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Bashanti's Story
Bashanti was born into a loving but poor family in Bangladesh. Her parents arranged her marriage to a local 16 year-old boy.
Her new family treated her as a slave. Athough she was only 7 or 8 when she married, she was expected to fully participate as his wife. At fifteen, she bore a son who died 18 days later.
Her grief and shame forced her back to her father’s house. She remembers her father sat crying while they fetched her mother to tell her the news.
In Bashanti’s second marriage, she was also abused by the family. There abuse turned to torture when her second son also died. Again she ended up back in her father’s house.
Bashanti then had a series of jobs where she found herself sexually harassed. When she declined a proposal for marriage, in fear of it ending like the first two, her job was terminated. It was while she was working in a rice field that she was offered a sewing job in Calcutta by a another women. That is how Bashanti ended up in Sonnagachi.
Bashanti remembers her first customer like it was yesterday. She was chosen from the many women who stood in line. Having negotiated with the man, her madam said to her “boste dow” (it means, in Bangla, give him a seat), so she did what she was told and asked the man to sit down. After 20 minutes of sitting and waiting the man became furious. “How long will I sit,” he demanded. Banshanti hadn’t realised that “boste dow” was street language for sex. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. She fought and screamed and the man eventually gave up and left in a rage. Her madam, furious at her loss of income, beat her.
Bashanti learned she was going to be moved again. She hoped they had given up on her and would let her be a housemaid. But her new “home” proved to be the place where she would give in. The house was full of girls from Bangladesh, all of them prostitutes. She remembers their advice: “We got trapped, too, but we had no choice. We had to compromise and so do you if you want to survive.” That night Bashanti gave up.
She says she always imagined, even after her divorces, that one day she would be a housewife with a husband and children. Now her nights were no longer for sleeping – there were customers, and tears.
Bashanti spent many years in the trade, moving around different red-light areas of Calcutta. But though she was trapped, she always remembered her responsibility towards her family. She managed to arrange for her two younger sisters to get married, and her focus today is to care for her elderly parents and little brother – along with her 2 ½-year-old daughter and a new man who looks after her well.
Bashanti was introduced to Freeset by a friend who also had been a prostitute. Freedom was something that she had forced herself not to think about. Now, she has completed 3 months training and is ready to sew export-quality jute bags.
In a way, it brings her back full circle: She came to Calcutta with the promise of a sewing job. Many years later, she’s doing just that – and not just sewing. Freeset is about freedom. Bashanti sews bags for freedom.