Behind Kamathipura's Closed Doors

Summary

On the rickshaw, in the evening rush hour. An elderly driver, hands on the steering wheel, khaki shirt, marking his station. His neck hesitantly swivels, as if to say something: they have arrived at their destination. An alien territory in the white-washed city. Coquettish beckonings are lined up on fractured doors as street lamps in the narrow alleys. Collapsing buildings constrict ventilation and light. A landlord’s greed is made manifest: two-storeyed houses buried beneath off-balanced extensions of disparate parts and assorted junk. Space is not given but taken. All roads lead to shining highrises looming outside. Redevelopment adverts promise a “World-class Neighborhood.” Around it, leaking pipelines crawl. Ramshackle windows remain shut. Neon lights conceal work. Others gape open, women perched behind rusting bars: bright skirts against the home’s squalor, glittering cleavages, hair bound in jasmine, and kohl-rimmed eyes popping up. Police sirens wail. NGOs offer aid. Houses lean into each other, tight-lipped and huddled, yet a sacrosanct atmosphere emerges. Ganesh pandals rise, temporary altars sprouting where light and air do not. Informality lingers: scrap wood and metal dealers, electronics recycling over carpets on streets, temporary shoe shops crouched beneath fabric awnings, recycled tins stacked as bricks, women spinning on thresholds, cinemas with in-house shrines, intermediate tea shops, perfume-making industry, liquor shops, jeans dyeing on terraces, beedi-industry on pavements, women hunched over tobacco and leaves. Time shapes these rhythms. As dusk thickens, a guided group of tourists uneasily skitters along. Kamathipura stirs. An anatomical mental map of the dense lanes and low-cost housing of Kamathipura by artist Majid Abidi. All photos and collages courtesy of Majid Abidi. Kamathipura, India’s most notorious red-light district, stands as a testament to resilience and survival ‒ a culturally heterogeneous and economically vibrant space shaped ...