Epilogue: Another Virus, Another Lockdown

Summary

We have always been under lockdown. Previously it was the social lockdown. Then it was the HIV lockdown. And, now it is the Corona lockdown.

—Member of Durbar

Surely this is not how I, or the women I worked with, had envisioned the conclusion. How does one begin to recalibrate lives now bracketed between two viruses? Albeit CoV-2 is not HIV, the intimate familiarity with another global contagion understandably generated a blasé attitude, as it happened in the early days of the epidemic in Sonagachi. With the closing of national borders, as though the virus too would respect them, my relationship with Sonagachi and the didis abruptly and solely devolved into the ecosphere of WhatsApp. While I was petulantly transitioning to “working from home,” they tenderly reminded me that “it's not so bad after all, we have been doing this all our lives.”

India announced a two-week-long nationwide lockdown beginning on March 22, 2020. The sex workers, like others, were used to bandhs (strikes), so the lockdown simply seemed another version of everyday life on pause. However, this time it was not the usual strike to protest a hike in fuel prices or a policy imposed on the state by the central government. Most importantly, bandhs have usually been a windfall for Sonagachi. Typically, around late afternoon, the bandh's grip loosened, and customers – from in and outside Kolkata who attended the political rally – began pouring into Sonagachi. The talabandi (lockdown), however, defied the hours and stared the women in the face with desolate streets and a troubling silence.

Everyone had heard about the indomitable creep of the “corona” but few paid attention to this respiratory virus that was gripping the globe. When Basu inquired, Kohinoor Begum explained:

I hear about it every day. But little did I know that your corona erokom nachabey [will be this much of trouble]. We survive using our bodies. When I heard about that corona, how would I know whether we eat it or use it to oil our hair?

The scenario began changing drastically on March 24: a police barricade was set up at the entrance to Sonagachi. The police were not just surveillance agents; the barricade was undoubtedly the cordon sanitaire.