When I flew out to India for the Sold shoot, it was the first time I’d been there since I was five. I always have very vivid memories of that time, which feel like flashbacks in a dream, the way that childhood does sometimes: the giant orange sun, the smell of sweet, steaming masala tea and malt biscuits, sitting in the thick reeds by the side of the road under the evening sky when our Jeep broke down. There was something all at once alien, familiar and grounding about being in India again. The noise was the first thing that struck me in Kolkata, from the hooting cars to the constant cawing of crows and then the masses of people methodically and chaotically getting on with their days, the smell of that Indian heat.
I tried to Wikipedia “loban” to find a way to describe the pungent incense-making stuff but it’s not on there. That’s made me smile. It’s one thing that I have experienced in life that’s not on Wikipedia. A small victory for a visceral as opposed to a virtual reality. Loban lao! On set that call would bring in the loban, fuming in coconut husks before each take leaving a sweet, thick, musty smell and a misty smoke that looked killer on camera. It made the atmosphere of Happiness House, the brothel in Sold, thicker, darker, more claustrophobic. As an actor you feed on these types of details that create the space and that smell will always bring me back to the shoot.
Sold follows the story of Lakshmi, a young girl of thirteen who is trafficked from her mountain village in Nepal to a brothel in India. In it I play the role of Anita, a fellow survivor who befriends her. Whilst being Anita, I had to think of life in Happiness House as an every day routine, albeit a horrific one that she would rebel against. She would wake up after a night of servicing men and brush her teeth and wash her face and drink chai and sit with her friends, maybe watch some TV and listen to some music before ‘work’ started all over again. Somehow millions of human beings live through this kind of enslaved life every day.
At times, while in character on set, the idea that this was Anita’s routine numbed me from the reality of it all but I remember the first moment when the penny dropped. Mumtaz the madam of the brothel instructs Anita and her friend Shahanna to put make up on an unknowing Lakshmi. I stood there in character listening to her instructions, and seeing Lakshmi my heart sank and burned at the same time, the reality and the horror of the situation set in. I didn’t sleep well that night.
Before I met Jeffrey D Brown, director of Sold I had no idea that trafficking existed in this way and on such a scale. Now I know the numbers. According to the ILO 20m people are in some form of slavery in the world, of that 4.5m are victims of forced sexual exploitation, 5m are children. 20, 000 children in Nepal are at risk of being trafficked each year, and 200,000 Nepali girls are estimated to be working in the sex industry in India.
The numbers are staggering. In the movie Mumtaz, the madam of the brothel clearly just sees herself as business woman. Human slavery is a lucrative business for those who see it that way, it generates an estimated $150 billion a year. I don’t understand how we can allow this trade of millions of men, women, boys and girls to carry on.
What saved me from just feeling lost and hopeless with it all was the fact that in some small way I was part of the Sold team and this film which has hope at its heart is going to shine a light on the reality of child trafficking and modern day slavery. I don’t understand how we can allow this and I don’t think we should.
Prevention is key to addressing the issue. Sold now has a charity partner, Childreach International, who are launching a campaign #TaughtNotTrafficked to keep children in school, where they are less vulnerable to trafficking. The film and campaign are a call to action against the human rights issue of our time.
Neerja Naik trained as an actor at the Drama Centre London
Sold receives its first UK screening at the London Indian Film Festival on 10 and 12 July, launching the #TaughtNotTrafficked campaign with Childreach International
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