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Born to a sex worker, Bulti grew up in Napitpara– Domkal’s notorious red-light area, a home to hundreds of sex workers living near the India-Bangladesh border. Her mother Safura Bibi earned her daily bread balancing life between running the household and negotiating with agents.
Recalling her past years in Napitpara, Bulti remembers few of her friends telling her, “Tor maa nongra kaaj kore” (your mother does dirty work)”. As a child, Bulti saw her mother Safura dressed up in glossy chiffons with deep strokes of kohl sitting by the window to greet many ‘Babus’ coming to her door as a regime. Bulti was too scared to ask her or talk to anyone else about it. For her, it was never easy to come to terms with the profession of her mother. She grew up without a clear sense of identity with the rest of the world looking at her in contempt. Adding to her agony, Bulti and her mother found it difficult to afford even two square meals a day with her mothers’ irregular work status.
At the age of 8, Bulti’s life took a difficult turn, when she fell prey to traffickers who lured her with the offer of good food, clothes, and was tricked into leaving her mother, with the hope of a better life. Instead, she discovered a world of sexual slavery, forced drug-taking and violence. Thankfully, within a few months, Bulti was rescued by the police and placed in Shilayan Government shelter home for rehabilitation. She developed a strong rapport with the social workers of the shelter home and the sustained counselling sessions helped her to grow past her traumas and initiate basic education. After ten long years when the order period was completed in the shelter home, Bulti was identified by the community mobilizers of Anudip Domkal centre. Rest was an evolution!
Upskilled by ANUDIP’s Building Entrepreneurs to Stop Trafficking (BEST) program Bulti is now employed in one of the leading digital data companies and involved in Crowdsourced Contributors Training Program, as a part of the gig economy. Bulti works on advanced technology projects like transforming unstructured text, image, and video into customized and trained data. It took her two years to imbibe the technology training and learn English. She has opened up a bank account, bought a new smart phone and subscribed to a English newspaper to enable her learn more! Being the first in her family to do a white-collar job, Bulti assures “The same people who called me – a daughter of prostitute today looks upto me. Nothing makes me happier. ’’
