Sandhya
Sandhya was 11 years old when tragedy befell her and she lost her father. Having already lost her mother a few years earlier, the death of her father was a period of immense difficulty for Sandhya and her brother who was just a year older. The siblings became dependent on the hand-offs of relatives and would constantly be cursed and be treated as an unwanted weight on their family’s already limited resources. One day, during one such fight at home, Sandhya’s aunt beat her up and in a fit of rage, Sandhya ran away from the house at night. She had no plans whatsoever but decided that any other life would be better than staying with her relatives and listening to their lament every day. She walked and walked all through the village when she suddenly met a man who offered to help her. Suspicious at first, Sandhya in the naivety of her age agreed to go along with the man. For 10 days the man took care of Sandhya like his own daughter and she started to believe as she had finally found a home. Sandhya stayed with the family which consisted of the man, his wife and two more girls living with them who at first Sandhya thought were his daughters, only to find the real sinister truth much later. After ten days of living together and gaining trust, the man brought Sandhya and the other girls to Delhi. At NDLS railway station, he instructed the girls to sit on a bench at the platform while he took care of some business. From the corner of her eyes, Sandhya could see the man talking to some woman at the platform and pointing out to the girls. Soon enough, the woman walked up to Sandhya and the others and asked them to come along with her. They protested, asked about where the man was, where she was taking them and all sorts of other questions but she wouldn’t listen and threatened to beat them if they just didn’t follow her. Only after 20 years of being in the trade can Sandhya now look back at the incident and join the dots. The man had sold Sandhya to a brothel owner at GB Road. The woman was none other than her captor, her owner at this new life inside the brothel.
Try to Become a Volunteer, This Can Solve Many Problems
In a few years, Sandhya attended a client who would turn her life around. A client whose involvement in Sandhya’s life would sound like a bizarre plot from a Bollywood movie. Sandhya finally met her future husband, Sanjay. Sanjay came once, came twice, came every week and slowly every day just to see Sandhya. He would smuggle in food for her, would listen to her, would fight for her. He saw her as a human being and slowly the bond between the two grew to a point where both of them couldn’t live without each other. Her owner caught them several times and each time Sandhya would receive a beating and Sanjay would be threatened by the pimps. Slowly, as the obstacles grew, so did their strength and passion for love. Sanjay, one day, came to the brothel room with two policemen along and a knife in one hand. The brothel owner was stunned, and so was Sandhya. Sandhya and Sanjay had confessed their love to each other several times before, but watching Sanjay risk everything to rescue her from the brothel made everything feel too real and yet too distant from reality. With fear in her mind but love in her heart, Sandhya made the decision to walk away from the brothel with Sanjay’s support. The brothel owner demeaned their relationship, to a point where she asked Sandhya to strip out of the clothes she earned through sex work if she wanted to leave, but they both held on to their pride. Sanjay immediately went and bought new clothes for Sandhya and took her away and married her in a temple nearby, under the supervision of the policemen.
In a few years, Sandhya attended a client who would turn her life around. A client whose involvement in Sandhya’s life would sound like a bizarre plot from a Bollywood movie. Sandhya finally met her future husband, Sanjay. Sanjay came once, came twice, came every week and slowly every day just to see Sandhya. He would smuggle in food for her, would listen to her, would fight for her. He saw her as a human being and slowly the bond between the two grew to a point where both of them couldn’t live without each other. Her owner caught them several times and each time Sandhya would receive a beating and Sanjay would be threatened by the pimps. Slowly, as the obstacles grew, so did their strength and passion for love. Sanjay, one day, came to the brothel room with two policemen along and a knife in one hand. The brothel owner was stunned, and so was Sandhya. Sandhya and Sanjay had confessed their love to each other several times before, but watching Sanjay risk everything to rescue her from the brothel made everything feel too real and yet too distant from reality. With fear in her mind but love in her heart, Sandhya made the decision to walk away from the brothel with Sanjay’s support. The brothel owner demeaned their relationship, to a point where she asked Sandhya to strip out of the clothes she earned through sex work if she wanted to leave, but they both held on to their pride. Sanjay immediately went and bought new clothes for Sandhya and took her away and married her in a temple nearby, under the supervision of the policemen.
They both took a small room on rent nearby and started their own small family together, Soon Sandhya was pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl. They named her Meera. Sanjay’s family accepted Sandhya with a lot of love and respect. While Sandhya has lost touch with her own family back in her village, she found a home in her in-laws. Sandhya and Sanjay started a new life together but it wasn’t devoid of its ups and downs. Sanjay was a daily wage earner and had little to no savings. Sandhya would earn from a customer-to-customer basis and have walked out of the brothel without any money in hand. Trying times tested the couples’ grit when Sanjay lost his job after demonetisation. To sustain the family and their daughter, when they reach out to her former employer – her brothel owner, she lured her into sex work again. Sex trade acts like a vicious trap where all vulnerabilities are capitalised on, and the brothel owner took this opportunity to capitalise on Sandhya’s desperate condition to push her into further abuse and exerted her body beyond limits. Sandhya put her daughter in a hostel nearby and prepared herself to earn more to sustain the family. The hostel authorities would not let Sandhya meet her daughter and would consider her unfit and even a threat as a mother. Both Sandhya and Sanjay fell helplessly into the deep pit of forced sex work and its consequences. That’s when Kat-Katha entered Sandhya’s life and her life changed yet again.
Maitri Meals is Kat-Katha’s alternative livelihood project wherein women are trained in various culinary skills and are employed as chefs to serve food with love. Sandhya joined the project in 2018-19 and regained hope. In a team of another 5 women from similar backgrounds, Sandhya felt at home and could finally openly share her story with women who would understand and empathise with her. Sandhya worked with Maitri Meals and grew both internally and professionally. She discovered her passion for south Indian cooking as it would remind her of the good old days of sitting by the chulha next to her mother as she would serve hot dosas to her and her brother. In Maitri Meals, Sandhya also received professional training in various kinds of cooking be it vegan cooking, farm to table cooking, bulk order catering etc. Sandhya grew so strong and determined as an individual that through Maitri Meals’ support, she slowly gave up sex work again. She even fought to get her daughter back from the hostel, and through Kat-Katha’s support won the court case against the hostel, proving herself to be a caring mother irrespective of the social or moral taboo around her identity.
During the 2020 COVID lockdown, however, operations at Maitri Meals came to a halt but this still did not dampen Sandhya’s spirits. With Maitri Meals paused, Kat-Katha opened HeARTshala, a skill centre at GB Road itself that trained women in the skill of product tailoring. During the lockdown the need for employment was high and the women wanted to learn new skills as the uncertainties of sex work as a business came to the forefront. Sandhya joined HeARTshala and slowly tried to learn to stitch. It was an uphill journey as she had held the Silai machine in her hands for the first time and dealt with the many frustrations of learning a new skill. She continued receiving training stipend and rent allowance so that the uncertainty and the struggle of learning don’t push her to depend on sex work for sustenance. With four months of dedicated hard work and commitment, Sandhya finally emerged as an expert on various basic products produced at the centre. Her production tripled over time and she grew into a tailor slowly. Her heart however still lies in her passion for cooking.
Only very recently Sandhya’s family life took a turn when her husband chose to betray her for another woman. Shattered as she was on having lost her partner of many years, Sandhya finds courage in her daughter and her friendships with all the other didis accompanying her on this journey. Though Sanjay was the one who rescued her from the brothel, promised her a new life and sparked hope in her, it was Sandhya all along who fueled this hope and she is determined to not let Sanjya’s violent disloyalty stop her from continuing to work towards a better future for her and her daughter. Sandhya now lives on her own terms and proudly says “koi tension nahi” with a big bright smile whenever any challenges come her way. If anything, her zeal of carving a niche for herself is stronger than ever before.
Sandhya is taking literacy classes from Kat-Katha during this lockdown, and is making sure that her daughter regularly attends online classes too. She is striving to find a safe hostel where her daughter can enrol to become a police officer when she grows up. She lovingly scolds the teaching volunteers into giving her and her daughter more homework that they can do together and repeatedly keeps pushing the entire Kat-Katha team to find a good hostel for her daughter. Her playful chiding is a testimony to the deep relationship she’s established with everyone in the team, and a reminder to this world that no matter how broken, all hearts can learn to love. She is slowly inching her way closer to her dream of opening a South Indian Restaurant someday and naming it after her mother. These dreams are what’s making her look forward to another day. With castles in her mind, she wakes up in her rented one-bedroom accommodation. With expertise and flavour in her hands, she cooks homely three meals for her daughter. With stuttering ABCs, she learns how to weave her story. That’s the superpower of Sandhya. Sandhya believes in a new tomorrow and lives to make it happen today.
When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.
– JOEL OSTEEN
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