutes.

  I get to the hotel in Connaught Place.

  Me: I have reached the hotel.

  Man: Where are you? Near the pharmacy?

  Me: Yes.

  Man: Are you alone?

  Me: No, I have a friend with me.

  Man: Only one friend, right?

  Me: Yes.

  Man: Go inside and wait on the first floor.

  Me: Okay.

  The largest commercial hub of New Delhi by day, at night, Connaught Place, the circular arcade that lies at the heart of Delhi linking the old city with the new, has a grimy, eerie air. The detritus of the millions of people who work here is evident—and peddlers, scavengers and beggars dominate the trash-filled alleys. I walk down a stained corridor lined with cramped shops that spill on to the footpaths and enter a lift to the hotel. The elevator opens up into a surprisingly spacious and well-appointed hotel lobby.

  Vinayak has insisted on coming with me on this sting operation. I allow him to come because it adds more credibility to my story. After my experience in GB Road, I hope I will be looked upon with less suspicion if I present myself as one half of a couple. Single men walk in and out of the hotel freely, some taking a seat in the lobby area. A stout man dressed in office attire comes and sits next to me, popping open his laptop. Every time an inconspicuous, middle-aged Indian man emerges from the corridor, I can’t help but wonder if these men are here for the ‘massage service’. The hotel staff don’t seem to wonder as much as I do; they don’t give us, or anyone else, a second glance.

  Five SMSs, four phone calls, and thirty minutes later, the pimp asks me to come to the second floor. We take the elevator up, and wait in the narrow second-floor lobby, across from a restaurant. I expect the pimp to emerge from the restaurant, after all it is dinnertime, but after keeping us waiting for another twenty minutes, the pimp sends me an SMS asking me to go to Room 240. The hour-long wait at the hotel has led to a build-up of anxiety, nervousness, and also excitement. Vinayak and I look at each other, hold hands, and ring the doorbell.

  The door is opened by a petite girl with Mongoloid features, her long, greasy hair streaked with blond highlights. She has a charming, almost beatific face and smiles at us sweetly. She is wearing a cheap black dress with gaudy silver embellishments and a roughed up pair of high heels. She is clutching a high-tech mobile phone to her heart. This girl is as visibly discomposed as Vinayak and I.

  We walk into the room, and realize that we are not the first visitors to Room 240 today. The room is in a mess, the bed unmade, the sheets twisted out of place and the pillows scattered on the floor. On the side table, two half-empty bottles of Kingfisher beer sit next to a bowl of peanuts. The smell of cigarettes and stale perfume pervades the room, and I spot, next to the sofa where Vinayak and I have taken a seat, a shiny used condom lying on the floor like the chrysalis of an insect.

  I have asked Vinayak to do the talking, thinking it would appear more natural coming from a man, but the poor man has been rendered speechless by the entire scene, so I am compelled to take over. I am not sure how to broach the subject and, it seems, neither is she. We stare at each other, and then I break the awkward silence with a natural first question.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Nita,’ she says with a nervous smile.

  ‘Hello, Nita, where are you from?’

  ‘I am from Darjeeling.’

  Nita’s phone rings. The pimp is on the line. She hands the phone to me.

  ‘Is she okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Uh, no, you had promised me a choice. Where are the other girls?’ I ask.

  ‘Hold on,’ he says, before hanging up abruptly.

  I hand the phone back to Nita.

  Moments later, we hear a knock on the door. Two plump, fair-skinned girls walk in. One has a young face, though she looks older because she is dressed in a sari. She could easily be an office receptionist somewhere, with her neat, parted, shoulder-length hair, and a sari of subdued colours tied high on her waist, the sleeves of her blouse long. With her is another flinty-faced young woman wearing a colourful, expensive looking salwaar-kameez, which is tight around her large breasts. The three girls whisper amongst themselves, and then the one in the sari takes charge.

  ‘You want group sex?’ she asks in a commanding tone, speaking perfect English.

  Vinayak and I look at each other, taken aback.

  ‘Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, snuggling close to Vinayak, wrapping my arms around him.

  ‘Are you from Delhi?’ she asks me.

  ‘Yes, and you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, I am from Delhi. I am a computer engineer,’ she says confidently.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I ask.

  ‘Nita. Yours?’

  I think to myself that they are all named Nita, and then I remember from the newspaper ad that this is after all ‘Nita Escort Service’.

  ‘I am Ira, and he is Vinayak,’ I say.

  ‘You want sex with all of us?’ she asks, pointing to the two other girls who stand in the corner.

  Vinayak and I look at each other. He replies, finally finding his voice. ‘No, just one.’

  ‘Okay, you can pay in advance,’ she says, placing her stylish black leather purse on the bed.

  ‘How much do I have to pay you?’ I ask.

  ‘How much did you speak for?’

  During my conversation, I observe that the first Nita has locked herself in the bathroom, and I hear her speaking frantically on the phone.

  ‘10,000,’ I reply.

  Both girls look at each other. ‘Okay, let me check,’ she says.

  Now there is mass confusion in the room. All three girls are speaking in hurried, frantic whispers to each other. They are walking around the room and bathroom, making calls from their cell phones. It looks like each girl has about three cell phones. I wonder if they suspect something. There have been a string of sting-operations by the media and police and the entire industry is enveloped in fear and suspici
on.

  Vinayak and I are frozen on the sofa. The original Nita spots the condom. She grabs a tissue from the bathroom, comes and picks it up. She goes back into the bathroom, and I hear the gurgling sound of the toilet flush. Without any warning, the two girls who had entered the room later leave, slamming the door shut behind them. The original Nita goes back into the bathroom. My phone rings; it is the pimp calling. ‘Get out of there right now! Right now!’ he yells, distraught. They are suspicious; I guess Vinayak and I are not their typical clientele.

  ‘Why? What happened?’ I ask.

  ‘Now. You have to leave. Unless you want the first girl.’

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘we want more choice.’

  ‘Are you willing to pay?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes!’ I say. ‘We are willing to pay well.’

  ‘Okay, do you want Russian?’ he asks, now sounding avaricious.

  ‘Okay, sure.’

  ‘Then go to the first floor. I’ll send you the room number… But leave this room,’ he says.

  Vinayak and I make our way out. Nita stands in the doorway. I ask her for her number.

  She fidgets with her phone, clearly unwilling.

  In the wisest move he has made all evening, Vinayak takes out a 1,000 note from his wallet and hands it to her.

  She dictates her number. I note it down and give her a missed call, making sure that her phone rings.

  We find ourselves waiting once again, this time at the bar. Vinayak desperately needs a drink. I call the pimp.

  He tells me tersely, ‘Russian left. You can come tomorrow,’ and hangs up the phone.

  As we walk out of the hotel, I wonder if the Russian on the first floor ever existed or if this had been a ploy to get us out of the room. Despite this setback I consider our mission successful now that I have Nita No. 1’s number.

  ♦

  After much persuasion and for the price of 3,000 ‘Nita’ agrees to meet me for a coffee at Connaught Place. She arrives with a short Northeastern man with a Mohawk and messy stubble. He’s wearing a Yankees baseball cap yanked sideways on his head. He takes a seat a safe distance away from us. Nita is beautiful. Her skin is a flawless gold, her nose a perfect little button, her eyes chocolate brown, accentuated with a 3D-effect because of the coloured contact lenses she wears. She looks fresh and pretty in a pink t-shirt and pink velour sweatpants. She carries a designer purse. She smiles, but I can tell she is nervous. I am not sure how to break the ice. I look at my outfit, my sartorial standard—unfashionable kurta with loose pajamas. Maybe it would be a good idea to dress less like a journalist for these meetings. I ask her to order something and she orders a cold coffee.

  Conversation with Nita is painful, I feel like I am performing arduous surgery. Nita is not exactly forthcoming, and I know that if I probe aggressively, I will scare her away. Gently and patiently, with just the right amount of persuasion, I steer the conversation in the right direction. Nita’s family lives in Darjeeling. Before she came to Delhi to study fashion, her life-long passion, Nita worked in her family’s restaurant. She got into the sex trade when she was introduced to it by a fellow student. She likes the pulse of living in a big city, because living in Darjeeling ‘got very boring’. She has quit fashion school, she doesn’t say why, and at the moment she is looking for a job, hoping to find work in fashion. Nita doesn’t mind sex work. It allows her to earn well and she says that sometimes it can even be fun. She has the right to choose her clients and also the right to say no. She gets paid 5,000 for one ‘shot’, plus the tips that her clients leave her. She lives in an apartment in South Delhi with her friend, the man she has brought along with her. He is also from Darjeeling and is looking for a job.

  Girls from the Northeast make up a large part of the sex trade. This is partly because of the abominable economic situation and the soaring unemployment in these states, and because of the popularity of Northeastern girls in the sex trade. Indian men prefer Northeastern girls because they appear to them to be more ‘exotic’. Nita tells me that many of the women in her trade have migrated from other states to the capital because their hometowns are ‘boring’. Many of these women have other jobs, some of them even have families. She knows housewives who care for their husbands and families by day, but do sex work at night for the extra cash.

  Nita tells me that she barely meets the lily-livered pimps like the one I spoke to on the phone, but she feels safer when she works with them, because they can step in if things go wrong. She collects the cash from the client (an amount fixed by the pimp) and a portion is collected from her by a courier and delivered to the pimp. The cut she receives depends on the type of arrangement she has with the pimp. If she is salaried, the entire amount is taken by the pimp. If she is a ‘freelancer’ then she keeps 50 per cent of the money received.

  I ask her if she is afraid of getting caught. For a second she looks alarmed and, for the briefest moment, I see vulnerability on her face. She admits that sometimes she is. An infamous pimp has recently been arrested, and everyone in the industry is scared of a crackdown. She is careful about how she conducts her work, and services only regular clients. The pimps are also extra careful because they are the ones who suffer the most if caught. I ask her how long she will stay in the trade. She tells me, throwing a quick glance at the man she has walked in with, that she will do sex work only till she gets married.

  When the promised hour of our chat is up, I place 3,000 on the table. Nita looks at the money and then shakes her head. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, pushing the money towards me. I urge her to take the money. I tell her that it is part of our deal; it is what we had agreed on.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says and then adds, ‘you are my friend.’

  She gets up, motioning to her companion. Though it is a sunless, grey afternoon, she puts on a pair of sunglasses that cover most of her face, and walks quickly out of the coffee shop.

  ♦

  Nita is the new face of the Indian sex industry, even as the old face—the destitute prostitute of GB Road persists. As the sexual landscape of India changes, prostitution is changing too, stimulated by economic growth, growing consumerism, and greater disposable income amongst the middle class. In a 2006 survey, 58 per cent of Delhi men (urban, middle-class) surveyed said that they had solicited sex workers.79 These numbers are bolstered by a 2011 survey, in which 54 per cent of Delhi-ites in the same class segment said they had lost count of the number of times they had paid for sex.80 Prostitution is just as widespread in other metros in India. According to police officials, things are going out of control in cities like Bangalore and Pune, where 54 per cent of male residents have said that they have had sex with prostitutes.81 The takers for this ‘new’ kind of prostitution are men, typically middle-class and above, who are comfortable paying between 5000-10,000 for young, attractive and well-groomed prostitutes, girls like Nita, who have come to the city to find their fortunes. Some are runaways from conservative households, others are students, others have jobs in coffee shops and beauty parlours, and others are housewives moonlighting as prostitutes to supplement their income and their lifestyles.

  Though the new form of prostitution is on the rise, the sex trade is not just an easy way for pretty young things to make money, for the older, squalid, exploitative version still exists. According to New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof who investigated prostitution in Indian brothels, ‘India probably has more modern slaves than any country in the world. It has millions of women and girls in its brothels, often held captive for their first few years until they grow resigned to their fate. India’s brothels are also unusually violent, with ferocious beatings common and pimps sometimes even killing girls who are uncooperative.’82

  Kristof’s findings are further buttressed by findings of the Ministry of Women and Child Development—India has nearly 2.5 million prostitutes in nearly 300,000 brothels in 1,100 red-light areas across the country. Around 1.2 million children are involved in prostitution in India, and the trafficking of gir
ls from Nepal to India is one of the busiest sex slave trafficking routes in the world, with anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 Nepali women and girls trafficked to India every year.83 Another survey conducted by the Indian Health Organization in a red light area of Mumbai shows double the government figure of 10,000 trafficked girls–with over 20,000 Nepali girls (between the ages of nine and twenty) in Mumbai brothels alone.84 The situation within India is dire too, and there are increasing numbers of females from Northeastern states and Orissa who are trafficked and forced to marry men in states like Haryana and Punjab which have low female-to-male child sex ratios.85

  SIN CITY

  ‘In this city, anyone can be a prostitute—the girl next door, the married wife, even you,’ says Kailash Chand, the fresh-faced sub-inspector responsible for the capture of two of Delhi’s most notorious sex racketeers—Ichadhari Baba and Sonu Punjaban. I’ve been trying to get hold of Chand for days and have finally managed to track him down to his current posting at the Mehrauli Police Station. Till just a few years ago, Mehrauli, on the outskirts of Delhi, was a large village. Today, while traces of the village still exist, much of the area has been rezoned and developed into luxury malls, designer stores, posh nightclubs and bars. Mehrauli is also at the centre of a complex prostitution racket.

  I meet Chand on the night of Dussehra, or Vijayadashami, the festival that celebrates the slaying of the demon Ravana by Lord Rama. Peeping at me through the window of the police station, against the silhouette of the historical Qutab Minar, is a giant fifty-foot-tall effigy of Ravana that has just been set on fire. Outside in the smoggy evening, there is a continuous eruption of fireworks that sound like gunshots. The crowds cheer rapturously as the flames crawl up Ravana’s body; dark fumes creep in through the window.

  ‘This mattress,’ says Chand, proudly pointing to the grimy mattress that I sit on, ‘is where Ichadhari Baba spent ten days. I became good friends with him and he told me his story.’

  One foggy February morning, Kailash Chand was sent to recover an anonymous, unclaimed corpse—cause of death unknown. The post-mortem of the dead man revealed a ball of heroin lodged in his body. Using mules is a standard technique to smuggle heroin, but in this particular instance it had backfired, and the heroin had spilt into the man’s organs, killing him. The cell phone of the dead man revealed Ichadhari Baba’s number on the list of recently dialled calls, and it was suspected that the pimp may have been involved with this transaction.