Every night I prayed to God to take me back to him. I could not stand living there.
To an outsider it might have looked like a busy house, almost like a market, but every day I was forced to please the guests Bari Maa sent to me. She was my buyer. She bought me from my uncle, even though I was never his property to begin with.
It was hard being alone in that place, so I made a friend there, ██████. She was someone I looked up to. Unlike me, she was different. She knew how to read and write, and she was the one who helped me become literate.
Everything about her felt calming, and at one point I even believed she was a form of a goddess. She chose only wealthy clients and sold her body, but unlike me, she had the choice to refuse.
I never felt jealous, though. I always believed that my God would bring me joy someday, and that I must not commit a sin and lose that reward before it reached me.
Maybe I am too superstitious, but I remember that morning clearly. When I woke up, I accidentally broke a photo frame of me, ██████, and Bari Maa. Everyone who lived in the brothel had a similar frame, a picture of themselves with ██████ and Bari Maa together. I cleaned up the broken glass and placed the frame above the almirah in my room. Then I left it there and went to serve my first guest of the day.
Sometimes I would drift away during the sessions, because it never seemed to matter to those monsters whether I was alive or not. They felt no different from animals to me. I often wondered if only beautiful people were meant to be loved, and whether Bari Maa would ever cherish me the way she cherished ██████, but that never happened.
I hated that place, but after a day full of suffering, every night ██████ and I would sit together and talk. She would tell me about many things. One night she said that someday a client might come who would promise me the world and even ask for my hand in marriage. "You must say no," she told me. I was confused. Why should I refuse someone who was willing to fulfill all my desires, someone with whom I only had to live for the rest of my life? To me, it sounded like a blessing from God in disguise, something I should never reject.
Everything felt normal for a while, or at least as normal as life there could be. Until one day in the year 2003, a client arrived. He did not look wealthy or important, not like someone who could even afford me, since I was considered one of the lowest among the girls my age at that time. I remember wondering why he was there at all, but I did not think much of it then.
Later that day, while I was with a client, we heard a sudden commotion outside. It felt the same as the last time, as if someone had been hurt again by a guest. The first time it happened, I had left my client in the middle of the session, and Bari Maa whipped me all night for it.
This time, to avoid that punishment, I kept the client distracted, even though he himself wanted to go out and see what was happening. In the end, he stayed. Men like him would not have been there if they could not be controlled easily.
After he left, no one else came to my room, and I stayed there until nightfall. As always, that night I went to ██████'s room to spend time with her, but she was not there. I waited for her the whole night at her doorstep.
I rarely spoke to anyone except Bari Maa and ██████, so the next day I went looking for Bari Maa instead, but she was nowhere to be found either. I asked around, and that was when I learned that Bari Maa had been beaten to death by one of ██████'s clients the previous day, and ██████ had been missing ever since. Even though she is gone, she exists in my memory, but her name does not belong on these pages.
I was alone again. I do not even know why, but as much as I had idolised ██████, I did not cry. I was already used to abandonment. She was not the first person to disappear from my life so suddenly, and I knew she would not be the last.
That day was the first time, since I had come to that brothel, that I did not serve any guests. I felt a strange sense of relief and slept through most of the day.
They say God punishes those he loves the most. I suppose that makes me God's favourite child.
Everytime I began to feel relief from my suffering, I should have known it was only soft pillows before another sleepless night.