Kamathipura is gritty at its worst, but otherwise plain, sombre and dull. There are days when it will surprise you; like the last time this writer visited the area, notoriously remembered as Asia’s largest red-light district. This was in June 2016 for an article I was pursuing for this very newspaper on the gentrification of the neighbourhood of Mumbai with the infamous pincode 400008. Real estate kingpins had been covetously eyeing the rundown tenements. The hope was that the dingy pinjras would slowly come to be replaced by plush high-rises, white-washing any stains of a murky past.

That day, 11th lane was cradled in chaos. A group of sex workers huddled around me, disturbed and desperate, as they spoke about the “burqewale log” or masked goons who’d beat them up with rods and chappals, threatening them to leave. The alleged harassment and growing anti-prostitution sentiment among the new conservative residents may have left them shaken, but despite the lack of support, they tenaciously held on. Between 2002 and 2012, Kamathipura’s sex workers had dwindled from 30,000 to roughly 2,000. The shrinking numbers had left many silenced. In a ruinous, decrepit pinjra that led into a maze of rooms, partitioned by thin curtains, I met more women, who feared stepping out and making a scene of protest. They spoke of having no one to plead their case to, because there was nobody to listen.