What does it take to have sex? Love, fun, marriage, 50 rupees? The skin near his crotch sweats as his gaze takes in her cleavage; he signals at her to walk with him. She asks him how much money is left in his pocket to spend here. It takes a man a stressful day, a better life, and a family to come into the arms of a brothel at night. He raises his voice, so does she. He glares at her, so does she. He has scars from a past accident, so does she, but hers are for a life that has become an accident.

Kamathipura, one of the most famous red-light areas in India, boils in the periphery of Mumbai. As the sun goes down, light glimmers in the shanty lanes. Houses are crammed one over another. Kamathipura is not white, as opposed to Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi. It is red, pink, yellow, purple. As colourful as it can be. Groomed like a bride, it walks the whole night and settles in dust as the morning rays touch its roads. Those smiles and that laughter are ashen with the prim expression that the master wears as he walks, owing to his high-prestige job. Is he to take the onus of what he did? But that is the funny thing; you are relieved of your karma here.

‘‘Bhagwan Indra ke bhi Apsara thi or ye toh fir bhi randi hai,’’said Kalind Rajput, who had come to visit Mumbai with his friends. He made sure he carried a camera to relive the moments back home.

She is young, she is old; her skin still thirsts for love. These women belong to no family, no family belongs to them, and yet in this world of women, boys take birth.

Vandan, 46, from Madhya Pradesh, was groped in a truck on a highway. While the engine roared, she was raped by three men. The truck reached Mumbai. “My whole body reeked of their touch. It happened multiple times.” The city had been vandalised in the blast of 1991, so she thought the city couldn’t handle another. “I felt my insides rupture for the first time then,” she says, and wraps herself in a tight saree. She curls a mascara stick on her lashes and confidently dazzles the street. “I am quite in demand here; at least now no one can associate the word ‘rape’ with me.”

A small temple stands in the middle of the locality. The pulses of the Azaan can also be heard. Barkha, 20, masks herself as she sits on a scooter on the opening of the 12th alley, bowing her head before starting her evening. She was forcefully wed at the age of 14 in her native place, Kolkata. Her husband, a drunkard, decimated her dignity and left her to rot. A pimp, promising a good life, deported her to Kamathipura. On November 19, a day before the Maharashtra Assembly election, she was called to the police station along with many others. “They need to make records. They try to identify who is Bangladeshi and who is not. We are to pay 1,500 every month now for our protection,” she said with a faint smile.

After the completion of the Hornby Vellard project, which brought seven islands together to form Mumbai, several low-lying regions came into existence. Kamathipura, being one of them, got its name from the influx of labourers known as ‘Kamathis’ in 1795. The city’s most notable colonial buildings—from the BMC building to CST station—were constructed by contractors who lived in the settlement in the late 70s. Originally known as Laal Baazar, Kamathipura soon entangled with the entertainment of the dockyard. Pilots were often led down the lane where ladies would offer them a fleeting taste of pleasure. Being the dockyard of major imports, it was full of people from different diasporas then, especially the Chinese. In fact, a small China operated on the diagonal alleys of Kamathipura. These people, who were shipped from Hong Kong, worked as dentists. However, after the Sino-India war in 1962, the whole community was ransacked.

It was the wave of Covid-19 which brought in the Hijra community’s dominance in the locality which further clustered the financial conditions and added to the need for redevelopment. The Kamathipura redevelopment project received a significant boost on July 2, 2024, as the state government outlined the benefits homeowners will receive from the facelift. The government approved offering a 500-square-foot flat to each owner of a 50-square-metre (539-square-foot) plot in the area. Owners of tenements on plots ranging from 51 to 100 square metres will be entitled to two 50-square-foot flats, while those with plots between 151 and 200 square metres will be eligible for four 500-square-foot flats, and so on. The state Housing Department has issued an official order detailing these provisions. This comes in the wake of the Dharavi Redevelopment Project being in turmoil.

“It has the scope for eroding prostitution here, but first, they will erode the population,” Abul Razak, a resident of Kamathipura, said. He has been working for the rights of sex workers for over two decades now. “One fish can pollute the whole pond. No society will accommodate them.” He stood near Cafe Dinar, pointing at a dingy alley. “I do agree that there are many who come here willingly, but what is that kind of will? It is not like they are being given sacks of money for doing so.”

The alley was a haven for Sharmila, who lived on the second floor of a crammed building. Kamathipura is also home to a thriving jeans dyeing industry and hosts the weekly Dedh Galli shoe market. But adjacent are sounds, noises, screams, because yes, there are brothels still. “I came from Bengal when I was 24 and didn’t go back. Every month I send around 1,000 to 2,000 rupees back home.” She sat opposite a withered, beaten door. The bulb overhead flickered twice when it creaked open, offering a brief glimpse of the interior. The corridor inside was lined with beds that resembled railway sleeper seats, each one curtained off on both sides. “I want someone who can love me,” she said, while contemplating what she wanted from the life that remained.

Even after being the ritualistic boiling point for Namdeo Dhasal’s Dalit Panthers, Kamathipura remained to foster the stories of prostitution. The infamous Pathan Gang, which ran money-lending and gambling rackets and was involved in contract killings, extortions, and kidnappings throughout the late 90s, also had its roots in Kamathipura. Many NGOs work in close vicinity to let the children survive and not drown in the lanes of brothels, but that is a daunting task. It is through Sadat Hasan Manto’s stories that the emotions which lurk in the air find a voice. He settled into a chawl in Arba Gali, Grant Road, in 1936, paying nine rupees and eight annas a month “for a room that didn’t have water or electricity.” It was colourful—his writings include descriptions of insects and rats so big they scared the cats. It was his specific interest in the fabric of Kamathipura that he expressed in his writings while he sat in Saarvi Café at Nagpada Junction. The same place where all the women were called by the police to know under which country’s jurisdiction they were prostituting!

As Manto would have said, it takes aeons to build a red-light area and seconds to malign the characters of ‘tawaifs’. Beyond the shackles of ‘Badnam gali’, there are dreams that have been habituated to the cages. One such person is 52-year-old Sheena from Nepal. “I was told that we are going to Darjeeling. I was just 12. I only wanted to see the tea gardens. God was gracious enough to help me get out of here. I got married and had kids, but then when my husband died, I came back to the place where I had spent my childhood.”

(This appeared in the print as 'The Cost of Living, The Price of Loving')