Children of the red-light district

In a cubicle just big enough to hold a bed, children sleep underneath while their mother services the client above. This is life for children of sex workers in the red-light district of Pune in India. Journalist Jane Lee met Parvati and Karan, a sex worker and her son from Pune in India.

It was time for her monthly pilgrimage to the children’s home and she prepared meticulously. Just that morning, she had gone to the market to buy the freshest and juiciest grapes that she could find – Karan loves grapes. She had remembered, too, to buy some sweets for his friends at the home. Scrutinising herself in the small handheld mirror, she takes off the gaudy adornments that hint at her profession. Parvati is now ready to visit her son.

It takes about an hour to get from where she lives and works to the Inter-mission children’s home at Paud. The way there, filled with anticipation, always seems so much shorter than the homeward journey, which is bogged down by the sorrow of being apart from her only child for yet another month. But Parvati knows that this is the best alternative for Karan; Pune’s biggest red-light district is hardly the ideal home for a six-year-old.

Karan has been staying at the children’s home for about a year now and Parvati has been amazed by the changes in him. Once a sickly child, he does not even suffer from coughs or sniffles now. In the past, it was difficult to get him to sit down to do his homework but now, he is acing his studies. The biggest difference, she muses, must be in the language. He had picked up the rough language of the area he grew up in but now he sings songs about Jesus’ love.

Karan is one of 19 children that CMS partner Lalita Edwards has placed in homes. All their mothers are commercial sex workers in Budhwarpeth, Pune – home to about 6,000 prostitutes – and are more than happy to have their children in a safe place.

Dr Edwards firmly believes that the only way to give these children a fair shot in life is to take them out of their high-risk environment.

“Otherwise they’ll stop going to school and stop studying,” she said. “The boys would end up becoming pimps while the girls follow their mothers into the trade.”

At home – if a cubicle just big enough to hold a bed can be called a ‘home’ – the children sleep under the bed while their mother services the client above.

Parvati has plied her trade for the last 13 years since she first arrived in Calcutta from Nepal when she was only 15. She rests all her broken dreams on her son.

“Since I’m in this job, who will give me another option? I’ll just stay here,” she says with a sardonic smile.

Then softening considerably, she adds with a whisper: “But it’s different for my Karan, I want him to study. And you know, he tells me that he wants to be a doctor.”

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