Born into Brothels: Life of the Children of Delhi’s G.B. Road
Explore one of India’s most notorious red right districts and learn about how one NGO is fighting to help the women and children struck in the sex trade
Sleep doesn’t come at the usual nine or 10pm for the children living in G.B. Road. This is the time when the street outside gets busy. This is when business starts streaming into Delhi’s biggest and most infamous red light district which sits right in the city center. Men looking for pleasure roll into the district in their rickshaw, sedan or tuk tuk. The moment these potential customers get out of their transport, pimps roaming the streets swarm to them and start touting, while prostitutes eagerly catcall and wave their handkerchiefs from the balconies of the short dilapidated buildings that line both sides of the road.
Garstin Bastion Road, most commonly known as G.B. Road, runs parallel to the railways that branch out from the New Delhi Railway Station, the second busiest and one of the largest railway stations in the whole of India.
In the day, G.B. Road serves a marketplace where hardware like automobile parts and other kinds of machinery are bought and sold. Some of the shops on the ground level also serve as mechanical workshops.
But at dusk, the regular businesses draw their shutters and lock their doors, and the sex trade gradually takes over. The pimps come out to hustle for more business while the women do what they have to do to make a living — for themselves and for their children.
The night life of G.B Road continues until around two in the morning, then can the children and their mothers finally call it a day and go to bed.
There are around 70–80 brothels, or kothas (chambers), along G.B. Road. Most of them are located on second or third level of the buildings, with a brightly painted balcony or a wide window looking out onto the street below.
Each kotha has a number and is identified by it. The kothas differentiate among themselves by the women they offer. There are kothas that offer mostly northeastern women who are fairer in skin color and can thus fetch a higher price. It is also an open secret that the most infamous kotha on G.B. Road offer virgin girls. This kotha is also the most expensive one. The girls of this particular kotha are either “recruited” from the countryside or from the streets.
In each kotha, the women form a close-knit community, offering one another support and a sense of sisterhood. The smaller kothas usually have around 10–20 sex workers, while the bigger ones may house as many as 60–70 women at a time.
More often than not, the living conditions are too cramped for any comfort or privacy, but to the sex workers and their children, the kotha is their home. Most women don’t even step out of their kothas for their own safety, and so their view of the outside world is limited to what they see from the window in their room or the balcony of their kotha.
Due to the limited space, it is inevitable that the children of the sex workers witness the coming and going of the men, and at times, even what happens in between. Thus, despite their tender age, the children do have knowledge of the sex trade and the nature of their mother’s work.
Just as in any other city or society, sex work is heavily stigmatised in Delhi. The archaic caste system, which still plays a major role in the Indian society today, banishes sex workers as well as their family to one of the lowest social strata. The child of a sex worker is looked down upon as much as the sex worker herself. Because of this, most of the children of G.B. Road do not go to school. Those who do eventually quit because of the discrimination and bullying they face in school.
The stigma these children face elsewhere prevents them from venturing out of G.B. Road. With limited access to proper education, the kids are cut off from other options in life. It is commonplace for children of sex workers to join the sex trade when they come of age. Girls will become prostitutes and boys will become pimps. For the children of the kotha owners, they will probably take over the kotha’s business or engage in the trade in other ways.
Despite their tender age, each child knows their place in the community. In fact, some form of power play already exists among the children. A kotha owner’s kid tends to display a sense of superiority and act in a more assertive and dominant manner when he plays with the children of the sex workers. When the children grow up, this hierarchic relationship is likely to remain or become even more prominent as each takes on the role passed down by their parent. It is therefore difficult for these children to break out of the vicious cycle they are born into. The familiarity of their childhood playground and their learned identities hold them back, telling them that the only way in life is to follow the footsteps of the adult role models they have growing up.
In 2013 when I was on a student exchange program in Delhi, I was connected with a local non-profit focused on helping the sex workers of G.B. Road and their kids.
Kat-Katha (a story told by puppets) was founded a couple of years ago by 29-year-old Gitanjali Babbar, a former journalist who decided to make social work her life’s mission. As a ground-up initiative, the organisation works with women who live and work in the brothels on G.B. Road. Kat-Katha functions as a safe haven for the sex workers, who are called didis (elder sisters) by the volunteers, to unwind and to learn skills such as tailoring and weaving. The women, most of whom never went to school when they were younger, can also seek basic education.
Gitanjali said that the women are encouraged to pursue their personal interests, be it dancing or arts and crafts. Even if it’s just for leisure, the women can at least enjoy some personal freedom. It is Gitanjali’s hope to see the women find new avenues of sustenance and self-reliance through them exploring and building on their interests.
The space Kat-Katha occupied on the second level of a building was divided into four sections: the play area, the office area, the main classroom, and a smaller classroom. To get to the small classroom, you would have to go past through the other three rooms in that order.
On top of helping the women, the non-profit also functions as a daytime school for the women’s kids.
Students aged three to 17 receive free formal schooling in language, science and mathematics on weekdays, and arts and crafts on the weekends. The teaching staff consists of full-time, part-time and on-and-off volunteers.
School usually starts at 12pm (considering the students only go to sleep at around 2am) and the lunchtime would be around 2–3pm. After that, lessons continue until 6pm and the day ends with a session of meditation and personal reflection. The students would help to clean up the place before leaving. The older students also take on the responsibility of sending younger students back to their kothas before returning to their own.
The most difficult part about teaching the students, as one teacher at Kat-Katha shared, is that all of them have different learning curves. She explained that the children joined the school at different ages and their educational backgrounds could vary greatly. A 17-year-old student could have the same English literacy of a 5-year-old student. Therefore the schooling provided at Kat-Katha has to be greatly customised to each student’s personal learning needs. It’s challenging for the teachers to gauge the student’s capabilities, coach accordingly and then keep track of his or her progress over time. This highly personalised format of teaching is arduous, and is only made more difficult when some students’ attendance aren’t consistent. I was told that parental objection is common.
On top of formal education, the students are also instructed on personal hygiene such as washing of hands after visiting the toilet and before meals, showering once a day, cutting of nails and etc. They are also taught basic manners such as courtesy when meeting people, sharing of things among themselves, and using terms like “please” and “thank you.” Observance of such practices is monitored closely and at the end of each school day, the students are asked to reflect upon what they did right and what they did wrong.
However, for some students it is difficult to follow through with all the suggested habits due to a lack of resources. Some may not have access to proper sanitation or clean clothes, or they lack parental support and supervision. Most children can go for days without a shower.
I was invited to attend a special celebration held at Kat-Katha on India’s Independence day. Around 30-40 of us squeezed into the main classroom, most of us sat on the concrete floor shoulder to shoulder while others stood around the edge of the room. The party began with a sharing session where everyone talked about what freedom meant to them. Thankfully Gitanjali and the other volunteers were there to help translate the thoughts of the didis and the children. A guitar was then brought in for a sing-along session and the small cozy space was soon filled with the sweet voices and the clapping of the didis, the children and the volunteers. It was the middle of monsoon season so the day was extremely warm, with the air thick and humid. Despite the sweltering heat and humidity, a sense of serenity occupied in the crowded room. Looking around and seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces, I felt honoured to be welcomed in as a stranger, an outsider. The party was an intimate meeting of the people whose lives have been changed because of Kat-Katha. It was a celebration of hope and love, and of the relationships that have been forged through acceptance and respect for one another. There, I saw that no matter how different our backgrounds are, we’re all the same, each capable of loving, having fun and appreciating the simplest things in life.
For the children living in G.B. Road, they do not get to enjoy what we call a “normal” childhood. They live right in the midst of the sex trade. They are witnesses to the chaos and violence that take place on the streets and behind closed doors. They did not choose to be — they were simply born into it. Thankfully there is Kat-Katha which provides a safe space for them to detach from the red light district and get receive proper education from passionate volunteers who lead by example. Without Kat-Katha, the children would be confined to the four walls of their kothas, shut in, or they will be roaming the lanes and streets of G.B. Road, idle, aimless and without purpose. With the children spending their days in Kat-Katha, at least the possibility of them running into trouble on the streets is lower. But besides providing refuge and schooling, I think what Kat-Katha really aims to achieve is to offer the children a choice in life, or at least, make them believe that they can have one if they are willing to work for it.
You can find out more about Kat-Katha at http://www.kat-katha.org.
