Click to play videoNat Purwa: Chandralekha, who was born in a village where every girl is raised to be a prostitute, spent her life making sure the next generation of girls break out of the tradition. Thanks to her efforts, the girls are now going to school, getting married and are even employed.
Explaining her story, Chandralekha said, "A drunk man abused me at gun point. That's when I broke down completely and decided to give up the profession."
Nat Purwa is a village where the birth of a girl child is always celebrated, but for the wrong reasons because childhood there ends at ten just like it did for Chanda, Pinky and Gudiya, young girls who were forced into the age old tradition of prostitution by their own parents. The people of Nat Purva believe that daughters are born there for flesh trade with fathers and brothers being their pimps.
Chandralekha was pushed into prostitution when she was just 14 years old, by her own mother.
"My mother was not a prostitute but because I am the daughter of Nat Purwa I was forced to do so by my mother and grandmother," Chandralekha said.
For 20 long years Chandralekha sold her body to earn a living. She gave birth to four children. 15 years ago Chandralekha reached breaking point.
"I went to a village nearby where a drunk thakur held me at gun point and abused me and that is when I came home and cried and decided that I have to give this up," she said.
For Chandralekha, hope came with Asha, an NGO that had set up a school in Nat Purwa. Since she was a class 8 pass out, the NGO employed Chandralekha as a teacher. Over the years Chandralekha worked hard to convince parents to send their daughters to school.
More than half the village girls began to study. A village that never saw marriages of girls now witnessed them. Chandralekha managed to break a tradition that was almost 300 hundred years old.
But convincing families to send their only source of income to school came with its own perils.
Chandralekha said, "People have come to my house to threaten me, they abuse me and I have also been beaten up."
But that did not deter Chandralekha. She battled on to ensure that the village primary school got government recognition.
Chandralekha was also aware that an alternative livelihood was the key to bring women out of flesh trade. So she started a self help group where the women took up tailoring and embroidery. The initiative lasted seven years, but lack of funds have meant that she has had to shut shop.
"There are women who have gotten back to prostitution, there are no funds, no support from anywhere, flesh trade is the only way," Chandralekha said.
Chandralekha needs funds to help restart her self help group. But in the meantime she keeps pushing families to keep their daughters in school.
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