It’s a different calling
Fifteen girls rescued from red-light areas across the country now run canteen for a Kolkata call centre ……JAYATRI NAG
KOLKATA: It’s three o’clock in the morning. A call centre canteen is awake with young girls and boys enjoying their dinner after slogging in graveyard shifts. There are crowds before the food counters.
The girls behind the counter are serving food with precision. Their gloves-clad hands move from one item to other, finally serving chatni and sweets. The dinner hours are too long – from 10 pm to to 3 am. The girls in red salwars and ash-coloured aprons behind the counter shut shop at 5 am. Now they will return to their home, run by Sanlaap, an NGO.
Fifteen girls who were once victims of sex trafficking, run the canteen and have adapted well to the call centre routine and lifestyle.
Sixteen-year-old Payeli (name changed) was a sex worker in a Mumbai red-light area. Rescued by police, she was sent to a stopover home in Mumbai. After she returned to Kolkata, Sanlaap took her custody.
Payeli was barely 12 years old when she landed in Bhiwandi’s (near Mumbai) red-light area. In her native place, she used to work in a leather factory. Promised a decent job, Payeli was lured by a neighbourhood boy to Mumbai.
Champa (name changed) was also trapped into a Mumbai red-light area. Hailing from a poor family in the Sundarbans, she used to live with her sister. One day, Champa went out with a local boy, who sold her to Kamathipura. Three years passed by before the police rescued her. When trapped into the sex trade, she was barely 14 years old.
“One day a client asked me about my life and experiences. I had spent the whole night with him. I told him everything, my journey from Kolkata to Kamathipura,” Champa’s fragile body shuddered as she spoke, “The police conducted a raid after two days. I understood who he was.” The girl has started smiling again.
“The girls have been trained in a city star hotel. They maintain health and hygiene standards while cooking and distributing food,” said founder of Sankalp, Indrani Sinha.
A superintendent always stays with them to monitor the service and keep an eye on the girls as well. The girls have also started two more canteens in the IT sector in Kolkata and a government college.
The girls have memories of kothis, shabby alleys leading to the rooms for entertaining the clients, the smell of liquor, smoke, abusive pimps and malkins, fear of police and above all a giddy sense of lifelessness. But their new work taught them to live life again.
The girls have memories of kothis,, shabby alleys leading to rooms smelling of liquor and smoke