Private prostitution is not illegal in India, but encouraging it, doing it publicly and owning a brothel is illegal. Despite the illegality of public prostitution, an India Today article noted that law enforcement is lax as places like GB Road are operating. School usually starts at 12 noon (since students don`t go to bed until about 2 a.m.) and lunch time is around 2 p.m. After that, classes last until 6pm and the day ends with a meditation and self-reflection session. Students helped clean the place before leaving. Older students also take responsibility for sending younger students back to their kothas before returning to theirs. In another corner of the same room, something similar is happening between another woman and four men. But she plays along. Everyone wants to be with her at the same time. "The room will not accommodate you all at the same time. One by one," she told them. From time to time, these girls beat someone to show that they rule brothels. Most guests behave in the rooms after observing such a reaction," says a young pimp who introduces himself as Roshan, perhaps not his real name.
He had followed this journalist and promised to take care of Indian and foreign girls between the ages of 16 and 18 before being informed of the real purpose of the visit. Kotha number 64, which is mostly inhabited by Nepalese girls, is the most popular among the 100 or so brothels in this bustling market area. It is also considered the safest for customers, as the price of the single sex is set at 300 rupees. For sex workers here, life is confined to the dark walls of the four-story building filled with movie posters. Inside these walls, they cook, raise their children and try to find love. A man in his thirties cuddles a girl in the common area of the brothel while she plays a game on his phone. Reluctantly, she left her business half an hour later, when three or four men repeatedly expressed their desire to use her services. Once outside the brothel, the married man told the Deccan Herald that he visited the sex worker almost every week and that the two developed feelings for each other.
Previously, he had offered to pay extra to take the girl with him for a movie. But an excursion of any kind is forbidden to the prostitutes of GB Road. "The girl said she wanted to go out with me but couldn`t because of the rules. I don`t want to make it difficult for her or me," he says. Believing that this journalist is a client, he sincerely advises him to stay away from any accident. But pimp Roshan learned the hard way. He shows several self-inflicted wounds to the blade on his hand, which have since healed. "I fell in love with a girl in one of these brothels about a year ago," he says. When the brothel owner learned of the existence of the "surroundings" in between, she forbade him to bring customers for her or even enter the premises. He needed time to forget the girl and move on. It tells the story of another brothel where a prostitute was so in love with a client that she didn`t even force him to use a condom during sex about a year ago, which quickly led to her pregnancy.
The client suffered the usual fate. The girl was horribly harassed and made an example of him. "But they took the child in and even closed the brothel for a whole day to celebrate his birth," says Roshan.While many girls at Kotha number 64 seem to be close to some customers, they are aware of several eyes. These are the stalls selling cigarettes, soft drinks and local beer – all at exorbitant prices – at the brothel. Also snacks and fruit salad inside sell street vendors. A tailor on one of the floors of this building measures a girl while several sex workers check the items with cosmetics sellers. These men keep an eye on the girls and the customers," says Roshan, who took a few hundred of the reporter. Guests are not allowed to take photos. "Photography is not allowed. If she is caught, the camera will be taken away from her," read several posters inside. But posters advising the use of condoms were torn down. Meanwhile, dozens of men go up and down the narrow, seedy stairs to pick up a girl of their choice.
Some older, out-of-shape prostitutes try to recruit clients on the first floor, but their cries of "jaanu" and "darling" are usually ignored. Despite their young age, each child knows their place in the community. In fact, there is already some form of power play among children. The child of a Kotha owner tends to show a sense of superiority and act with more confidence and dominance when playing with the children of sex workers. As children grow, this hierarchical relationship is likely to persist or become even more important as each person assumes the role passed down from their parents. As a result, it is difficult for these children to break out of the vicious circle in which they were born. The familiarity of their childhood playground and their learned identities hold them back, telling them that the only way in life is to follow in the footsteps of the adult role models they grew up with. The streets and houses at the end of the street are residential. The India Today article added that the IPC makes the following illegal: There are about 70 to 80 brothels or kothas (rooms) along G.B.
Road. Most of them are located on the second or third level of the buildings, with a brightly painted balcony or a wide window overlooking the street below. The stigma these children face elsewhere prevents them from venturing off G.B. Road. With limited access to adequate education, children are cut off from other options in life. It is common for children of sex workers to enter the sex trade when they reach the age of majority. Girls become prostitutes and boys become pimps. For the children of the owners of Kotha, they will probably take over the business of the Kothas or engage in trade by other means. "Whenever there is a raid on a brothel, as voluntary sex work is not illegal and only the operation of the brothel is illegal, the sex workers involved should not be arrested or punished, harassed or harassed. The section of road leading from Ajmeri Gate in the south to the small intersection with a road to Farash Khana in the north has shops on the ground floor and kothas or brothels on the first and second floors. Each Kotha has a number and is identified by it. Kothas differ from each other in the women they offer.
There are kothas, which mainly offer women from the northeast who are lighter skin color and can therefore fetch a higher price. It`s also an open secret that G.B. Road`s most notorious Kotha offer to virgin girls. This Kotha is also the most expensive. The girls of this particular kotha are "recruited" either by the countryside or by the street. The volunteers fear that the "Didis" will be upset. It`s Sunday, and they like to sleep. After about five minutes, a little boy opens the door and we are led into an open courtyard decorated with steel utensils, a wooden bed and a tricycle. At the end, there are two small rooms with closed doors, behind which the women sleep. G.B. Road, Garstin Bastion Road (officially changed to Swami Shradhanand Marg in 1966) is a road leading from Ajmeri Gate to Lahori Gate in Delhi, India.
It`s a big red light district. [1] There are several hundred multi-storey brothels and it is estimated that there are over 1000 sex workers. [2] It is lined with two- or three-story buildings that have shops on the ground floor. About twenty of these buildings have about 100 brothels on the first floor that open at night after the ground floor shops close. It is the largest red light district in Delhi. [3] In most cases, living conditions are too cramped for comfort or privacy, but for sex workers and their children, Kotha is their home. Most women do not even leave their kothas for their own safety, and so their view of the outside world is limited to what they see from their bedroom window or from their kotha balcony. As in any other city and society, sex work is highly stigmatized in Delhi. The archaic caste system, which still plays a major role in Indian society, relegates sex workers and their families to one of the lowest social classes. The child of a sex worker is looked down upon as well as the sex worker herself.
For this reason, most children in G.B. Road do not go to school. Those who end up quitting because of the discrimination and bullying they face at school. She starts by rubbing sandpaper against the wall. The dust pushes my fellow journalists and me further into the house. We venture onto the balcony, which doubles as a kitchen, and look at the other brothels in the area.