The representation of the sex worker in Indian celluloid seldom displays attempt at non-voyeurism. Satyajit Ray, on the other hand, took a more nuanced look at the sex worker, finds Shoma A. Chatterji on the birth centenary year of the maestro. Without taking a moralistic stance it is as if his characters reflect social realities that he observes around him. It was true of his portrayal of the sex worker in three of his films as well. In Ashani Sanket Distant Thunder , Chutki, a poor girl from a lower caste is pulled into prostitution by hunger which the brickfield agent takes advantage of during the infamous Bengal Famine in during the World War II.
Historians now establish that it was totally man-made as the British administration hoarded rice to feed soldiers about to arrive in the East. She runs away to the city with the agent perhaps to disappear in the red light district eventually. When driven to starvation, Chutki, unlike Moti who dies of starvation, or Ananga, who adjusts to the grim reality, is prepared to exchange sexual favours for a fistful of rice from a hideous, scarred man she abhors. Conditioned morals of a patriarchal society mean little to Chutki when hunger stares her in the face.
Women like Chutki are not uncommon in contemporary India. Ray perhaps can be credited with the first non-voyeuristic but a sensitive look at prostitution in Indian context through cinema. In Pratidwandi The Adversary, Ray introduces his viewers to a different kind of sex worker. She holds a job as a qualified nurse but moonlights as a sex worker.
Or is his discomfort rooted in the fact that he is not easy in the company of females? The woman speaks in a flirtatious, even mocking tone, and comes out in a bra and petticoat.
When she finds that Siddhartha is nervous, she asks him for a cigarette. She is quite open about her double life and it appears that she manages to keep the two occupations apart.
