I had the opportunity to visit the Sonar Tori home today. It was founded in November 2009 as an extension of New Light Soma Memorial Home, the residential facility for daughters of sex workers and other girls at risk of being trafficked or forced into prostitution. The terms of the license granted by the Provincial government, only allows Soma Home to shelter girls up to 18. But young women over the age of 18 are still at an incredibly vulnerable point in their lives. Many cannot return home to their mothers who work in the sex industry or are homeless and are at increased risk of being forced into prostitution or being forced into an early marriage.
The purpose of Sonar Tori is to provide these young women age 18-25 with safe shelter and to also help them pursue higher education and acquire professional skills that will allow them to gain financial independence and become self sufficient.
Many of these young women come from abusive backgrounds, either rescued as young girls from the trafficking world themselves or their mothers were in the sex industry and they were placed in Soma Home before joining Sonar Tori.
When you first start speaking with them, they’ll give you short answers and shy smiles. But the more you show them you want to hear what they have to say the more they open up and start to share. To simply see that transition, from soft voices and shy smiles to loud voices and to see them trying to talk over each other as they got more excited, more invested in the conversation was a genuine pleasure.
Later in the evening I was able to visit the Dalit Center, which was established in July 2003 and serves as a multi-functional shelter for the children of the Dalit community located behind the crematorium in Keoratala, Kolkata.
The ‘dalits’ (meaning the oppressed in Hindi) of that area is comprised mainly of ‘Doms’, a caste that has traditionally been marked as `untouchables' because they take care of burning the dead bodies. Those born into this caste hold professions that are considered highly undesirable and are looked down upon. In the rigid caste hierarchy, these individuals are never expected to hold any other profession other than that assigned to their caste. Even though un-touchability as a practice was abolished almost a century ago, people belonging to the ‘dalit’ community of India still continue to be subjected to stigma and discrimination. The constitution through its provisions guarantees all people exactly the same rights as every other citizen of the country.
Unfortunately, the provisions have not yet been fully translated into existing practices and rights. The children born into this community live no less precarious and violent lives than those of sex workers. The Dalit Center was established with the aim of challenging the status quo and changing the lives of the little ones in this small population located at Keoratala.
Today, more than three dozen children of various age groups receive education, healthcare and nutritional support through the support of teachers and care givers. The hope is to continue to incorporate more children into this shelter.
Every shelter I go to I fall in love with the children, the Dalit Center was no exception.
One of the volunteers here, Natasha, has already been here for two months and will be leaving in a couple days. A friend of hers, Megan, is a jazz singer who invited us to hear her sing at a hotel in town where they also served delicious traditional Bengali food.
Megan was absolutely stunning. She had that deep, soulful voice that’s perfect for jazz. I was able to take a video so I hope you enjoy the music and her voice as much as I did.