Fashion as accessory to legalise prostitution

Covered or uncovered — doesn’t matter. My soul had been stripped to the very nakedness. No, I am not a victim, just forbidden of pride ’cause of what I earn,” reads the caption accompanying an image which shows a woman wrapped in a red and black saree lying on the ruins at Kangra Fort in Himachal Pradesh, with her back facing the camera.

Another image shows a woman holding a cigarette stub and a bottle of alcohol in her hand with her bare back facing the camera. Hair neatly braided, she is seen looking outside a grilled window which is, ironically, shut. The picture caption reads: “Irony — my weakness is my power; Misery — your dreams bring me monetary showers; Rebellion — I fight your passion and rip it apart; Bravery — I forget you and prepare for a new start... New vengeance for a new desire”.

These images, among many others, form the crux of an ongoing project ‘Nath Utrai’ by students of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Kangra, through which they attempt to document the lives of six sex workers — three each from Rajasthan and GB Road in Delhi, including one from the LGBTQ community — and create awareness about legalising the profession.

Spearheaded by Amit Chauhan, the project was conceptualised nearly three years ago when he visited red light districts and learnt about the “miserable conditions” in which such women live and work. “I belong to Haryana where a lot of social evils like female foeticide  and dowry system are practised. These practices have always disturbed me; but after visiting GB Road (Delhi) and Khakranagla (Rajasthan), I got to know about the conditions of prostitutes there. Their lives made me curious, and I wanted to study more about them. While researching, I happened to read about Rajasthan’s Bedia community where prostitution is celebrated. It is then that I conceptualised ‘Nath Utrai’,” he says.

He explains that Nath Utrai is a ceremonial process in which the community celebrates when a young girl attains puberty. The celebration, he says, ends with the girl being sold for one night. “This process is called Nath Utrai (where the nose pin of a girl is removed before she is sold and loses her virginity),” he explains.

The project, which also has six other students, is Chauhan’s way of depicting the lives of sex workers because he says, “Every profession must be looked up with dignity, and no one should have any right to discriminate anyone based on their work”.

“India is the land of Kamasutra, Khajuraho, and even Ajanta and Ellora. So we want to change the stereotypical mindset of people. Our project will culminate into a book which we will publish in January 2017,” Srishti Soni, co-head, tells Metrolife. On being asked why he chose to use the medium of fashion and styling to depict the life and plight of sex workers, he says while it isn’t easy to influence the thinking of the elderly, his target audience is the youth “who instantly relate to the idea of fashion”.

“To give an example, while my mother supports what I am working on, she does have her apprehensions and doubts. But it is very easy to create awareness among the youth if you have the right idea and approach. Looked up as a profession in the earlier days, especially the Mughal period, prostitution now is looked down upon with dirty eyes,” Chauhan says, adding that being NIFT students, fashion is the first thing that comes to them.

However, despite the project having its basis in the world of “fashion” and “glamour”, and the images being semi-nude, they have been shot aesthetically, with no amount of vulgarity in them.

“Some of the sarees used in the project have been designed by us, while some have been purchased from local markets. If you think about it, prostitution is also a glamourous profession where these women wear extremely loud clothes. While we have not shown it the way it is, we have retained the aspect of glamour in our photographs. And in any case, a text-only and non-visual initiative would not have garnered as much attention,” he says. While the 23-year-old student agrees that it did take him some amount of persuasion to get his subjects on board, he says that once they agreed, they opened their lives to him. But his troubles were not just limited to there as he also had to “pay the middleman” to let him talk to the women involved in this practice.

“In fact, there was police interference, and even my classmate and college friends did not support me to start something like this. I have also received a lot of abusive messages regarding the same. And when the people around you do not support you, it’s very hard to keep going on,” he says.