One of the few things that we learn as a kid is to treat everyone equally irrespective of their background, gender, caste, and area. However, our perspective changes as we grow. We learn about various rituals every day. We meet new people and they encounter their mentality, so we forget the basics.
Sandhya Nair is a third-year student, studying at Ashoka University, Mumbai. She is pursuing a master’s in Psychology, while her other subject is creative writing. It is a story of a girl who stood up for her rights and demanded to be treated equally in a world that only sees her as property and nothing beyond it.
Everyone who doesn’t hold the same status as us, we banish them mentally. We forget we are human beings before belonging to any caste, gender, area, occupation. In today’s world, human beings have become arrogant. Now, people need to fight for their rights to be treated equally with respect.
Sandhya was born in a red-light area. Her mother was a sex worker. She grew up around these people and had to put up with the cheap mentality of our society.
Hence, she was always looked down on by everyone wherever she went anywhere. Let us hear her story.
Sandhya Nair – My Story
I am Sandhya Nair, and I am a daughter of a sex worker. I was born in the oldest red-light district of the Indian subcontinent – Kamathipura, Mumbai. Kamathipura was the only place that treated me as a human being. Everyone took care of me and loved me. My mom worked for our family, but it was not enough to meet the necessities. I helped her by doing domestic work in areas near Kamathipura.
Until the age of 7-8, I was happy, unaware of the outside world and its atrocities. I met a different world when I wanted to go to school. I was really excited. My mom never deprived me of the best in anything, so she enrolled me in a private school. My mother lied about her occupation during the admission procedure because no one would have taken the daughter of a sex worker.
Though it turned out to be the most terrible time of my life. In school, kids bullied me about being a dark-skinned person. The students of my age called me “Kaali”. When they got to know about my mother’s occupation, the news of me being a daughter of a sex worker spread like wildfire. Their perspective changed and now the way they saw me was entirely different from before. Previously, they mocked me for being a dark-toned girl, but now I was treated like a nobody.
I had to put up with their worst behavior. Once a few students had pushed me in the corridors and no one came forward to help. My classmates wouldn’t talk to me. I remember eating my lunch alone in a lonely corner.
Sometimes students would beat me for no reason and teachers wouldn’t stop them. I was assaulted physically and sexually. The administration could not dismiss me from the school because I was a sex worker’s daughter. Therefore, they left no stone unturned to make me drop out of school by myself.
My teachers also supported them and gave their maximum effort. In my class, I was made to sit on a broken bench in a corner. They disrespected me because of my identity. I couldn’t complain because whenever I complained, they would take no action. In fact, they will point it out at me and move on from it as if the injustice never happened. They wouldn’t leave a chance to make me feel like I was out of the place. I tried my best to survive in the surroundings, but it was too difficult to bear. I was an innocent kid, and I had done nothing wrong to deserve it.
In 2013, after finishing 10th standard, we moved back to my hometown Kerala because of my dad’s deteriorating health condition. My mom started working as a tailor to suffice for the family’s needs, but it was not enough. So helping her, I took two jobs to pay money for my college and tuition fees.
I wanted to study further, but I knew my two jobs won’t even help me with it.
There was a girl named Shweta, whom I knew because she came from the same region as Kamathipura. I saw her article online where she had mentioned how she was studying abroad with the help of an organization. I knew she could help me if I could reach out to her. But, I did not have any internet or mobile phone to contact her. So, I went to a cyber cafe and typed a long note telling her about all I have been going through since childhood and sent it via Facebook.
I came back home and wished for something magical to happen. I could not check my messages often, still I had my hopes high. After a few days, I visited the cafe. There it was, Shweta had replied, asking me to connect with Robin, the co-founder of the NGO Kranti who had helped her.
The NGO worked for marginalized children and children of sex workers. I messaged Robin, stating everything about my life, from my past to what I wanted to do in the future. She asked me to come back to Mumbai, and she will help me. I reached Mumbai to meet Robin. She heard me out and gave me a place to live in a shelter home. 24 other people were staying in the same home.
Each one of them had a background where they went through a lot in the past. It won’t be wrong to say that Kranti changed my life. We were 24 people who did not know where life may take us, but now we are going around the world telling people our life stories.
We have a theater group- “Lal Batti Express”, meaning Red Light Express, and travel around the world and do theater. We have been to various world-renowned stages, where people appreciated us for who we actually are. Several media houses contacted me to give interviews and talk about the red light areas. I want to tell people through these interviews that red light areas are not what they see in movies.
It’s so much more than that. I have lived in those areas, and I am not ashamed of it. People only see sex workers living in the area, but they have a family. Just like my mother, many other women are working vigorously for the sake of their families, to feed their husbands, parents, and children.
They are not sex workers but mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters taking care of their families. Just like a normal middle-class household. In fact, their lives are tougher than normal women’s. For me, it is the same world as outside where these sex workers and their children live like human beings as the “normal people”. The only difference is that the outer world does not treat them like humans, but properties or even lower than this.
I have never felt unsafe when I lived in Kamathipura. It became unsafe when I stepped into the real world. I was bullied, raped, and physically abused. The rape was so frequent that I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to give up because of the people who made me think I was not worthy. Each time I wanted to end my life; I asked God why he gave me life if I was unworthy. But I am happy that I did not give up otherwise, I wouldn’t be what I have become.
I am sharing my story with the world proudly, hoping that someday we will be treated equally like others, hoping that the people will change their perspective towards sex workers and their families.
Currently, I am studying for an undergraduate degree, but I have plans to help the community children because I know what changes a single help can bring to one’s life. I am also planning to publish a book and start my theater association in the future. However, I am still trying to figure out my life, and I have a lot to achieve in the future.
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