On a rainy winter night in 2009, Kamala (name changed), a native of Tiruvallur, reached Chennai and called the number that her “agent” had provided her the previous night.
She had been in the business of prostitution for a year. Abject poverty after her husband left her and their two children for another woman forced Kamala into the illegal profession.
A week before she reached Chennai, she was given an inviting offer. “They offered me `8,000 and said I would have to act in a film. Compared to what we earn in prostitution, this was too good an offer,” she told Express.
She was then lodged in a small hotel on the Old Mahabalipuram Road. “The room had multiple cameras. Though I knew this was a porn movie I was going to act in, it seemed like it was a real film,” she recalled.
The fact that she was paid almost immediately made her realise that the business of pornography should be a lucrative one.
A number of women involved in the flesh trade now see pornography as an easy wage earner, shielding them from the dangers of strangers who sometimes hurt them physically.
Express, with the help of a police officer, tracked down two such women, who shared their experiences. Kamala said the “sense of security” in the porn industry was an important aspect to why more and more prostitutes were taking to acting in such movies. “Firstly, the people you work with are known faces. In prostitution, you do not know who your customer is. There have been so many times when the man turned out to be psychotic or drunk and would be violent,” she says, with tears running down her cheeks.
Anjali, a 33-year-old woman, shared similar experiences. Hailing from Madurai where her father was killed in an accident, she settled in Triplicane when she was 24 years old after her agent shifted to the city.
She says the remuneration for acting in a porn movie was much higher than in prostitution. “In prostitution, your agent is paid a lump sum amount. You are at his mercy and he usually gives you very little. But here you are paid almost immediately,” she says, recalling her first payment of Rs 5,000 when she was taken to Puducherry.
Most of the agents involved in the business of making porn hail from Andhra Pradesh, the women say. And Puducherry is a safe haven for making such films given the huge number of lodging houses in the tourist town.
But the two women, who have since given up the profession, say the shifting nature of the porn got them worried. “When we started off, it was different. But as time passed, the agents started asking different things. I gave up after a film where I was asked to take three men. Though there is no brutality like in prostitution, it was very painful. But you had to pretend as though it is not,” says Kamala.
A senior official at the Anti Vice Squad says pornography makes the prospect of reformation difficult, as the women become visible to the outside world. “I remember one woman whom we called in begging us not to proceed with the case since she had gotten married and her husband did not know her past. When they act in a porn movie, the prospect of getting back to normal becomes difficult,” officer said.
Also, unlike the West where porn actors enter into specific contracts and have quite a say on how the material is used, the women here are mostly illiterate and end up regretting their participation once the movies make their way to the Internet.