Save the cage girls

Mary Ellen Mark - a writer who first time wrote a lengthy article in India today almost 15 years back is my first introduces to the struggles of few children. Cage Girls. This article brought in lot of controversies for the kind of revelations that made and also brought in a dramatic change in the way I was looking at life. As a happy child with good and caring parents, with a secured childhood, a school that was more like a paradise, we could never imagine the plight of our fellow sisters who get throttled in this world in a very shady lives. Children as young as 11years were drawn to the child prostitution in the cities of Bombay and Calcutta ( now called Mumbai and Kolkatta). The names of these cities changed over the years but do not think the destiny of the children in the so called trade areas have changed despite the government and NGO efforts to rescue and protect them. People talk about child protection, eradication of child labour but in fact not many can even enter into the lives of these children and bring them back to the main stream society. As a young writer who got selected to do a survey for India Today, I had a chance to interact with few reports and writers during those times. It was under shocking circumstances that I saw what few children whose pictures these people were even reluctant to publish looked like. Writing this remind me of Kamal Hassan's movie "Mahanadhi" which portrays the lives of these unfortunate children. This cage girls will not see life better than being in the flesh trade unless and otherwise the whole society reacts to this silence hazard that is prevailing in the society. Its not just human rights commission, or the women forums and few NGO's to raise voice against such unimaginable state, but for the entire men and women who pull this children to understand that this is no way of making a livelihood and also to understand that what they are actually tarnishing is the future of this country. Government should take serious measures to eradicate this prevailing dishonour and make the lives of these children more meaningful. God Bless!