Empower Future Leaders from Mumbai Red-Light Areas

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