Reporter’s notebook

Each time I enter a brothel, and walk up the staircases stumbling in the dark, avoiding stepping on used condoms, and cigarette butts, I am nervous. I am also asked by others if it is dangerous. In many ways, it is. If the police raids the brothel, you could end up in jail. Or other worse things could happen. I try not to clutter my mind with such things. The issue is a reporter is always looking at their own lives as a possible mine for stories. So mishaps could turn into great stories.

Each time I enter a brothel, and walk up the staircases stumbling in the dark, avoiding stepping on used condoms, and cigarette butts, I am nervous. I am also asked by others if it is dangerous. In many ways, it is. If the police raids the brothel, you could end up in jail. Or other worse things could happen. I try not to clutter my mind with such things. The issue is a reporter is always looking at their own lives as a possible mine for stories. So mishaps could turn into great stories.

How we get to a story, and follow it through is mostly never discussed except in meetings. A story matters. That’s where we all agree. But the process is fascinating.

Last time I was in Kamathipura, I was at the Nagpada police station to look up a case for a couple of stories I was working on. The officer gave me a number and asked me to approach a ‘freedom fighter’ to get access. I met him near Alexander Theater. A heavy set man with thinning white hair that he tied in a long ponytail, he sounded dubious. But I needed the access. I decided to take the chance. I did remember a professor of mine in a class on news reporting back at Syracuse University’s SI Newhouse School of Public Communications that a reporter must always rely on the gut feeling. It is always their best bet against the odds, he had said.

Mr. Lalwani, as he is commonly referred to in the area, and is allegedly a police informer, asked the driver to park the car, and asked me follow him upstairs. I insisted on going to one of the chai shops that lined the street. But he said he was an old man, and I should not be worried. A few prostitutes were standing under the building. Among them was Puja.

That's where she spends most of her time. There's Seema, and others. In her choli, he has a mobile phone tucked, and songs play. Usual fare – heartbreak songs. Bollywood, and Farida Khanum.

I met her the day I ran down the stairs, and she asked me why the old man had taken me upstairs. The man said he was a freedom fighter, and he understood the pain of these women, and insisted I went to his first floor office. He had locked the door, and said I must relax. He asked me if I wanted a drink. A lone bulb in one corner of the room was flickering. My phone was almost out of charge, and the man started talking about his love affairs, and his tryst with Bombay, and prostitutes. I stood against the door, and asked him to open the door.

“It is not a safe building. Drunk men come, and thugs are always lurking here,” he said.

“If you don’t open, I will create a ruckus,” I said.

“Nobody would talk without me helping you,” he said. "You will need me."

I was looking to speak to prostitutes about the clients that visit them. I also wanted details about a case where a man had killed his prostitute lover, and hid the body under the bed, and only when the stench became too strong, he left. The case remains unsolved. It happened in Gulli no. 11, one of the more notorious lanes in this red light area.

Later, Puja said the man was exploiting them. He would take them upstairs, and ask them for sexual favours.

“But he is 77?” I said.

“Tharki Buddha. He doesn’t even pay us,” she said. “If you hadn't come downstairs in five minutes, I would have raised an alarm,” she said. “Tum toh hamare line ki nahi lagti. But we are sisters.”

My former editor called me to tell me I couldn’t be this stupid. But the prostitutes were kind. They bought me tea, and gave me the story. I didn’t see the man again while I was there. But we did abuse him. Verbally, of course.

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