In India, children are not prepared for criticalthinking, which leads to a lack of cultural references such as bowling with theirAmerican counterparts, after going to the US or any other western country it’sbecome hard for them to keep up and making friends after reaching there.
Tina Talukdar of the NGO Kranti said that it becomesreally difficult for the daughters of the sex workers to accept and live withtheir own background story. Tin Talukdar was the one who helped the girl who grewover a sexual abuse; went through several nicknames throughout her school life,and who underwent issues related to self-worth. The girl’s name is Shweta Kattiand she is the first one from Kamathipura to get educated in New York from BardCollege.
Katti now calls her 18-year-old attitude “Superficialconfidence”, it was this ‘Superficial Confidence which made her walk in theclass with a glow of her new haircut on her first day at Bard College in 2013.This transition from a medium ‘Marathi’ school to an elite college, studyingwith privileged youngsters was intimate.
The difference in the finances, the accent of the Americanprofessors and the academic standards were the reasons which caused anxietyand depression in her. Throughout her first year, she was scared of children whocould make fun of her accent and color were the reason why she didn’t attendlectures.
Kranti has helped many kids of the sex workers pursuetheir higher education and Tina told that the sex workers usually send theirchildren abroad to continue their higher education instead of a local college, which is basically their “survival mindset”. She further addedthat the foreign institutes pay attention to the background honed grit, resilienceand other skills of these children, unlike the local colleges which insist onproviding marks for admitting a student and also create a great hindrance forthese children.
The second of the four daughters of the bar dancer, Shaikh,who recently graduated from the University of The West, Los Angeles told thatto survive college children need to adapt and grit it out which perhapsrequire ample hard work. Like Shaikh, now an aspiring counselor, Katti alsoconsidering taking up psychology, but is still thankful that she has spent thethree semesters there.
Katti has studied ESL (English as a second language), livedwith foreign roommates, became more culturally and politically aware, andsaid, “I became a global citizen then.” She had soon applied for a scholarshipfor a multicounty study program. She would also take care of her “vulnerabilities”of the underprivileged in South Africa.
Katti sensed the same hope from the children of theorphan in Burma that all the rest have, which is to have a better future.Later, in her internship at Kranti in Mumbai, she played performances at theEdinburgh Fringe Festival, which was a part of her social internship in the US.Tuberculosis in 2018, brought back the old feelings but she fought them byspirituality.
Now this 26-year-old, won the UN Youth Courage Award a few years ago for all her achievements and struggles.