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The Rediff Special/ Amin Ahmed

IT was a different world out there, a world hard to find, unless it was at a carnival like that.

Out there, you saw a mela of sex workers. Men, women, children, all, everywhere.

It was their world, there at the second International Peace Meet for the Right of Sex Workers in Kolkata. And it showed in their attitude, the confident way they moved around, the way they talked, without inhibition, about sex, contraceptives and homosexuality -- and that, while the visitor looked unsure and tongue-tied and absolutely unconfident.

Confidence... yes, the international meet -- or should we say, carnival? --was all about that.

That, and Dignity.

"We have chosen this profession and we plan to stick by it," said 25-year-old Swapna Gayen, who heads the Durbar Mahila Samanway Committee, the organiser of the meet.

She and her sisters want respectability, the chance to live their life with dignity. Like those involved in any other 'decent' profession.

Gayen knows dignity is hard to win, especially for a sex worker. But she is willing to fight for it.

"We aim to educate the workers and make them aware of their rights," she said. "We want a change in the society's attitude towards sex workers."

Durbar, thus, focuses on projects for the upliftment of this marginalised community. And even as it educates sex workers on sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS control, it strives to inject confidence into them and, through it, a life of dignity.

It was as part of this that Durbar organised the sex worker's meet, from March 3 to 9. It saw "some 50,000 thousand sex workers -- male, female and transgender -- from across the globe".

"We observed March 3 as the International Day for Sex Workers Rights," Gayen said.

Delegates from the United States, Britain, Netherlands, Cambodia, Thailand, China, Malaysia and Bangladesh participated in the seven-day event, dubbed the 'Shanti Utsav', which followed the communal carnage in Gujarat.

Parvati, a participant from Kolkata's infamous Sonagachi area, put the spirit behind the exercise succinctly when she said, "This is the only profession where you do not have to display your religion by your name."

The seven-day event had the look and feel of a carnival. There were stalls selling handicrafts and other products made by sex workers, stages for their cultural shows including the disreputable dance forms from the areas they hailed from.

There were, thus, regular performances of the baiji from Muzaffarpur in Bihar, mujra from Lucknow, devdasis of Kerala and Orissa... and, of course, the 'disco dance' popular in bars of Indian metros.

The stalls featured a variety of handicrafts -- and also the culinary skills of some sex workers.

"It's a bid to bring out the ordinary women in this suppressed class," said Mitra Pant, Durbar's public relation officer.

Seminars, panel discussions and health awareness programmes too were part of the carnival -- and were well attended. The discussions provided the visitors an insight into the lives of the sex workers, aimed at awareness for a change in their attitude towards the community.

Interestingly, the sex workers, who normally hide behind pseudonyms, did not shy away from revealing their identities.

"Why should we?" asked Angoor Begum, Durbar's general secretary. "That is what we want to change. We are not ashamed of our profession."

A 30-year-old, she was born in Bangladesh. She was forced into the flesh trade at a young age and ended up in Kolkata.

"Why should not we be considered workers?" she asked. "We are not criminals or anti-socials. Rather we serve people and entertain them."

"This is not a criminal act," added Mumtaz, a sex worker from Bangladesh, "but still we have to live a degraded life."

The hurdle in the path of an easier life for sex workers in India, said Dr S Jana, the brain behind Durbar, is the Prevention Of Immoral Trafficking Act.

"Till we abolish it, workers cannot be given licenses," he said. "This work cannot be said to be immoral till the time it is not being solicited and serves as a means of livelihood."

Durbar now plans to fight the PITA -- more specifically, certain of its clauses. According to the legislation, sex work per se is not illegal, but influencing clients or turning it into a business is.

The PITA also has it that the family of a sex worker cannot be supported by her earnings!

"It is these clauses that need amendments," said Dr Jana. "The concern should be not on what she is doing, but why she is doing. If it is not done by force there is nothing immoral about it."

The main concern of the sex workers, he clarified, is the way the society use them but still treat them as untouchables. They ask - and this is a request from the one million-odd sex workers in India -- for a labourer's status so that they can form their own union to safeguard their interests, especially in the wake of consistent harassment from the police as well as the mainstream community members.

For their part, most of the foreign delegates felt themselves much better off than their Indian counterparts, as there were 'more instances of sexual abuses, police harassment etc in India'.

Monica and Tina had come down from Malaysia where flesh trade is legal. They cannot understand why it is not so in India.

"In Singapore," said Sheila, originally from Cambodia, "you do not have to hide from the police."

She, however, sees a plus in the Indian scenario: sex workers do not normally indulge in drug trafficking and other criminal activities.

For the duration of the carnival, the sex workers were put up in small kiosks near the fair ground. Visitors kept arriving, in dribbles, most of them looking sheepish -- after all, in conservative Kolkata, how would you explain it away if someone saw you in a red light area?

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