Indian sex worker in GB Road, New Delhi’s main red light district, tells her story of pain and loss
- Rekha is one of more than 5,000 women with little chance of escape working on the notorious Garstin Bastion Road in India’s capital New Delhi
- Several groups have been set up to help rehabilitate the area’s sex workers and their children in an attempt to provide alternate livelihood options
“When I was first pushed into this, unlike other girls I did not resist,” Rekha says, tears welling in her eyes. “Other girls who tried to run away or were not cooperating were beaten by the kotha maliks [brothel owners] as if they were not human.”
Rekha saw no way to escape her demeaning life as a sex worker. “It was a river of fire on one side and bed of thorns on the other. Where would I run to?”
One of more than 5,000 women plying their trade in Garstin Bastion Road – commonly known as GB Road – in the ruins of the old walled city of Shahjahanabad in central New Delhi, Rekha knows her future looks grim.
Rekha works in an establishment reserved for older women, over the age of about 45. The walls are bereft of decoration except for a faded 2017 calendar. Potatoes are frying in a nearby kitchen and outside in the hall a song from the soundtrack of Muzaffar Ali’s film Umrao Jaan, about a courtesan’s rise to fame, can be heard: “Dil cheez kya hai aap meri jaan lejiye” (“Forget my heart, take my life instead”).
