In the sex trade, the demand for young girls is high due to a belief that sex with children holds less risk of HIV infection, and, in fact, can cure the disease As the customer entered her room, the 14-year-old’s mother pushed a cassette into the tape recorder and turned the volume up. Before leaving, she looked at the teenager and warned: “Do not shout or cry, even if it hurts.” The room in one of Kolkata’s red light districts was small, no more than 10ft by 8ft, and had a bed with a lumpy mattress, a dust-laced air conditioner, a small shelf that held various deities and the tape recorder. The man was in his late 20s, she guesses. “I was trembling and crying. He said, bachche (kid), I have paid Rs.50, 000 to your mother to spend two hours with you.” She pushed, hit, shouted for help and then she gave in. After the man left, her mother gave her medicine for the pain. Then she left her alone for a few months. But after she turned 15, it was time for business and there was no turning back. The girl remembers growing up in a lower middle class family in Mumbai. She was just in preschool when a couple kidnapped her while she was playing out in the open. She remembers crying and begging to be returned home. Instead, the couple insisted she start calling them “mummy-papa”. There were other girls in the house, she says. “Everyone called them ‘mummy-papa’. So did me.” Running away was not an option—she had no money and no idea of where to run to.

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