I had an opportunity of spending the weekend in Pune; me & my colleague. For the past 4 days we had been loafing around the locality where we were staying and found that Pune had graduated into to highly cosmopolitan lifestyle.
Of course when its 2 boys roaming around the main attraction would be the babes, and Pune offered plenty of them. That too of good quality. We could see couples loitering on the streets close to midnight, attractive clothing.. That was something unusual for a country like India.
We wanted more. Someone suggested MG Road. We went there and got disappointed. It was nothing better than the MG road of Bangalore. The other option suggested to us was Laxmi Road for shopping with a ‘visit to the parallel road, Budhwarpet ;-)’
Boys are not into shopping. Not even window shopping like girls. We asked the autowala to take us to Laxmi road.
“Where on Laxmi road?”
“Near Budhwarpet”
As if he had understood what we exactly wanted he stopped in the beginning of the lane. The moment we got down, a petty-shopwala came out of his stall asking what we wanted. A second’s glance at his shop showed condoms- plenty of them; on the shelves, hanging on the door, in boxes, everywhere.
We turned around. There was this plump lady sitting on the pavement. We could clearly see that she wore nothing under her blouse.
A pimp!
A girl in her late teens walked dangerously close to us. Tight jeans, high heels, a tight girlie top with a cellphone tucked into her blouse, powdered face, painted lips, totally decorated and ready for the ‘night-shift.’
We decided to take a walk down this busy lane. The lane had tumble-down one or two story buildings on either side. Clothes were hanging on the balconies & windows. At the door-step half a dozen girls of ages ranging from 15 to 40 yrs were sitting. Waiting. Hoping someone would like their company for the night. Hoping they can afford a square meal the next day.
There was money in the business. But there where expenses too: the pimps wanted their share, the ‘bed-usage-charges’, fashion accessories (there had to be something fancy for the guys to chose her out of the lot), health expenses… and maybe there were rogues wanting to snatch some dough as hafta.
Welcome to the industry!
Yes, it was an industry. I had seen prostitues before. You can't miss them on MG road of Bangalore. But they generally preferred standing alone. In this particular place there was upstream & downstream integration: There were shops selling condoms & cigarettes, there was a wine shop, the ramshackle buildings served as the lodges or places of pleasure, there was a police-station with a constable standing at the door (I suppose prostitution was legal on this street), all this complimenting the flesh trade.
As we walked further we could see that none of the girls had charm. Maybe the good-looking ones never came onto the streets. Maybe they dealt only through their ‘managers’. There were guys on motor-cycles bargaining, there was a constant two-way traffic of couples entering & exiting the building, there was a lady dressed for the occasion trying to pacify her crying infant, somebody was fighting with a shop-keeper as he was asking her not to wait for customers in from of his shop..
I had read about prostitution. I had seen movies on the subject. I had also seen lots of porn… But when the dark reality was unfolding in front of us we felt a shiver run through us. We could encounter anything on this lane – a police raid, a bunch of gangsters, eunuchs may pounce on you, a desperate girl might plead us to be taken…
We fastened our pace and headed for the exit thinking how fortunate we were to be born the way we are…
