By Somnath Mukherji,
I went for a quick visit to Nishtha’s day and night shelter for the children of the sex workers of Baruipur in South 24 Parganas. About 30 children are here during the day while 40 to 45 children spend the night here. The children, as in any other place were very lively and animated. Some of them recited poems while some danced to music from the mobile phones. Children come here for a few hours before they go to school and then again after school. Some teachers support them with academics as well games & music.
It was about 4pm and some of the women were already sitting outside on the narrow lanes within 300 feet of the Sinchan shelter. Along with Mina di, and a few other workers of Nishtha we entered into an office room with the women whose children were part of Sinchan. I met a mother whose daughter was part of the Sinchan family from her very childhood had recently graduated from college and found a job as a nurse in a government hospital. Mina-di was narrated later on how difficult it was for the girl as well as people from Nishtha to see her through college. They were under constant pressure and threat from the trafficking networks who wanted to whisk her away into flesh trade. Her mother and Nishtha were determined not to let her go.
In the midst of talking to the women in the office, a man, possibly drunk came and started pulling one of the women who was carrying a child, saying that a customer was waiting. Since he had given Rs 500 she had to go right away. It was the mother of the nurse who intervened and gently showed the man outside. She then explained that even this resistance could be dangerous. The child who was perhaps a year old was abandoned in the field by his mother. The other women found the baby and handed it over to his grandmother who has been raising him. Without his mother the baby had fallen into grade 3 malnourishment but had recovered now with support from Nishtha. These lanes are hell – one of the women said, we want our children to be raised mostly away from here.
Later on I learned from Mina-di that the trafficking network was extremely strong. Ironically, here the birth of a girl was very valuable to these networks. They could bid on her for Rs 15000 and then she would be taken away from her mother and raised elsewhere. This shook me to the core. The many other details of the lives of the women and the children that Mina-di shared only began to give me an idea into the challenges they faced and the importance of the work that Nishtha was doing.
Back in the main building where Nishtha is established, there were about 200 women who had gathered from 6 of the 300 villages where Nishtha works. The hall reverberated with the calls of “Nari Shakti Zindabad” – Long Live Women’s Power.
A few women performed a moving play to highlight the ills of child marriage and patriarchy and then asked the audience for feedback on each character – the mother in law, the husband and the father of the child bride. They asked for my feedback too. During the discussion one of the women told me that things had already changed and that is the reason why so many of them could be gathered here Once again, I left the hall raising my hands to Nari Shakti Zindabad.
As I left Nishtha, I could only think of the immense strength and resilience of the sex-workers who are so brutally ostracized by the society. Perhaps some of the strongest women I have met – salutes to them. Nari Shakti Zindabad!
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Somnath Mukherji is a volunteer with Association for India’s Development ( www.aidindia.org)