Day in the life of a devadasi

William Dalrymple writes on the lives of devadasis or sex workers in India in the latest issue of the New Yorker. It’s one of the most interesting and poignant articles I’ve ever read in the magazine. The easy realism in the piece is astounding.

On the public humiliation the women faced:

Long before the glasses of hot sweet chai arrived, the farmers at the other tables had started pointing at Rani Bai, and gossiping. They had come from their villages to sell cotton at the market, and, having got a good price, were now in a boisterous mood. Although Kaveri and Rani Bai had the red tikka of a married woman on their foreheads, Rani Bai’s muttu—the necklace of red and white beads that a devadasi wears—and her jewelry, her painted face, and her overly dressy silk sari had given her away.

…

The farmers sat there as we sipped our tea, looking at her (on Rani) greedily. Before long, they were noisily speculating about the relationship she might have with me, the firangi, and her cost, what she would and would not do, and wondering where she worked and whether she gave discounts.

A stark example of how the AIDs epidemic wiping out women left right and centre:

I asked what had happened to her (Rani’s) daughters.

“One was a singer. She eloped when she was fourteen. She came back a year later, but no one would marry her. So she became a devadasi.”

“And the other?”

“The other had some skin disease and had white patches on her thighs. We went to many doctors, but they could not cure it. Like her sister, she found it hard to get married, so I had to dedicate her, too.”

“But how could you do that when you were so angry with your own mother for dedicating you? You just said yourself this is undignified work.”

“My daughters scolded me,” Rani Bai admitted, “just as I scolded my mother.”

“Didn’t you feel guilty?”

“I didn’t like it,” Rani said. “But there was no alternative.”

“Where are they now?” I asked. “Here? Or in Bombay?”

There was a long pause when I asked this. Then Rani said, simply, “I have lost them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Both have passed away. Maybe it was because of some sins in a past life that the goddess cursed me in this way. One lost weight and died of a stomach disease. The other had fevers.”

I later learned that Rani’s daughters had had AIDS. One died less than a year ago, aged fifteen. The other was seventeen, and died six months later.

The real tragedy seems that poverty, inability to marry, the caste system and the cultural trappings of being a devadasi tricks thousands of women into being sex workers. Links to the religious reference of the past being the main thing that keeps a lot of these women going.

Read the piece. It’s sad, but illuminating.

August 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am • Filed in Culture, Life



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