Mars World

I recently watched a film titled “Born Into Brothels”, directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman. I was skeptical about watching a documentary that was based in the Calcutta’s red light district, thinking that the film would be the run-of-the-mill movie about India’s poverty and destitution in the eyes of the Western world. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the filmmaker Zana Briski chose to focus more on the small glimmer of hope in the area: the children of the sex workers.

According to the synopsis given at imdb.com, the film looks at Zana holding a special photography workshop for a group of children living in Calcutta’s red light district and their journey to a better life through their photographs. One major result is the Kids with Cameras non-profit organization and winning Best Documentary at the 2004 Oscars.

Let me get into a brief history of prostitution in India first. Before India became an independent country in 1947, sex workers were not prostitutes in the modern sense. They were courtesans, or tawaifs, who lived in palaces and were mistresses to lords and nobles. They mainly taught adab, or etiquette, to men. They sometimes entertained men and perhaps slept with them too, but it was up to their discretion. In some ways, these courtesans were similar to the Japanese geishas.

However, post-independence India ran into the turmoil of an independent nation and its initial adjustment problems, as was seen during the violent and unstable 60’s and 70’s. This resulted in industrialization, urbanization, overcrowding and ultimately, unemployment. Most women coming in from the rural areas were not educated beyond high school, sometimes less; they had fewer job opportunities and thus went into prostitution to survive. The 80’s brought in a lot of dancing bars, where women would dance on a stage ‘showcasing’ themselves, later entertaining clients for money. This formed most of the red light districts of modern India.

I felt that the film looked at the issue of prostitution and the children of sex workers in a humane way. Although prostitution isn’t the way to go and its illegal in India and most of the world, the film portrayed the sex workers and children as human beings – they too have their ups and downs. In comparison, it neither romanticized the sex workers nor was bitter about them, unlike most recent Bollywood films such as “Chameli”, “Devdas” (right) or “Chandni Bar”.

While “Devdas” was a periodic piece set in the pre-independence India (where a prostitute was known as a courtesan), “Chameli” and “Chandni Bar” are set in more recent times. Madhuri Dixit, who plays the courtesan Chandramukhi in “Devdas” is shown as a courtesan with a heart of gold; Kareena Kapoor, (left) who plays Chameli in “Chameli”, a cynical prostitute with redeeming qualities;Tabu, (right) who plays Mumtaz in “Chandni Bar”, a reluctant sex worker trying to earn enough for her family . In each of these films, especially “Chameli” and “Chandni Bar”, the female lead playing the prostitute still has aesthetic appeal: they look clean and ‘virginal’ despite the rugged life they try to portray.