Srilakshmi is a terrifying example of this; the other girl, there is simply no way of knowing how she is coping on her own in a family comprising educated and cultured people. It cannot be nice for her, being that desperately alone in one’s own home.

Prema

Prema’s mother died when she was three.

Prema’s father remarried when she was four.

Prema had stepsiblings, a brother and sister, by the time she was six. Prema had no problems with her stepmother or vice versa, and even missed her when she went with her children to her village.

Prema is seven. Her stepmother has just left for the village with her children. Prema’s father, an inspector of police, and Prema, are expected to join her for the summer holidays a few days later.

‘Here,’ says Prema’s father, ‘let me give you a bath today.’

Prema protests, no, no, she can bathe herself, she has been bathing herself all along, as also bathing her stepbrother and stepsister.

‘I know, I know, but today I feel like giving you a bath. Cannot a father do this?’

Prema’s father makes her undress, he spends a lot of time soaping her beginning-to-bud breast area. Prema is plump. He parts her legs and spends time soaping her behind, parting her constantly.

Prema’s father bathes her every single day for those five days, sometimes thrice a day. He keeps her locked in the house as he goes out on work and returns to bathe her again. By the third time he has soaped his erect penis and inserted it into Prema’s anus. By the sixth time he has vaginally penetrated her with it, bathing her again to wash off all the blood. Immediately after, he is sexually abusing her through every possible orifice, devouring her, muttering all the while, ‘First you are mine, my oota, my food to eat, before any other man sinks his teeth into you.’

When it is the day to go to the village, Prema’s inspector-father boards the bus alone to join his second wife and children. Prema has wrenched her hand away from his and run away from the bus station.

Prema is now a child-prostitute in Calcutta’s Sonagaachi. She is not plump anymore, she has several sexual diseases including Aids. She says she never complained against her inspector-father at the police station because she knew they would suspend him and then what would her stepbrother, stepsister and stepmother eat?

Child Prostitution

Should Prema be rescued from the brothel and if she refuses to go back home or if her family does not want her anymore, she will be put into a remand home. As will fourteen-year-old Seema who has been beaten and starved for three weeks in a Mumbaii brothel, she would not give in to the pressure. She was then put into a small room with a live cobra. She sat there, numb, staring at the cobra, for two days. She gave in. When, and if, she is found alive to be rescued, a remand home it will be.