Missing Women

A figure of a missing girl painted on a wall in Kalighat, one of Kolkata's red light districts.  The painting is part of Missing a nation wide public art project dedicated to the estimated tens of thousands of girls who go missing in India understood to be victims of commercial sex trafficking.

So many different faces, so many different eyes, expressions and lives.  Different cultures, different tongues, different constellations born into poverty, different storied.  Some sold into slavery.  Some forced to sell the one thing left they had to sell.  Women whose years fade beyond my age. Who have endured what I thank God I have never had to endure.  Who have tasted the insatiable appetite for sex, distinguished from rape only through the passing of a few dollars, sometimes less, and then minus commission.  Who exist only on the underbelly of the male of our species, often condoned by the retired matriarchs in their field.  Tired women who sell the girls whose nubile body’s are worth more than theirs.  Who were initiated through fear and broke through into resilience.  Women who now have no qualms about feeding off the next generation, the next cycle of discrimination.  Of power over.  Physically, economically, symbolically.

Girls wise beyond their years, tough beyond the fragility of their young skin.  Decades younger than I.  Fucked by hundreds if not thousands of men.  Some sold by their families, others stolen or tricked, trafficked and renamed.  Stuck in a profession of opening their legs because they never were taught how to read or write, because they were viewed as nothing more than a girl child, with no potential than wife and failing that hooker.  And if they tried to escape, if they refused to work, a thousand tactics could be employed to remind them they had no other hope.  No other choice.

Women who were married and widowed.  Women who were married and deserted.  Left with children to provide for, children to feed, by whatever means they found possible.  Women who numb the pain with cheap liquor and makeshift drugs, intoxicants to allow them to endure what they endure, until its no longer so horrific, that is of course until a client takes more than what he pays for – cigarette burns visible on chests, scars as signs of split eyebrows, bashed cheeks, broken bones.  Children who were taught that this is how the world works.  That this is their food and shelter.  That the definition of safety is different from the one you or I grew up with.  Survival of the fittest.  Torture to the weakest.  

Hearts that still shed tears, years later and only hours before the evenings work is due to begin.  Kohl smudged beneath the windows of the soul, with a depth only Kali knows the limit to. 

I bow down to each and every one of you.  I have no idea.  None.  Our concepts, terminology, ideas of Life are so different.  But thank you for your dance.  For being here.  For the gift of survival you have given yourself.  I cannot even comprehend the fortitude you have.  The strength of your spirit.  The lack of power you have over who touches you, how they touch you, when they touch you, where they touch you.  And even the word “touch” doesn’t qualify for what inter-action takes place.  Yet your internal power blinds me with its beauty.

May the shakti in you blind all those who dare to violate you.  May the dakini in you rise beyond your wildest imagination, until the internal reflects the external and its on your terms, your way.  Until you no longer need listen to customers haggle your price down to what is less than a cheap meal, change for a beggar.  May the grace of your Bodhisattva guide your liberation, not in some imaginary future life time, but right here right now.  For you dear sister, mother and daughter are not worthy of this patriarchal trade.  You dear sister, mother and daughter are sacred and precious, divine and I pray, one day – completely free.