'Unspoken' is part of In Transit, a double bill featuring 'Unspoken' and 'Untitled'. A commonly explored (and much exploited) subject on stage is prostitution. It is often romanticized as the world’s oldest profession. We have even learned to laugh at the business of prostitution with finely scripted comedies. Alas, for every one Irma la Douce there are a million untold tales of horrific exploitation, craftily maintained by well organized human trafficking networks that are, in effect, run as business empires. The stakes are high, the business models ruthless. Human trafficking, with particular reference to trafficking for prostitution, can easily be recognized as a widespread South Asian phenomenon. The unholy “golden” triangle comprising Bangladesh, Nepal and India is well studied and documented. (So is a ‘triangle’ further East with villages in the north of Thailand as the suppliers.) While it is important to have facts, figures, data and analyses to come to grips with the subject, it can too easily remain in the realm of academic kicks. Even a “case study” can often provide a voyeuristic satisfaction, rather than an empathetic bind to the living tragedy. Coming to think about it, a play script may also end up with the same shortcoming. Perhaps one way to cross over from academics to the real world is to get a glimpse of the violence that remains central to the system. The play would be incomplete without the violence. The play explores the tragedy of Chinku, a real person in a real trap in a real trafficking system, although with a fictitious name in the play. It must be evident to any performing group that Chinku is part of a brothel system that is part of a Syndicate system that is part of a trafficking system that is part of a demand-supply system that is part of …. Where does one stop? Where does one begin?

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