Empower Future Leaders from Mumbai Red-Light Areas

Namaste everyone! Wishing you all a very, very, VERY happy new year, wherever you are I wish this year brings a lot of love and happiness in your life. :) I hope you had a wonderful holiday for Christmas and New Year. Did you do anything exciting?

At Kranti as normal we had a lot of crazy adventures, and of course a few misadventures also! The number one best part of the winter break was that we got to go somewhere new, exciting and very very beautiful….Andaman Islands!!! Normally it takes three days by ship from Chennai to reach Andaman, but for some reason there were no ships running alllll December. And this should have been a hint for us that we should not go. But because we are Kranti, we decided to go. Even though there were no ships, Robin (co-founder of Kranti) asked her sister for help, and she sponsored our flights to go! And I can honestly it was the MOOOOSTTT beautiful place I have seen in my life! But that’s not even the best part...you know what’s the best part? It’s because many of the Kranti girls mothers came on the trip too! So for many of them it was their first time on a flight, their first time away from housework, and the best part, their first time NOT listening or answering to any men! :) It was so nice to see the mothers playing in the water like kids, trying new things like snorkeling, and (shockingly) taking even more selfies than the Kranti girls!! We spent a lot of time together reflecting on the last year and also planning for 2019. Here are a few questions for you that we discussed in our meetings.

1. What is something you did this year that you’ll remember for the rest of your life?
2. What did you spend time on last year that gave you the most peace, joy, or happiness?
3. What was your gift to the world this year?
4. What were three nice things you did last year for someone else?
5. What were three nice things someone else did for you?
6. Which three people are you most grateful for this year and why?
7. What are you ready to forgive or let go of from last year?
8. What are three things you will do for your mental, physical, and emotional health next year?
9. What is one fear you’d like to overcome in 2019?
10. At the end of 2019, how do you want to describe your year?

Hope it gives you an idea of the meetings and discussions over winter break! It was a wonderful way to ring in the new year, discussing our past year and planning/dreaming together.

Then there was the not-so-good part of the trip! There is a well known spiritual leader in India who wanted to hold an event and fundraiser for sex workers, so he invited girls and women from red-light areas all over the country to come for the event. So from Andaman, we headed off to Ayodhya...if you’ve heard of this place, it’s probably because it’s infamous as igniting Hindu-Muslim riots all over the country. It was a very interesting experience for all of us girls, one because we are all used to living in big cities and it was a small town, and two, because...well...everyone there treated us TERRIBLY. While the spiritual leader wanted to help sex workers improve their lives, it seemed the rest of the town wanted to make sure they stay as oppressed as possible! We were forced to sit in a place sanctioned for sex workers, we were served food separately so that “normal people wouldn’t have to worry about the sex workers’ diseases.” It was a shock, to say the least. But this is life at an NGO….we have to do a lot of strange things for the hopes of some financial support!  The good news, of course, is that this experience made us all the more grateful for all of you. Thank you sooooo much for continuing to support Kranti’s work, and for not treating us like second (or third!) class citizens in exchange for your donation!!

And then, the best part...we started Kranti School full time again!! We had been on break because so many girls were in boarding school or studying in university, so the girls at home were doing internships and volunteer work. But now we have school full time...and sometimes it’s more than full time!! Just to give you an idea, here’s our daily schedule: We wake up around 8 to do chores (washing dishes, cleaning bathrooms), then we all do yoga at 9am, breakfast/shower at 10, and start school at 11. The first hour is 20 minutes of meditation, 20 minutes of journaling, then 20 minutes of writing gratitude letters (it can be to friends, donors, mentors - anyone!). The next hour is spent on looking at Reuters Day in Photos, 20 minutes of logic puzzles like solving cryptograms or sudoku, and 20 creative thinking exercises - like building a newspaper parachute to drop an egg from our window on the 6th floor! Then we read aloud and do reading comprehension worksheets for an hour. The rest of the day is taken up by Music Mondays, TED Talk Tuesdays, Worldly Wednesdays, Thinking Thursdays, and Field Trip Fridays. It’s super fun but also super exhausting...we are up to our ears in homework and logic puzzles!! (If you want to know more about Kranti School, you can watch the video below!)

Okay, I have to get back to my homework!! But thank you so much for reading this. Like I said, we all have a very, very deep appreciation for all of you “strangers” around the world who keep supporting us and making our lives possible despite never having met us. And for accepting us for who we are without any judgement. May this new year bring you the same - lots of support, joy, laughter, and unconditional love. :)

With gratitude,

Ashwini

Links:

• Kranti School Video

Hello everyone, how are you? My name is Danish and I’m 20, I’ve been at Kranti for almost four years now. I study in the US but I had to take a break this semester due to fundraising issues, so I’m living at Kranti, studying part-time, and working part-time. I’m excited to write Kranti’s GG report because a lot of exciting and amazing things were happening in the last three months...let me walk you through a couple of them. :)

Our most favorite thing that happened very recently in September, which was our visitors from the Crooked Trails, a voluntourism group from America. What do you expect when you hear “voluntourism”? Young people trying to change the world, right? We thought the same. But guess what?? The youngest person among them was 33 years old, and the oldest was 67 years old -- she had seven grandchildren!!! We really had a fun time with them taking them around Mumbai like a tour to Hare Krishna temple in Juhu, as well as Haji Ali, a famous Sufi shrine that’s a 15-min walk into the ocean! And later, we took them to the Bollywood movie about trafficking and for some Mumbai street shopping! All of them were so open and friendly - they would sit on the floor with us, eat with their hands, and they even tried to learn our dance moves! We were so, so incredibly inspired by them, that even in this age they have a very much zeal to learn things and to explore different cultures and the countries. Spending time with them really taught us that there is no such thing as “too old” to learn!

The second most interesting things that happened was that in July, we went with two Tibetan Buddhist monks to a small Dalit Buddhist village, Sakharwadi. We spent time with the community in their beautiful, organic, bamboo open-air center with inverted roofs! The monks led a small mindfulness meditation practice and taught us about the differences and similarities between neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy.

And lastly, on a completely different note, the MOST special thing that happened to us and to our country was on 6 September 2018. For those of you who are not in India, you might not have heard of “377,” which is an act that criminalizes the sex lives of LGBTQI people. After many, many years of legal struggle, 377 was finally overturned on 6 September!!! As Kranti, we have been to many pride parades and 377 protests over the years. We see a lot of connection between the way queer people are treated and sex workers are treated in this country and we think it’s important to fight for everyone’s rights together. So for all of us, it was such an amazing thing to see the battle for 377 finally won!! (The photo above is from a protest four years ago!)

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you also had an interesting summer! I am still in India for another three months and trying to enjoy and study hard, but I’m also dying to get back to the US. Thank you so much for continuing to support me, Kranti, and all the girls in general. We are so grateful to our donors every single day and can’t thank you enough for making our lives possible. Thank you, and take care.

Sincerely,
Danish