A dark side of Mumbai – and a home away from ‘home’

A small group from the Deputy High Commission went after work one evening to a part of Mumbai we wouldn’t normally visit.

Kamathipura has numerous small businesses, and like every part of the city is a great example of entrepreneurism. That evening we saw the dark side of business, calling on the founder  of an NGO called Prerana, helping the young children of women working in Mumbai’s brothels.  Priti took us around with her on some of her calls, where the housing conditions for anybody were bleak – but for a prostitute almost unimaginably squalid. Many of the women, forced into the sex trade through illegal human trafficking, had apparently come from hundreds of miles away, including from other countries in the region. Some were lining the monsoon hit streets waiting for an early evening “appointment” in a room (and a home) scarcely bigger than a cupboard. Some of us saw a nine year old girl on her mother’s bed, waiting to die from HIV/AIDS.

Most of the children of the sex workers are, if it is possible to describe anything as “fortunate” in those surroundings, luckier.  Priti’s NGO, which she has run for an amazing 30 years, is five minutes walk from the brothels, and provides a home for the night away from their mothers’ workplace. As dusk settled after a colossal downpour, we saw children drifting into the accommodation, releasing some of their pent-up energy with some Bollywood style dancing, before tucking into a very simple meal and a night curled up together on a common floor and a threadbare mattress.

Amid the depravity that we glimpsed there were rays of sunlight. One of the teachers, brought up by a sex worker in the area, is making a livelihood from his wonderful physical agility as a dancer. And we left in awe of the founder of the NGO, who has worked in the area with thousands of children  who would otherwise would face a nightmarish existence.

Little wonder that our office has chosen Prerana to give some modest support through fund raising, and that the Government of India and Tata’s Institute of Social Sciences have hailed the work started by its tireless founder.