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Literary Review
Memoirs
Of detours in life
MADHU GURUNG
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Brutally honest, Jameela’s narrative is devoid of self-pity or guilt.
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Autobiography of a Sex Worker, Nalini Jameela, translated by J. Devika, Westland Books, p.143, Rs. 150.
“I wrote this book because of the great divide that exists between the sex worker and the client. The man is seen as upright and moral while the vaishya (prostitute) stands around to seduce, and so deserves to be punished. But are the men really seduced?” Nalini Jameela asked an audience at the Indian Women’s Press Corps in Delhi, where she had come to promote her book, Autobiography of a Sex Worker.
Jameela, now in her fifties, was dressed in a pale gold cotton sari, her hair worn loose framing a calm face, with black, intense eyes as old as time. There is a certain dignity in the way she puts her point across in unhurried Malayalam spiced with logic and courage.
For those who seek to read steamy sexual confessions, her book would be a turn off. It is an odyssey of a woman who is wife, mother, sex worker, successful businesswoman and social activist. Within her limited circumstances, Nalini makes her choices and asks for no pity, but envelops you with her conviction as she carves out her own patch of sky.
In 2005, when the autobiography Njan Laingikatozhilaali was first published in Malayalam, the book went into six editions and within a hundred days had sold 13,000 copies. However, she rejected the work as it got mired in controversy. She felt she had been misrepresented by the person who co-authored it and authorised this second version as the authentic one. The second version is published in English so that it reaches a wider audience.
Poignant narrative
Published by Chennai-based Westland Books, it is a compilation of small jottings and oral narratives, translated by J. Devika. Like most translated works, the book sometimes loses the original flavour and the author’s voice, only to come up suddenly and catch you unawares with poignant passages steeped with life’s lessons.
Born in Kallor in Kerala, Nalini studied up to class three. When her mother was dismissed from her job in the textile mill because of her father’s communist leanings, Nalini took up work in the clay mines. Later, she married and had two children. The husband, who sold arrack for a living, was a womaniser. Eventually the arrack and cancer pushed him to commit suicide.
Matter of fact tone
Nalini opted for sex work to support her children. Her story speaks matter of factly of the violence, police harassment, rape, exploitation and life threatening situations that are the hazards of her profession. She does not openly describe these situations, leaving one to read between the lines and that is where the book is most fragile and yet at its strongest, as it leaves you to paint your own images. It also leaves you impressed by her unspoken grit.
Particularly poignant is the story of her struggle to protect her daughter Zeenat from prying eyes and grabbing hands in the days when they slept on the pavement, destitute and living on alms. She did everything in her means to prevent her daughter from joining sex work, eventually pushing her into marriage to escape prostitution.
Nalini’s entry into social work began years later when she joined an NGO for sex workers and worked for an AIDS prevention campaign. This period marked her awakening as an activist who actively advocates that sex work should be decriminalised. Given the impending amendment to the Immoral Trafficking Protection Act, hers is an experienced voice that should carry weight in the controversial debate.
Nalini’s distinctive writing style is brutally honest and devoid of any coquetry. The narrative is not steeped in self pity, nor is there reproach, shame or guilt as she destroys the dominant stereotypes of sex work being oppressive, exploitative and disempowering while marriage offers dignity and empowerment. She recounts her initiation thus, “The moment she mentioned ‘needing women’ I understood that this had to do with using the woman, the way the husband does.”
Blurred boundaries
She draws parallels and differences between “domestic life” seen as familial love and relationship and “public life” as the one lived by a prostitute and her many alliances. Nalini believes that in domestic life too many women find themselves in an equally oppressive, exploitative environment where they are sexually used. The only difference is that they live without the social stigma that becomes the sex worker’s mantle. Nalini deftly negotiates the two socially defined boundaries, framing her own benchmarks.
Nalini also sees her sex work as “counselling” and “therapy” sessions with her clients who seek her advice. Her belief that sex workers help men to overcome their inadequacies subtly takes away the shame associated with sex work. In the Afterword to the book she says clearly, “I look after my family, I also do social work and when in financial need, as someone in my situation often is, I do sex work. Life isn’t a narrow, one-track path, there are detours one can take, and one can also return to old familiar paths.”
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