“Eventually, I went to Bombay with my devadasi aunt, who had promised to show me the city. We went by train and I was very excited as it was my first visit. I did not know that I would be tricked again. But when we arrived, she took me straight in a rickshaw to a brothel. There she handed me over to the gharwalli—the madam—who was a friend of hers.
“The gharwalli was very sly. She did not force me, and she was very nice to me. She gave me lots of sweets and chocolates, and introduced me to the other girls. They were all dressed up in fine clothes and good saris with amazing jewellery on their wrists. I had never seen so much gold or so much silk! In fact, I had never seen anything like this on any woman in Belgaum. I thought this was the good life. The gharwalli offered my aunt Rs 2,000 for me, as I was very good-looking; but she did not ask me to do any dhanda [sex work] at first, and let me take my time. That first month, all I had to do was to help cook and clean the house, and I was happy with that. I liked Bombay. I ate fabulous biryani at the Sagar Hotel and once when I was in the streets I saw Amitabh Bachchan pass by in his car.
“Before long, a rich man came and saw me at my duties, cleaning the house. He refused all the other girls and demanded to have me. I was scared as he was very hefty, very fat. Much fatter even than you. So, instead, the gharwalli, who was very clever, sent some younger boys to me. They were lean and good-looking, and a nice match for me. Eventually, I agreed to sleep with one of them. They were very sensitive with me, not like the men here. We didn’t use a condom—I didn’t know about them in those days.
“Finally I agreed to take the big man. He offered Rs 5,000 for me, and the gharwalli gave me half—Rs 2,500! It would have taken me twenty years to earn that picking onions in my village, and I wasn’t even a virgin; I was already used goods. So I stayed, and even though I got some diseases that first year, I remained in that house for four years.
“By that time, I had had my first two children—a daughter and a son—and it was partly for them that I went back to my village. I lived with my mother, and for the past eighteen years I have done dhanda in our house in the village. After some time, I got a lover—a big man locally. He has a family—a wife, two sons and two daughters—and used to give me money. With him, I had a second daughter. He wanted more children by me, and I didn’t. That was how we eventually parted, even though we had been happy together.
“Because I am still good-looking, I have been lucky and I’ve made good money. I can still earn Rs 200 to 300 from a single client. It’s true that I sometimes feel this is not dignified work. There is a lot of insecurity. But I have looked after and married off my sister, I feed my mother and my son, and I now have eight acres of land with the money I have earned. On it, we keep four buffaloes and four bullocks. Thanks to the generosity of the goddess, I will escape this work when I have saved some more, and live by selling the milk and curd from the animals.”
It was only when I specifically asked about her daughters that Rani told me what had happened to them.
“One was a singer. She eloped when she was fourteen. She came back a year later, but no one would marry her. So she became a devadasi.”
“And the other?”
“The other had a skin disease and had white patches on her thighs. We went to many doctors but they could not cure it. Like her sister, she found it hard to get married, so I had to dedicate her too.”
“But how could you do that when you were so angry with your own mother for dedicating you? You just said yourself this is undignified work.”
“My daughters scolded me,” admitted Rani Bai, “just as I scolded my mother.”
“Didn’t you feel guilty?”
“I didn’t like it,” said Rani. “But there was no alternative.”
“So where are they now?” I asked. “Here? Or in Bombay?”
There was a long pause when I asked this. Then Rani said, simply, “I have lost them.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Both have passed away. Maybe it was because of some sins in a past life that the goddess cursed me in this way. One lost weight and died of a stomach disease. The other had fevers.”
Rani didn’t say so explicitly at the time, but I later learned that both her daughters had died of AIDS. One had died less than a year earlier, aged only fifteen. The other had died six months later, aged seventeen.
The devadasis stand in the direct line of one of the oldest professions in India. The word comes from Sanskrit: “deva” means god and “dasi” means “a female servant.” At the heart of the institution lies the idea of a woman entering for life the service of the god or goddess. The nature of that service and the name given to it have wide regional variations and have changed through time; only recently have most devadasis come to be working exclusively in the sex trade.