Fifteen Lanes (33 page)

“Hello, Noor.” She plopped down onto my mattress on the floor. “Do you remember me?”

Aamaal, who was never more than a few feet from me the entire time we lived in protective custody, looked up from the schoolwork I’d assigned her.

“Yes,” I said.

My eagerness must have registered on my face. She looked pleased. In addition to being separated from my beloved brother, we hadn’t been allowed out of the home to go to school. Prison could not have been more punitive.

“You never came back to see me. I always hoped you would.”

“You would have taken my brother away.” I didn’t state the obvious—that I’d since brought that misfortune upon myself.

“I saw Shami yesterday.”

I sat up straighter.

“How is he?” demanded Aamaal, closing her book. “How did you get to see him? Can you take us?”

I didn’t speak. Aamaal had asked every question in my own heart.

“I thought perhaps we could discuss a more permanent solution.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“I live with my brother’s family and my mother. My mother and brother are both doctors. My brother has a wife and two children. Thankfully she’s not a doctor. That would be a bit tiresome, wouldn’t it?”

She paused, but when we didn’t respond she continued. “We’re a crowded household but we’re happy. I think you would like my nieces, Noor. The eldest is studying her standard twelve. The younger is in standard eight. You’re in standard ten now, aren’t you?”

I blushed when I remembered the lie I’d told her.

“Standard nine,” I mumbled.

“So what do you say?” Her penetrating eyes were full of kindness, just as before.

I was confused. What was she asking?

“Would you and Aamaal like to come live with us?”

Her offer was beyond my wildest hopes. “What about Shami?”

“Oh, he’s already agreed,” she said breezily.

Aamaal jumped up. “Yes, YES, YES!”

“Wait a minute, Aamaal,” I cautioned. “How long would we live with you?”

“I’ve never married, Noor. The idea of deferring to a man never sat well with me. Having my own children, on the other hand, is something I’ve always wanted. I like you, Noor. I have a feeling you and I are not so different. And, of course, I’ve been smitten with Shami from the moment I met him. Now that I’ve met Aamaal, I can see you’re an irresistible lot, you Benkatti children. I’d like to become your guardian. What do you say?”

It was a week beyond that before the legal work was completed and we came home to this apartment. I laughed when Usha-Auntie, Karuna-Auntie’s sister-in-law, showed us to the bedroom we now share and apologized that all three of us would have to share a room, and Aamaal and I would both sleep in the lower bunk. It took her weeks to accept that, to us, everything about the way they lived was luxurious.

Finished on the toilet, Shami goes to the sink to wash his hands. I stand up to supervise. He isn’t thorough if I don’t keep an eye on him. Karuna-Auntie follows us back to the bedroom and climbs up the ladder to tuck Shami in and kiss him good-night. I switch on my night-light and pick up my Biology textbook. In two weeks I’ll write the medical school entrance exam. With three doctors constantly testing me, I’m confident I’m ready, but I enjoy studying, which is lucky as it’ll be another seven years before I’m fully qualified.

Karuna-Auntie leans down and plants a kiss on my forehead. “Sleep is just as important as study, Noor,” she whispers. “Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t.”

She walks out, leaving our door slightly ajar. I stare at the page in front of me but my mind wanders.

Grace will return to Mumbai soon for her summer holidays. I’m looking forward to being together again. She graduated last year and went home for university. VJ and I have planned a welcome dinner for her.

VJ graduated two years ago and has been a rising star in Indian cinema. Last year he was in a British coproduced movie that was an international hit. When he was nominated for an Oscar everyone said his fame would eclipse his father’s. He went to America for the ceremony. The paparazzi found it quaint that he brought a high-school friend as his date.

All of India watched with pride as Bollywood’s heartthrob won the prize. Since VJ had remained a fixture in our own lives, our whole family was gathered around the television when he took the stage to accept.

He began his speech by thanking his father and mother. Then he thanked us, his adopted siblings. He said his brother Shami had taught him everything he knew about courage; I was surprised to discover we had that in common. I smiled when he said his sister Aamaal had taught him to live life to the fullest. It may have been true, but I’d never known the film star to have any problem living big.

I was nervous when he mentioned me. He said I’d taught him that if the future was not written as you wanted it to be, then you must write your own story. I thought about that for a long time. My life hadn’t been the straight canal to the sea that Ma had predicted, but neither had it been Deepa-Auntie’s mountain river full of unpredictable twists and turns. Many hands had guided my journey, not the least
of them Ma’s. I’d had some luck, but more than that, time and again, I’d had help. I couldn’t have written my story without that.

Last of all, VJ thanked his high-school sweetheart, the love of his life, Luca D’Silva. The camera panned to the beautiful boy in the audience who blew him a kiss.

It caused a media storm that went on for months. Some said VJ’s public disclosure would end his career. VJ said it launched it. He’s moved behind the camera now, to tell the stories that matter to him. His father is financing his first film, a documentary on sex trafficking. He and Luca live together. They talk of getting married if it ever becomes legal.

Grace has grown stronger with each passing year. Counseling and finally confronting Kelsey and Todd, the masterminds of her downfall, helped her to move forward, but that was only a small part of her recovery. Grace and I spent her last two years in Mumbai volunteering at the NGO in Kamathipura, Sisters Helping Sisters. With Chandra-Teacher’s help we’ve started literacy classes for sex workers. Deepa-Auntie was our first student. When Chandra-Teacher offered Deepa-Auntie a job as an outreach worker and helped her break free from Nishikar-Sir, Grace and I learned as much about the importance of confronting bullies as Deepa-Auntie did. Grace plans to become a human rights lawyer. I pity anyone who persecutes the powerless on her watch.

This summer she’s bringing a boy with her who wants to intern at our NGO. Grace doesn’t call him her boyfriend but I think he’s important to her. Grace didn’t date throughout high school. While the wounds on her leg have healed, not all damage is visible. I teased her that this boy must be serious if she
was bringing him to meet us, but she just laughed and said, “He’s a bit of a dork.”

“Noor-di.” Shami interrupts my thoughts. I get out of bed and step up on the ladder.

“Are you all right, baby? Is the light bothering you?”

“My stomach still hurts.”

I climb up the ladder and settle myself next to him, leaning on the headboard. “Roll on your side. I’ll stroke your back.”

It’s the rare night that I can’t put him to sleep with a back rub.

“Noor-di?”

“Go to sleep now.”

“Just one question.”

“Okay, but only one.”

“If I die and get born into another family in Kamathipura, will you still recognize me?”

“You’re not going to die.”

“But will you recognize me?”

I don’t tell him the truth—that when we lived in Kamathipura, and in the years since, I’ve seen all of us reborn a thousand times. I see myself in the hopeful school-going girls with their scuffed shoes and faded uniforms, and Aamaal in the wide-eyed stares of young girls who know too much about abuse and too little about love. I see Shami in the wizened faces of children haunted by disease. I used to dream that one day I would have a home where I could shelter all the people that I loved, but every day, the list of people I want to save grows longer. There are already too many to be contained by four walls and a roof, so I’ve changed my dream. I’ve opened a room in my heart that I reserve for the women and children of Kamathipura. Its size and scope have no limits.

“Of course I will recognize you,” I say. “Now go to sleep.”

“Just one more question, Noor-di, and then I promise I’ll sleep. If I’m born into another family, will you still love me?”

I pull him into my lap. He’s so tiny and light he still fits easily. “If you come back as a bunny, or a pigeon or a child of Kamathipura, born to another family, I will find you, Shami. And I will always love you.”

I first started volunteering with sex workers’ daughters in Kamathipura, the largest red-light district in Asia, in March of 2013. Though I’ve had training in working with victims of sexual violence, I wasn’t so naive as to think I was going to transform the lives of the girls I worked with. Still, I wasn’t entirely prepared for the level of violence and degradation they’re routinely exposed to. More disheartening still is the extent to which a large portion of society has turned its back on them. Time and again I’ve heard stories of girls being shunned, even asked to leave school, when it was found out their mothers were sex workers—no matter that the vast majority of their mothers had been trafficked into the life and were victims themselves.

Early in my work with the girls, I had the opportunity to edit a countrywide report on sex trafficking produced by Dasra, a leading Indian strategic philanthropy organization based in Mumbai. Suddenly my personal experiences and observations had a broader context. Though government figures are lower, according to Dasra’s research, there are an estimated 15 million people in India who have been trafficked into sex work. More than a third are children, some as young as nine years old, sold into sexual slavery to satisfy an increasing demand for younger girls. Daughters of sex workers are at particular risk.

In a decade where India has seen unprecedented growth and a decrease in the percentage of the population living below the poverty line, sex workers have experienced falling wages, an increase in the number of child prostitutes and a significant decline in life expectancy. NGO workers in Kamathipura estimate that 60 percent of sex workers are HIV-positive. Many children are born infected. Tuberculosis and other diseases related to poverty and overcrowding are also rampant.

Some day I will leave India, as I have left so many other countries, but I’ll take with me the memory of girls, full of hope and determination, who against all odds dream of a future beyond the fifteen lanes of their red-light community. I’ll remember their mothers, who chided me for my abysmal Hindi, and the chai-wallah who, despite the congestion of goats, cows, people and all manner of vehicles, always managed to save me a parking space outside the night shelter where I worked. But for now I look forward to the hugs and shrieks of “Susan-didi!” that will greet me tomorrow night when I return to my girls in Kamathipura. I still have no illusions that I’ve transformed their lives, but I have no doubt they’ve changed mine.

SJ Laidlaw

Mumbai, February 2015

It took close to two years to write this book, because it was challenging to find the light in a story too dark to tell.

I’m very grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts, not only for financial support but for the tacit endorsement that this story was worth the struggle.

I feel extremely fortunate to have worked on yet another book with my wonderful editor at Tundra Books, Sue Tate. As always, Sue provided the perfect combination of intelligence and empathy, cheerleading and honesty.

Also at Tundra, I appreciated the wisdom of my former publisher, Alison Morgan, and I’d like to mention a young intern, Sarah Essak, who was an early champion of Noor’s story, even in its darkest incarnation.

This was my first time benefitting from the keen eyes of Catherine Marjoribanks, who copyedited this book, and Tundra’s managing editor Elizabeth Kribs. I’d like to thank them both.

While this book is a work of fiction, it’s based on lives that are all too real. Those stories were collected from many sources, but two women in particular illuminated my work with their insights. I’m grateful to Manju Vyas, who has dedicated her life to the women and girls of Kamathipura, and Namita Khatu, whose energy and smile never faltered despite the daunting task of helping the most downtrodden in a city
where more than a quarter-million people live on less than thirty cents a day.

I’d also like to thank Sudarshan Loyalka, who sixteen years ago started the small NGO in Kamathipura that became my second home in Mumbai, Apne Aap Women’s Collective (
www.aawc.in
). His vision and commitment continue to inspire all those around him.

Unwittingly, two good friends, Neera Nundy and Deval Sanghavi, cofounders of Dasra, provided assistance when they invited me to attend a countrywide conference of anti-trafficking NGOs and asked me to edit their report on sex trafficking in India. Also at Dasra, I’d like to thank Pakzan Dastoor, who oversaw the report and lent me books. I swear I’m still planning to return them.

Finally, as always, I thank my husband, Richard Bale, who reads every draft of my work from the most abysmal beginnings. He is perhaps the only person whose relief when a book is finally finished equals my own.