IndiaOn

News >> Browse Articles >> IndiaOn News

Sex and The Sari

In March I travelled to coastal Andhra Pradesh, to the delta region of the Godavari river. On the streets of a village we drove through, I noticed an overabundance of beds. Beds being delivered, new old beds, makeshift stage set beds, cheap beds being varnished in the sun, mattresses in the dust. Around this strangeness of beds proliferating, village life seemed as benign as Narayan’s Malgudi stories that had created my idea of what it meant to be Indian in this world, in the sweetest incarnation possible. Little shops for cigarettes and sweets; cows wandering; men riding cycles on their way to the banana market by the river’s edge, bananas tied to the handlebars, their colour macaw shocking-green and yellow, green and yellow, the greenest green and the yellowiest yellow. Sound of water pouring into pails, out of pails. A jeep going by with some policemen poking their heads out. This world was normal.

Except it was really entirely something else.

The women getting children ready in tiny shorts and mini-ties on elastic bands were all sex workers. The children with their homework were the children of men who stayed five minutes for a “shot”. The cycle rickshaw men were pimps who’d found extra business when auto rickshaws drove down their income, the gas station men were also pimps, and so were the dhaba men. A 20 per cent or 30 per cent cut. The lorry drivers, the coolies were clients. Others in the street were “brokers”, some 300 of them. Men coming back with groceries were “temporary husbands”. The old lady at her gate was a brothel madam, haggling over the price of girls she was buying from desperately poor parents. Coloured Christmas stars over bungalows revealed a missionary drive to save the fallen. The policemen were slowing down, hoping to catch someone soliciting. They’d let her go again in exchange for free sex.

Say “Peddapuram”, and every man grins. This is a village of “high-class” sex workers from the Kalavanthalu subcaste, hereditary courtesans and temple dancers famous for their elegant beauty. Almost every family is involved in the trade.

They trace their lineage from the days when they were protected by royalty, priests and landowners, all the way downhill to a franker prostitution as patronage crumbled in a modernising India of another shade of morality. “There is still a lot of money in this dhanda (business).” The price of a high-class sex worker in Peddapuram: all the way from Rs 200 ($5) a shot, and Rs 1,500 ($37) for a night, to Rs 1,000 ($25) a shot, Rs 10,000 ($250) for a night; depending on beauty, fairness of skin. “Shot” always said in English, with movie swagger. All ages were sought after, from teenagers to “auntys”, for younger men feel safer with “auntys”, explained a sex worker. And, guffawing hard: “Those policemen are smiling at you because they think maybe you’re a new girl with lipstick on especially for them.”

Andhra is red earth; chillies; virile moustaches – lush, verdant, moist and black – on every man’s face. A state famous for pickles and chutneys.

“And other hot stuff.” Frank humour of women with other women.

“It’s the chillies.” “No it is the music. The beat of the music.” “And who likes the sex?” asks one of the aid workers. “Any of you girls?” “She! She! She! She does!” they point at one woman with frustrated, accusing faces.

The woman begins shouting, “Why do you all say that? I don’t.”

“Yes, you do! Admit it.”

At the moment it seems it will break out into a bitter row, the accused begins to laugh and cover her mouth, and they all convulse into giggles while still attempting to maintain anguished and stern expressions.

The statistics indicate Andhra Pradesh is at the top of the list in people having multiple sexual partners. In rural Andhra Pradesh, 24 per cent of men and 9 per cent of women claim to indulge themselves beyond the restrictive parameters of marriage, up from the meagre national average of 10 per cent of men and 2 per cent of women. But, I wondered if, more than titillation, Peddapuram proffered home comforts. I had imagined stripy tiger sheets, spooky and suggestive lighting, mirrors in strange places, women posturing with bottoms and breasts first – my naiveté? But there wasn’t the slightest attempt at titillation or mystery. The women were in conservative sari blouses, almost no makeup, gold and diamond nose rings and earrings in traditional flower shapes. Peddapuram strove to provide simple middle-class contentment on the road.

“We are famous because we are the descendants of courtesans and royalty, so we have that poise, those fine looks,” the Kalavanthalu women say.

“No special tricks?”

“No tricks. We are known for our good manners. We treat a man like a king. We’ll cook non veg, we’ll give oil massages and baths. We turn on the fan. The men bring the whiskey, the McDougal’s – but everything else we provide, and when they leave we beg, ‘Don’t go, please don’t, oh, don’t go, oh…’ – we do all of that play-acting. We spoil them.”

Inside a brothel so high class, they say film stars and even Americans go there, was the stuffiness of a middle-class home: melamine; fridge; food smells; cabinets full of plastic flowers and china dolls; bed done up in pink with a poster of the Sydney Harbour over it. The only odd thing was that, for privacy, sheets printed with flowers and zebras had been tied across the grill gates, blocking anyone attempting to peep into the compound. The brothel owner, like a prosperous and overly mannered housewife, large tummy spilling over her sari. “Don’t even call them sex workers, don’t mention prostitution here,” I was warned. Her parents were oriented towards each other in the manner of people who’d been married most of their lives, and were finishing lunch thalis of rice.

---