Mumbai’s prostitutes bank on a better future
Trafficked and often tricked into prostitution, Mumbai’s sex workers are among the most marginalized in the world. Now a new cooperative bank is allowing them to do something they’ve never done before; save for a brighter future

Photos by Vikrant:

Zarina willingly shares her tea with this regular client of hers who has begun to like her more than she expects him to. Zarina like other girls in the flesh-trade, latched on to affection wherever she found it. She found a soft corner in Pervez’s heart and clung on to it for a few beautiful moments. Parvez was an unemployed shoemaker. More often girls like her end up paying for whatever dregs of affection they receive with their hard earned wages. Ambika started giving money to Parvez for the upkeep of his family.kamathipura,mumbai.

It was once a desire to visit Kamathipura, the famed red-light light area in Mumbai to document and research commercial sex workers from the traditional devadasi castes. From my repeated visits I learnt of the pending escape of one of the workers with the help of a client who wished to marry her. I pursued it.It is this moment of transition of a young girl from a prostitute to a respected housewife is what I shot literally at the threshold of her brothel. It was to be the first in a series of documenting a life, its reformation, its value, and through it the value of many more such lives.