“Also,” she continued, “unlike other women, we can inherit our father’s property. No one ever dares curse us. And when we die, the Brahmins give us a special cremation ceremony.”
We stepped over a dog, sleeping, half in, half out of an open sewer.
“You see, we are not like the ordinary whores,” said Rani, as we finally approached her house. “We have some dignity. We don’t pick people up from the side of roads. We don’t go behind bushes or anything like that. We spend time with our clients and talk to them. We are always decently dressed—always wear good silk saris. Never t-shirts or those miniskirts the women wear in Bombay.”
We had arrived at her door now. Outside, suspended on the wall of the house, was a small cubby-hole stall selling cigarettes and paan. Here sat Rani Bai’s younger sister, squatting down and handing out individual beedis and cigarettes to passers-by. The sisters greeted each other, and I was formally introduced. As Rani led the way in, she continued:
“You see, we live together as a community and this gives us some protection. If any client tries to burn us with a cigarette, or tries to force himself on us without wearing a condom, we can shout and everyone comes running.”
Inside, in contrast to the street, everything was immaculately clean. The space inside was divided in two by a large cupboard which almost touched the shack’s roof. The front half of the room was dominated by the large bed where Rani plied her trade. To one side, on a shelf, were several calendar pictures of the goddess. At the back half of the room was a second bed—the one Rani slept in. Here were all her beautifully clean pots and pans, stacked neatly in racks, and below was her kerosene burner for cooking. Above all these, on a cupboard, were a large mirror and Rani’s family photos: pictures of her son and her old boyfriend—a handsome man with a Bollywood-film-star moustache and dark glasses. Beside that were small, passport-sized shots of her two dead daughters. Both were pretty girls, shot smiling when they were around twelve or thirteen, full of youth and hope.
Rani took the photos from my hand and replaced them on the cupboard. Then she led me back to the front half of the room and indicated that I should sit on the bed. Perhaps prompted by the association, I asked her whether her auspicious status made any difference to her clients when they came to be entertained here.
“No,” she said. “There is no devotional feeling in bed. Fucking is fucking. There I am just another woman. Just another whore.”
“And do you feel safe from the disease here?” I asked. “Are you confident that the condoms can protect you?”
“No,” she said. “There is always fear. We know that even if you persuade all your clients to wear a condom, one broken one can infect us. And once we are infected there is no cure. We will die—if not today, then tomorrow.”
She paused. “You see, I know what it’s like. I watched both my daughters die, as well as at least six of my friends. I nursed many of them. Some lost their hair. Some had skin diseases. Some just became very, very thin and wasted away. One or two of the most beautiful girls became so repulsive that even I did not want to touch them.”
She shivered, almost imperceptibly. “Of course we feel very scared,” she said. “But we must continue this work if we are to eat. We have a lot of misery to bear. But that is our tradition. That is our karma. We try to show our happy side to the clients to keep attracting them, and put all our efforts into doing a good job.”
“So do you have any hopes for the future?”
“I am saving,” she said. “As I told you, I have bought a little land, and one day I hope if I can get some more buffaloes and a few goats, maybe I can save enough to retire there and live by selling the milk and curds. Yellamma will look after me.”
“You know that?”
“Of course. If it wasn’t for her, how could an illiterate woman like me earn Rs 2,000 in a day? Yellamma is a very practical goddess. I feel she is very near. She is with us in good times and bad.”
We parted soon after, and I drove back to Belgaum. Later, I asked one of the project managers of the NGO working with the devadasis about AIDS and how their families reacted to infection.
“It’s terrible,” she said. “The families are happy to live off them and use the money they earn. But as soon as they become infected, or at least become bedridden and sick, they are just dumped in a ditch—sometimes literally. Just abandoned. We had a case before Christmas with one girl. She was taken to a private hospital in Bijapur after she had complained of severe headaches. The hospital ran some tests and found she was HIV-positive and on top of that had a brain tumour. She began treatment, but her family checked her out because of the expense and took her home. When we tried to find her, the family gave several conflicting accounts of where she was—different family members said she was in different hospitals. In fact, she had been taken home, thrown in a corner and left to starve to death. We found her in a semi-comatose state, completely untended by the same family members she had been supporting for years. She wasn’t even being given water. We took her straight back to the hospital ourselves, but it was too late. She died two weeks later.”