There is a strong sense of ownership in knocking on the door. L* walks in, a cheeky smile on her face and a confident sense of belonging.
When I talk to Shweta Tara Vandana, director of education at Kranti, India’s first residential school run by daughters of sex workers, she relaxes herself and sits at home.
Nestled in a pine forest in the highlands of Himachal Pradesh, with heaps of snow gleaming in the April sun, Kranti – the word means revolution – is intentionally small, with a capacity of 30 students at any given time.
There are 26 now, with four places kept vacant for emergencies – like the case of a seven-and-a-half-year-old girl who told an aunt in Kamathipura that her father was raping her. The aunts beat up the boy’s father a lot before bringing him to Kranti, where his extra curriculum includes lessons in tabla and karate.
Like almost all the girls here, El has a tough story that includes a mother who tried to sell her. Today, what you see is a confident girl who clearly belongs in the home she has probably known before.
The scale of the revolution’s ambition is no small thing. The girls come from Kamathipura, Sangli, Bengaluru and red-light areas of Delhi. Many are already 10 years behind in formal education. Almost all are first generation learners. Most have experienced trauma, including sexual abuse.
About 80% of the girls have attained higher education and many study abroad on scholarships, says Robin Chawrasia, co-founder with Bani Das, a single mother who founded Kranti in 2011. Five years later, Robin was among the top 10 finalists for Million Dollar. global teacher award Awarded by the Varkey Foundation in partnership with UNESCO.
More than saving girls, Kranthi is training future leaders and change agents. “In development sectors, survivors are often welcomed as storytellers, but rarely trusted as decision-makers,” Shweta Tara said in an address to the UN Commission on Women in March this year. “Yet the girls I grew up with are not stories waiting to be told. They are leaders waiting to be trusted.”
Shweta Tara knows what she is talking about. The daughter of a sex worker, she grew up in Kamathipura and joined the revolution at the age of 16 as part of the first batch of students. It was not easy. Having studied only in a Marathi-medium government school, he struggled academically. The teachers, she remembers, were “sweet and kind, but not visible most of the time.” He was also bullied because of the color of his skin. “I had a feeling of being very small.”
The revolution removed that smallness, but it took time. After winning a full tuition scholarship to study at Bard University, New York, Shweta Tara says she had to drop out without completing her degree because she couldn’t afford it.
In India in her early 20s, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and nearly died. “In that moment, the answer became clear,” she says. “I didn’t want a life defined by telling my story. I wanted every girl in my community to have the opportunity to create her own story. So I returned to the place I once tried so hard to escape.”
She just wanted a better life for herself and her mother. She says, “I never wanted to leave the community. Yes, there was violence and abuse, but the community of aunties was there for you, taking care of you, feeding you while your mother was working.” “Women always, always come through for each other.”
Every child understands the work their mothers do to support the family. “I knew this work was looked down upon but I never thought it was bad,” says Shweta Tara.
Right from the time of inception of Kranti, Robin and Bani knew that they would not follow the usual papad-pickle-sewing path for girls. “People talk about success stories saying ‘Oh, the girls are making papad’ or are skilled at household work, maybe at computers. But when people look at our organisation, they realize what girls are actually capable of doing. That’s the transformative power of our work,” says Robin.
Revolutionaries, as they are called, go to regular schools to get their certificates and complete their formal education. But the education doesn’t end when they return home to Revolution – there are private tutors and a social justice curriculum that covers race, the environment, women’s rights, with workshops, guest speakers and field trips. Every girl goes to therapy. Both travel and theater are integral parts of how Kranti teaches girls to become confident leaders.
(*As a minor, the names of L’s minors cannot be disclosed.)
a himalayan escape
Twelve years after its launch in 2023, Kranti has been moved out of rented premises in Mumbai for the eighth time.
Outside, the organization was being recognized for its groundbreaking work. Robin was giving a TED talk. Others were being invited to give speeches. Girls, or at least many of them, were thriving in India and abroad. But no one wanted them as neighbors.
When landlords discovered that they had daughters of ‘orphaned’ sex workers in their premises, they served eviction notices. After the eighth eviction, the girls had no place to go and had to return to the red-light districts where their mothers worked.
It was time to find a new home. The Himachal property on which Kranti has a 99-year lease is a failed hotel project with large, open spaces for girls to live, play, study, do yoga and meditate.
On the top floor, construction is underway for a sleeping area with bunk beds and adjacent shower. There is an open kitchen where the local cook, Poonam Didi, prepares a hot evening snack of cooked black gram for the hungry girls when they return from school. All the girls have assigned jobs – cleaning counters, washing dishes, loading a donor-owned industrial-sized washing machine and dryer.
I ask, who finances this? There are individual donors and a large number of crowd-funding. Individual philanthropists such as author Aparna Piramal Raje have been supporters for more than a decade. “I went with my guts,” says Raje. “Revolution is the Harvard University of social change.”
As someone familiar with mental health issues, including bipolar disorder, Raje knew women didn’t stand a chance without therapy. She largely finances the girls’ therapy bills ₹20 lakhs annually. He also contributed to the wealth of Himachal Pradesh.
There are many success stories, depending on how you define success. Sheetal came into the revolution at the age of 17 with sporadic education. No matter how hard she tried, she could not pass the 10th board exam. Eventually, Robin says, “we let him put academics aside and pursue his passion, which was drumming.”
It was a smart move, ultimately resulting in Sheetal getting a full scholarship to study drumming and music in Washington for a year. Today she runs her own organization, Canvas of Healing, to bring drum circles and music therapy to marginalized communities.
Kamathipura to Colombia
“My first class wasn’t in a school. It was a brothel.”
The opening lines of Mehak Krantikari’s application for the master’s program at Teachers College, Columbia University could be a love letter to revolution. After his mother’s death, he and his elder sister were left alone with a stepfather who was sexually abusing the elder sister. When she arrived at Kranti as a playful 10-year-old girl, it felt as if she was entering the only place that felt like a family.
“I was welcomed and treated like a little sister,” she says, but there was a huge age gap between her and the other girls. The struggle to adjust was real. A year later, Robin took him to Mussoorie by bus and convinced the headmaster to admit him to his private boarding school with a fee waiver. Kranti remained at home, the center where she returned for holidays and events, for example, whenever the theater group went on tour with a production, Mehak would take a bus to Mumbai and participate.
Mehak first took to the stage with Laal Batti Express, a play written by girls about growing up in brothels. The play has been performed everywhere, in juvenile prisons, in sex worker groups and, eventually, on the international stage.
In 2017, it was invited to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The smell also went away. “This was our big media moment,” he said. But by the time she returned to Mussoorie, the news had spread. Some kids came up to him and told him he was brave, but there were a lot of fingers pointed and whispers behind his back. Even now, all these years later, she says: “There is no right way to tell people that my mother was a sex worker.”
Currently in her final semester at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, Mehak is majoring in theater arts. He has received an offer of admission for a master’s degree from Columbia University, New York. They told me over the phone that as of now, there have been no offers of financial aid or scholarships. But, she says, she’s going on, confident that it will work out somehow. “Robyn has a way of doing things,” she says.
The attitude of ‘find a way and get the funds’ has kept the revolution going all these years.
In 2015, Kranti’s theater group’s invitation to tour the US was happily accepted, even though there was no money for the airfare – which came from a sympathetic donor at the last minute. Determined to pursue other journeys, the girls stay in churches for free and travel by bus for food and metro tickets.
Ultimately this is the pull of revolution. During her undergraduate years, Mehak says, she would return home to Kranti, and tutor new girls or lead theatre-based learning sessions. “Everything I’ve been through has empowered me,” she says. “The revolution didn’t ‘save’ me. It’s my family. It made sure I was fed, educated and taken care of. It’s the home that healed me.”
A fundraiser is being held to support Mehak’s education at Columbia University. If you would like to contribute or learn more click here Here.
