Nalini Jameela is a bestselling author, activist and sex worker from Thrissur, Kerala. She started sex work at the age of 24. She was the president of the Kerala Sex Workers Forum. She has directed two documentaries, Jwalamukhikal and A Peep Into The Silence. Her autobiography Njan Laingikathozhilali, sold more than 40,000 copies in Malayalam, the language in which it was originally published, and was translated into English, French, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Telugu and Tamil. Reshma Bharadwaj is presently Assistant Professor at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kerala. She earned her PhD on Ways of Being: Ontological Insurrections by Little Selves in Keralam from the Department of Social Anthropolgy, Bergen University, Norway. Reshma has edited a volume entitled Mithyakalkkappuram on homosexuality in Kerala.
The term 'sex worker' often conjures up images of solitary women standing on streets, soliciting clients. Romantic Encounters of A Sex Worker, an engaging memoir by Nalini Jameela presents a fascinating story of the streets, the clients and life before and after the encounters. Nalini leads the reader through the nighttime fields and hedges, sleazy lodges hidden on the outskirts of cities, plantations shrouded in darkness, arak shops in the suburbs, vacant construction sites... Her narrative brings to life an array of clients--landlords, forest officers, travelling salesmen, field hands, small-town lodge managers, police officers, supervisors and more, capturing humorously the pomposity, patronising behaviour and pettiness of her clients.
