Daughters of the Red Light: Coming of Age in Mumbai's Brothels by Shanoor Seervai Read Free Book Online Page A

to go to summer camp in the U.S. and the U.K. One of the requirements is a permanent address, but because their days at their residence are numbered, the passports are in jeopardy. Robin makes trip after trip to the passport office, shunted from one official to another. There’s no precedent for girls from the red-light district applying for passports, and Indian bureaucracy isn’t known for making exceptions for those without clout.
    Through it all, Robin manages to insulate the girls from the struggle. When I speak with the two girls, they bubble with excitement about visiting another country and summer camp. That any hurdle could come in the way is hardly on their minds.
    Eviction day arrives in June, and Robin still hasn’t found a home. She’s forced to split the girls up among Kranti’s various staff members. She keeps looking, incessantly calling landlords.
    What must it be like to never have a moment of rest, to move from one crisis to the next, all the while knowing ten girls are entirely dependent on you?
    Robin does finally find a stand-alone bungalow that would be suitable.
    The price tag is high, but it would mean they’d never again have to worry about complaining neighbors. And it’s a much larger space.
    A few months after everyone has settled in, Robin steps onto the balcony one evening as I speak to her over the phone. She still can’t believe she’s survived another storm.
    “There was a day I was in tears,” she says. “I was just so upset, and nothing was working out.”
    “The kids were coming back from a trip, and when we all sat down to have dinner that evening, I just felt that all of it was worth it.”
    No matter what, the Kranti family remains intact.
    *****
    Robin acknowledges that not all the girls emerge as charmingly confident as Shweta.
    Saira has a love-hate relationship with Kranti. I met her on my first visit. Our conversation consisted of one-line answers to my earnest questions and lasted all of ten minutes. The whole time, she cast a suspicious gaze on my notebook and recorder with brooding eyes that always seemed on the precipice of violence.
    I make a mental note to go back another day to talk more with her. I’m used to dealing with people who don’t want to speak to me, and sometimes I take a more pushy approach. With Saira, I’ll need to be gentle if I’m to get through.
    The second time around, we sit alone in the study. Besides two cats, the house is empty. All the other girls are at school. Saira starts out the same as before. She squints slightly at every question. Her responses are bare as bones.
    I can see her weighing the pros and cons of sharing intimate details of her childhood with a stranger. When it is apparent I’m not going to leave in a hurry, she begins to grow more comfortable, eventually backing up her story to when she was six years old.
    It happened around four in the morning, when it was dark outside in her village in South India. The roosters hadn’t even started to crow. Saira still remembers the color of the sheets. Orange, her favorite color. She was wearing a red salwaar khameez, her other favorite color. Nearby, her older sister was fast asleep.
    Saira woke up when her father entered her bed. His hands felt cold on her skin, his breath had that funny smell like when he shouted. At first, she thought he was going to beat her, as he sometimes did. Instead, he pushed the lower hem of her khameez up above her stomach and did something that hurt much, much worse.
    Her memory of what happens after is blurred, a lot of pain and a lot of tears, both her own and her sister’s. Three days later, her mother returned from the city, where she’d moved for a high-paying job. Her parents fought with each other, screaming for hours. Her mother prevailed, and the next day Saira was on a train, leaving behind her father and sister.
    I ask Saira if she told her mother what happened.
    “No. I didn’t tell anyone. I thought it was my fault.” She