The Little Whore House

The little whore house stood next to a well-known and respected family home on Ambujavilasom road in the heart or Thiruvanathapuram. About 5 minutes by foot from the main thoroughfare and the State Secretariat. It was an unassuming place with tiled roof and a lone door opening right on to the street. Much of the drama and little melee we used to witness as we passed by each morning and evening was all that we were privy too. Nothing beyond that!

It was about 200 meters or so from where I lived and, I and my friend used to walk past the little whore house each morning to school and on our way back in the evening. I was in the 5^th standard when I was told about this strange, and to me then, a fascinating place in our neighbourhood. It was my friend two years senior to me who introduced me to the intrigues of the place. Being about 8 or 9 years and fresh from the protected environment of a convent education, many things were inexplicable though curious and amusing. Amusing especially when on our way to school or back we witnessed the police raid at the whorehouse. A ramshackle police van parked by the door of the whorehouse and potbellied fearsome-looking policemen and a few scrawny ones with only handle mustache to evoke trepidation bundle few women inmates and their plebeian clientele into the police van. Looking back, the policemen would now evoke clownish feel, attired in their odd short trousers with ample ventilation around their hairy thighs for fresh air to blow up their groins. I recall the day after when we passed by, the old woman who ran the place (a hag perhaps in her early 70s) , always with sandalwood paste and a few shreds of flowers on her grey hair sitting at the door forlorn and sad, having lost her clientele, women and business to the police outrage.

She lived there with her daughter (a single woman) and her teenage son. I did not notice any disenchantment in the daughter nor her son who apparently let the old woman run her cottage industry.

There were occasional arguments at the door between petulant patrons and the inmates. I saw one day one man forced out of the place by a few women inmates. He was very agitated, quite inebriated too and was shouting expletives. An unhappy and a dissatisfied customer, perhaps! “Caveat emptor”, I now would suggest to him.

Looking back there was no clear discomfort, annoyance and moralistic angst from the people who lived around. An impossibility in today’s phoney, voyeuristic Mallu society. The place seemed to have survived all by itself and ignored by the elite folks who lived in the neighbourhood. Whether the clan men in the region frequented the whorehouse talking refuge in shadows of the night, I can only guess with some amusement nevertheless!

The story ended one day abruptly with the death of the old woman. It abounded rumour that someone poisoned her, but no one could tell. However, the passing of the old woman ended perhaps the saga of “the little whore house”. The daughter and son vanished soon after and now a multistoried office building stands on the 5 cents of land where perhaps much of Vatsyana’s exhortations were religiously indulged in, but all at a value.