THE SLAUGHTERED DAUGHTERS


The books on life of sex workers have always ignited a strong urge in me to know more about the psychological bent of mind of persons inhabiting those places.  Whenever the thought of visiting such place brewed in my mind, the social taboos, my profession and social status always dampened my desires and pushed them to one remote corner of my heart.

But with the passage of time, this cornered desire got ignited and suitably fuelled too. The same social status which once restricted me to go there, advocated my stance. Amidst this dilemma I decided to visit a red light area in Delhi to know more about their compulsions, their psychology and attitude towards life. 

When the darkness struck I headed towards the target area. The girls, who appeared to be in their early teens, were standing in the corridors.  I spotted a girl of the age of my daughter going upstairs with the client. The scene which might have been common there jolted me deep inside so severely that I needed some moments to restore the courage and conviction to carry on the project. I felt deeply hurt, pondering over their life, their compulsions, and their mercilessly butchered emotions.
Smelling any client, one such daughter approached me. I gathered the required courage and with hammering heart beats asked her for just fifteen minutes of rendezvous. Finding everything contrary to her expectations, she hurled abuses at me. Just when I was ready to depart abandoning my planned programme, the same girl approached me again and demanded Rs. 500/.- After initial hesitation I mustered courage and handed over Rs 500 note and followed her ‘upstairs’. With each step upstairs my heart sank.


 I was asked to sit on a stool behind a dirty, stained curtain. I started the conversation with the words, “you are like a daughter to me as my daughter is also of your age”. Her eyes searched genuineness in me and my uttering. Her face depicted the pure, honest and virgin responses to my queries throughout this brief session. The face from which innocence stood snatched by compulsions and harsh, cruel realities of life echoed extreme displeasure with society, destiny and God. “We also have desires like other girls living in ‘your’ society, we also think about our parents and their love although we have not seen them ever; we also want to feel the warmth of genuine love and affection. All these thoughts travel through our minds when we are all alone, but we have learnt to bury them deep as we know this all is a distant dream at least in this life.”

The tears gently rolled down my cheeks as I saw and experienced vast ocean of desires and dreams in the desert of her eyes. By this time her eyes were also unsuccessfully trying to hold her tears back. Finding them uncontrollable she at once asked me to get away from that place. I was sitting like a culprit during this brief conversation lasting 15- 20 minutes. The guilt of being a very important part of this society and enjoying a very respectable and noble status in the set up was hurting me. As I got up to depart, I tried to give her another Rs 500 note which she denied, the way daughters usually do but perhaps taking note of my feelings or the ground realities of life, she was tempted to accept that.

I was gently descending the stairs, with my head bowed down under weight of my own thoughts about daughters who are abandoned by their parents and are thrown in the cruel hands of filthy society, the innocent girls who are abducted or kidnapped and are sold in such markets, or the daughters who commit mistakes of falling in wrong hands and finally are made to land in such places. I just prayed to God to bless all the daughters in this world with never ending smiles, with happiness of all kinds, with innocence and divinity of angles. But would this wish be accepted? God also seems helpless before the nefarious and stinking designs of human beings. The daughters are being slaughtered some times in the womb itself and sometimes are made or sent to be slaughtered everyday in such slaughter houses. I find myself a coward, a culprit being part of this hypocritical society or just a mute spectator nurturing the impotent rage in me and in the whole society.

 - DR. SANJEEV TRIKHA. Associate Professor

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