I am the mother of both the good and the evil,” Holy Mother Sharada, the wife of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, had once said, reminds Madhumita, a sex worker as she comes out offering special prayers to Goddess Durga on the Maha Ashtami Day on Saturday.
She is one of the members of the sole Durga Puja organised by the sex workers at Sonagachi, Asia’s largest red-light colony.
Treated with filthy contempt during the day and courted post sundown, the sex workers of Sonagachi, who had thus far been excluded from the Durga Puja pandals offered their Pushpanjali or special prayer, “seeking the prosperity for the whole world and begging the Mother so that no woman has to enter this wretched life in future.”
The Puja is being organised for the first time by Durbar Mahila Samanway Samity, an umbrella foundation of sex workers, after winning an order from the Calcutta High Court against the Kolkata Police which had refused it permission to organise the Puja.
According to tradition, the first clay that is pasted around the wooden structure on which the Mother’s idol is constructed “has to come from a red-light area”, she reminds insisting how Hindu festivals had always been of inclusive nature.
“Many of us have vowed not to do ‘business’ during these four days,” said one member, adding how even the women from other religion are taking part in the Puja. “We have a budget of little more than Rs 2 lakh which has come from the contribution of our 7,000-plus members,” Bharati Dey, an organiser said, adding every member has given Rs 20 or more for the Puja.
“We are poor so we do not afford any theme but we are sure that Mother cannot cast us aside as she does not distinguish among her children,” said Dey, adding the deity is about six-feet tall.
Such has been the publicity around the Puja that sex workers from other parts of the State have been visiting the Puja and contributing generously.
On whether the whole money would be spent or some of it would be preserved for social cause one member said, “We will think over it after seeing how much money is saved. There are many things to be done.”
The Puja thus organised would give the other workers in other parts of the country to establish their own identity “and many of them are planning to follow us”, said S Jana, a member of the DMSS.
“We have arranged for cultural programmes to be performed by the children of sex workers many of whom are good artistes and studying from hostel,” he said, adding some of them have been emerging as talented football players getting chance in big clubs of Kolkata.