Vaishali Karande has been a part of the Prerana family for the last 2 decades and has directly worked with women and children from the red light areas we work in. Post the Nation-wide lockdown, Vaishali, and six of our team members have been regularly providing relief to the women in the area through ration and hygiene kit distributions. The team noticed that a majority of the migrant workers living in the area and working in the local factories began leaving the area. A few women from the area also shared that they were planning to leave as well, post-Ramzan.
During one of the outreach visits (in June 2020), the team shared that 113 women had left the red light areas of Kamathipura & Falkland Road of which 22 women left with their children.
Here one of Vaishali’s interactions with a mother of one of our children as she shared her current situation and the reason, she has chosen to continue living in the red light area.

I have been working at Prerana for the last two decades. I work as a social worker and outreach coordinator at Prerana’s Falkland Road Night Care Center (NCC) located in Khetwadi. I live close to the Kamathipura red-light area and it takes me about 20 minutes to reach Khetwadi from my home. My area of work for outreach is the Falkland Road red-light area where I have continued my outreach visits even during the pandemic and lockdown. I ensure that I follow all the safety guidelines laid by the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health.

Since the lockdown was announced on the 25^th of March 2020, life in the red-light areas of Kamathipura and Falkland Road has come to a standstill. There have been no women soliciting and no customers visiting the brothels. This has left the women in distress and also increased their debt. I am a part of the six-member field team from Prerana that has been working to distribute relief material among the women in the area. We have been distributing ration and sanitary kits in both the red-light areas (Kamathipura and Falkland Road) on a regular basis.

During our distribution drives in the areas, we have observed that many of the migrants who were living in the area and working in the local manufacturing units have been leaving and returning to their villages. My colleagues and I also started asking the women about what their plans were. Almost all the women said they were considering leaving as well but would make that decision after the month of Ramzan, as at the time some women were selling food items in the area and some were hoping to celebrate Eid in the city. Many women were also hoping that public transport would start again. I later spoke to my colleague Sheetal, who is an outreach worker at our Kamathipura center. She shared that many of the male daily wage earners were leaving but not the women from the brothels.

The situation changed a week after Ramzan when Sheetal shared that almost 40 women from the brothels of Kamathipura had left. Most of these women have their families in their villages and are natives of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

During my outreach visit the next day, I discussed this with a few women. These women are the mothers of children who avail Prerana’s Night Care Center services. During my outreach, I met Reema*, whose 3 children attend our NCC and are also enrolled in the local School.

I asked her if she was considering returning to her village, here’s what she said, “Didi, no one will welcome me”. I have known Reema for the last 10 years and she has visited her village a number of times in these years, I asked her about that and she said “Didi, those were different times, when I’d visit before I would take money and gifts with me for them. I was ‘money’ for them. If I go this time what do I have to take with me? I’m not welcomed there if I go empty-handed. I am still here because I have nothing left in my village, but now I have nothing here as well. At least I have food here. If I go back, I won’t even get that. I called my family to ask if I should come back, they themselves told me not to come. They said the village is getting crowded, and there are many mouths to feed with no job and no income. The people in the village are also worried that we will bring the Corona virus with us. Earlier they would look at me with suspicion thinking I have HIV and was ‘bringing’ it to the village ‘iske pehele Bombai se aya mane HIV laya, ab corona’. I don’t know what to do now, my debt (to the brothel keeper) is increasing day by day. There was some happiness in my life, my children were receiving an education, I was dreaming of their life-changing, I was hopeful for them. Now everything is so uncertain.”

Reema is a very committed and involved parent, she always ensures her children go to school daily, attends all meetings held for parents, gives us feedback on the NCC services and the Study Class program, and is vocal at the Parent-Teacher meetings at school as well. Reema told us she belongs to a village in Kolkata, where she fell in love with a man and married him. He later brought her to Mumbai and she eventually found herself in a brothel on Falkland Road. Her husband sold her into the brothel and went back to his village. She also shared that her family knows that she’s in the ‘dhandha’ (sex trade) and that they don’t care as long as she visits the village with money and gifts.

While Reema was worried about the uncertainty that the situation brings, she was also trying to be hopeful for the future, she shared, “Didi, here we are getting ration through some way or the other, here we have people like you who comes and helps us. Whatever happens, will happen. In the village, I won’t have anything.”

The current situation has heavily impacted the women of the red-light area, but they are hopeful. Meanwhile, we are doing our best to support them for as long as we can.