By Sylvia Yu Friedman
HONG KONG, Feb 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Pimp turned do-gooder Kaushic Biswas has swapped the brothel for the kitchen and is now teaching the sort of women he once exploited how to cook their way out of sex trafficking.
It is a total change from his Mumbai life back in the 1990s, when Biswas earned big money as a pimp, managing and selling women for sex after they had been trafficked into prostitution.
“Every night I broke down and cried. I cried because I was part of the exploitation,” Biswas told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Biswas was a trained chef whose life took a bad turn in 1991 and has now come full circle. Biswas says he wants to help victims of trafficking, the sort of women he once sold for sex to be abused by the wealthy clients he calls “johns”.
“Sometimes they forced me to watch.”
MASTER CHEF
Born in Calcutta, India, Biswas trained as a chef then worked in top hotels. But aged 21, he changed tack, discovered the underworld of Mumbai’s discos, and worked for 18 months hooking up women with wealthy clients, many from the Middle East.
“I was lost and needed money to survive. I knew I wasn’t supposed to do this,” he said. “Many of these ladies cried with me. They were drinking, some of them took drugs. Drinking was like drinking water for them.”
Something had to change. So Biswas bought a plane ticket to Thailand to escape Mumbai, working once more as a chef, first in a 5-star hotel in Thailand, next under his mentor in Hong Kong.
It was here that Biswas feels he found his true calling.
