Shweta Katti and her mother Vandana go through photographs clicked on her mobile phone as they wait at a suburban railway station in Mumbai.
A young woman who grew up in Mumbai’s red-light district facing poverty and sexual abuse has overcome the odds to win a scholarship to study in New York. Shweta Katti, 18, left for America on Thursday to study at the liberal arts Bard College, where she hopes to read psychology.
Afterwards she wants to return to India and help other young women in her community.
“It’s my childhood dream. I didn’t think it would finally happen,” she said before leaving Mumbai, where she grew up in a brothel.
Katti’s determination won her a place this year in Newsweek’s list of 25 ‘Young Women To Watch’ aged under-25, alongside Pakistani schoolgirl and activist Malala Yousufzai who was shot in the head by the Taliban.
It is a long way from Katti’s early childhood experiences of abuse and harassment in Mumbai’s notorious Kamathipura neighbourhood. “You would see everyday someone beating up a woman, the police coming unexpectedly at any time, and women selling their bodies — they were not happy,” Katti said.
“Men would ask to sleep with me, it was so embarrassing, but I had to face it. My father abused me, many people abused me, but my mum was with me always saying: ‘You are the best, you can do anything’.”
The teenager, who describes herself as “a tough-skinned girl”, said she faced discrimination “from all sides” at school because of her poor background and low caste status.
She credits her mother, a factory worker, as her “inspiration” and says the local charity Kranti — meaning “revolution” in Hindi — also played a vital role in helping her achieve her dreams.
The group’s aim is to empower girls from Mumbai’s red-light areas “to become agents of social change”, and a small group of them live at Kranti’s north Mumbai apartment, where Katti moved two years ago.
Here she was able to work on her English language skills and experience therapy, which sparked her interest in psychology. “I really think it can change somebody. I started thinking openly and respecting my background and myself,” she said.
Meanwhile, in Chandigarh, Poonam Dhull, daughter of a driver working for the government of Haryana, has done her family and state proud by bagging a $50,000 scholarship to pursue a doctorate in the US.
Twenty-four-year-old Poonam was awarded the $50,000 scholarship for pursuing PhD in chemistry from the University of South Carolina.
Her father, Suresh Pal, works as a driver with the public relations department of the Haryana government.
Poonam is presently a research student in the department of chemistry in Punjab University. She pursued research work under the supervision of P Venugopalan who guided her on the project “Structure-activity relationships in a-fluorohydrins and their derivatives: A structural investigation”.
“My family supported me in achieving this. They encouraged me to study further and never let any financial difficulties bother me,” Poonam, who has two younger siblings, a brother and sister, said. Suresh Pal said that he was proud of his daughter’s achievement. He said that his wife, Sheela Devi, who is semi-literate, encouraged their daughter to study.