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The fabric is only sufficient to cover an arm and one breast. It is as infected as the flesh.
The body is unprotected. The open wounds and warts of the roadside prostitute remain a
target for continuing infection from the unsanitary environment in which she is forced to
live. In addition to this, the gali provides little protection. The worker is evident to the
people on the gali and as a result often falls prey to attacks by roadside hooligans.
This sense of vulnerability and isolation is embedded in the design by the way that the
garment draws attention to nakedness. The work makes no attempt to align itself with
traditional values associated with modesty and protection. Modesty has been burned
away. We are confronted by the corporal nature of the body. Brutality, complicit neglect,
ignorance, entrapment, and manipulation have resulted in demise.
conclusion
These artworks operate as metaphors for documented conditions in the lal batti. They
speak not only through their appearance but also through their structure. They are not
euphemisms, but they are a form of translation. They come from a world I know. The
accounts woven through these chapters are not sensationalised incidents but part of the
fabric of manipulation, entrapment, marginalisation and eventually demise that make up
the every day world of the sex worker in the red light districts of Indian cities.
They are my voice as an Indian designer.
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