The Autobiography of a Sex Worker

TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD

 Nalini Jameela Writes Her Story

 Nalini Jameela came into public view in Kerala in 2005 when her autobiography, Oru Laingikatozhilaliyute Atmakatha, was published in Malayalam, and became a controversial bestseller. The book went into six editions in one hundred days and sold 13,000 copies. No less an authority than M. Mukundan, one of Kerala’s most powerful literary figures, condemned the book as a ‘prurient money-spinner’. The controversy deepened when Jameela decided to reject the first version, and prepare a second version, which she authorised as the authentic one.

 The furious debate around the book and its author, in which ‘inadvertent alliances’ between voices from the conservative right and some feminists were formed, evoked memories of an earlier controversy over a woman writing her story. This was in the early 1970s, and the controversy had been about the ‘revealing’ autobiography written by one of Kerala’s finest literary authors, Madhavikutty (Kamala Das). However, no two authors could be so differently located. Madhavikutty was born into an aristocratic Nair family, was the daughter of an eminent poet in Malayalam, and the niece of a prominent intellectual. She was already well known as a short story writer in Malayalam and as a poet and writer in English when Ente Katha appeared. Jameela came from a lower-middle class, lower caste (Ezhava) family, was removed from school at nine, and worked as a labourer and a domestic worker before becoming a sex worker. Later she became an activist and a filmmaker, but was not very well known outside a narrow sphere.

 Now it seemed as if she had taken over the crown of thorns from Madhavikutty — who had once been disparagingly referred to as the ‘queen of erotica’.