A varied one..!!

Allright a complete new take on relationshps…I am in Goa and I shall be working here with an ngo called ARZ: Anyaay Rahit Zindagi, for the next two months. They work with sex workers and for the upliftment of their children.

My dads very close friend, Harry Goveas is accompanying us here on the trip and he asked me where my ngo is situated. I said Vasco and immediately he started evaluating the odds and looked thoughtful. This was yesterday morning during our halt for lunch. Today, 9:14 pm, we are sitting in our room sipping on beer and whiskey and he asked me “Do you know why your ngo is situated in vasco?” the only reason I could come up with was...."ummmmm because the people who founded it were from here?????"
"Well beta", he said, "Vasco is a mining district. People from Maharashtra and other places migrate here in the search of work. And more often than not they donot have families here along with them or they don’t have a family backing at all. And the need of fulfillment of desires is a very basic one!!! May it be physical, monetary or else. The women in Vasco or more appropriately Goa are the lowest sections of the society. They have no stature of their own and no standing of their own. They realize that the only role they can play is in the fulfillment of sexual desires of these migrants. And that is what they do!! And hence, find a goal in life for themselves.

This on the other hand in western countries is accepted as a very basic need of human kind and eventually as a part of the society. The need is given the stature of a very basic physical need and the the profession is regarded legal and the women are given status and respect in the society. Whereas here in India we are all hypocritical. We need fulfillment yet we are not ready to accept it. We find means to fulfill them otherwise and commercially but we still swear off and write off sexual workers and commercial sex workers if ever mentioned.”

This got me to thinking to a new kind of relationship that exists between men and women. The kind that is accepted and regarded in the western countries but abolished/ignored/ not accepted here…! A kind of relationship in which the women keeps shut does or does not enjoy the role she is playing but plays it anyways due to various reasons. She might have a family to support, she must have been sold to a brothel when she was a kid and the family did not want a girl child, out of choice for money, and so and so forth. What does this relationshp does to the people involved?
The man, who is at a risk of getting an STD or is betraying his wife or girlfriend waiting for him back home and the woman who sells her body and her dignity for a few pennies and fulfillment of a few desires and a few to-do needs in life?!
What is the kind of compulsion, misery, need, want that leads a woman to sell herself?! What goes through her mind after the man leaves. Does she cringe? Does she cry? Does she hold herself close and shiver? How does she explain it to her family? Her children in some cases? What about her million dreams of a prince charming, a happily ever after, of her family on the country side after retirement, with children running around playing and the husband and her sitting and sipping tea after a siesta??!! What about her?