Empower Girls from Mumbai's Red Light Area

You can’t begin to imagine how much has changed since the last time I wrote. You could probably say we’ve been to hell and back…or the moon and back…maybe they’re the same thing??

For those of you who follow us on social media, you’re probably aware of the fact that in April, we were forcefully evicted from our shelter home where Kranti has been working/living/learning out of for nearly four years. Yes, this is our EIGHTH eviction. And every single eviction had a different reason. The first was because my story was all over the news and the neighbors didn’t want “girls like that” living with “normal families,” so they evicted us. Another was because someone didn’t want so many Muslim girls living in their Hindu home. 

This eviction, however, had nothing to do with us. Our landlord hadn’t paid the bank, so the bank came with police and court officials to seal the flat. Given less than 15 minutes to pack, we left the home with a few sets of clothes, and we split up across the city. Some girls went back to their mothers in the red-light area, some went to stay with friends and family within the sex worker community. For weeks, we lived without our clothes, medicines, or ID documents. After our situation was published in the local media, many generous people came together to help provide emergency food, clothes, and toiletries for us, but we continued to miss school, classes, and therapy sessions. 

After weeks of searching for the ninth Kranti home in Mumbai, we finally made one of the biggest decisions of our lives. With endless hopes, prayers, dreams, and ambition, we decided……to buy our own home!!! As you probably know, Mumbai is one of the cities in the world with the most expensive real estate and there is no way we can afford to purchase even one-bedroom flat in the city (normally about $1 million) so we decided we are moving to another place in India that we feel deeply connected with - Himachal Pradesh. Everyone at Kranti has attended workshops, trainings & retreats in Himachal over the past few years, and we all fell in love with this area.

The home we’ve decided to purchase is a 4-story, 10-bedroom, 12K square foot home! While it needs a lot of work, repair, and TLC, we are preparing it to welcome 15-20 more Krantikaris next year. We JUST raised enough to make a down payment of $185K and we have one year to raise the remaining $250K before the home officially becomes ours.

Your support and contributions are crucial as we work towards this goal, creating a space where Kranti can continue to thrive and make a difference in the lives of the Krantikaris. Every contribution counts, and together, we can turn our dream into reality.

Thank you so much for being part of this incredible journey! 

Hi, my name is Shraddha and I’m one of the Krantikaris. First of all, I hope your new year is off to a great start! After a couple quiet years without many performances, events, or travel, 2023 has been a busy, loud, crazy adventure.  As with the rest of the world, Covid-19 reminded us yet again just how marginalized and vulnerable sex workers are in India, despite Kranti’s tireless work (as well as that of numerous other NGOs). It broke our hearts to see our community’s plight during lockdown - it seemed that girls & women at high risk of mental breakdowns were abandoned by all of society. We, of course, could not abandon them, so we did our best to feed their stomachs by distributing rice and lentils. But we still felt helpless, as we were unable to feed their souls. 

So this year, we started a project called “Haan Hum,” (This means “Yes, US!”) an art project in collaboration with actors and artists from around India to feed the souls of Kamathipura’s sex workers. For a couple days a month, the artists, we Krantikaris, and all the sex workers come together to play, paint, sing, dance, laugh, cry and share. Although it’s only a small dent in what the community needs, all of us Krantikaris got so much joy this year from watching our mothers, sisters and aunties ditch their work and worries to spend some time on self-care. We even took many of the sex workers to the Prince of Wales art museum in the city for our last day together - it was their first time ever visiting a museum!

The day after our four-day art project ended, we boarded the train to Gandhinagar, a nearby city where we were invited to perform our flagship show, Lal Batti Express. We were very nervous because it was our first performance after three years and there were only eight of us to do the entire show. We gave our best and the performance went very well. For us, it’s not just a “performance” but it’s a connection we feel towards each other and towards the audience members. It was such a nice feeling to be on stage again after such a long break and also see our audience members laugh, cry, share, and open their hearts to us. 

Lastly, I have my own exciting news to share. In 2022, I got a full scholarship for an art residency in Ireland. From September until December, I had the chance to learn many new art skills. I also really enjoyed meeting other young, passionate artists from around the world. After coming back from this amazing experience I was worried about what to do next. Luckily, an opportunity walked into my hands. For the last two months, I’ve been painting the classrooms of Kamathipura's (the red-light area) government school. I'm excited to do this project because I have always wanted to do something in my own community, and the most exciting thing is I'm painting classrooms for 1st to 5th students. I always hated school as a child because the classrooms were so dull and the teachers were so boring. I hope things are changing now. So I started with an activity with the students to know what they want in their classrooms. So far, I’ve finished one classroom with “underwater” theme that has water, shells and animals. I’m having a lot of fun and I’m so excited to finish the other four classrooms this month!!

I hope you enjoyed reading this report, and if you have any thoughts, please feel free to respond with feedback. Thank you, as always, for your kind, generous, consistent support. We of course know that none of our work or even our lives, let alone our dreams, could be possible without your love, faith and support. You have been with us through the hardest of times and also the most beautiful of times. It is YOU who gives us the courage to dream, and it is YOU who shows us that dreams do come true. Thank you for being with us on this crazy journey called life!