I was 21 the first time I held a camera…but now I’m 25 and got a scholarship to study photography in PARIS!

Of course I had seen cameras all my life - my childhood home was always full of photographers, filmmakers, and news reporters. Not because I lived in a famous, beautiful area but because I was born and raised in Kamathipura, one of Asia’s most infamous red-light areas. Many foreigners, filmmakers & news reporters walked around with fancy cameras.

My mother, a sex worker, wanted to keep me as far away as possible from her world. At age nine, she sent me to an orthodox Christian orphanage where I was forced to spend my days in school, my weekends in church, and all my spare time memorizing the Bible. I had no idea what lay outside the walls of the orphanage and no idea what lay within the walls of my own mind.

At 17, my world was shattered by my mother’s sudden death, leaving me lost and adrift, without a purpose, or a person, to tie me to this world. I wanted to fly away from the orphanage, from my life, and from this world. But since I couldn’t fly, I did the next best thing…I ran. With the police chasing me for months, I boarded random trains, stayed with generous strangers, and changed homes every week.

After a couple months of running, I found my way to Kranti NGO, which empowers girls from Mumbai’s red-light areas to become agents of social change. Along with mainstream education, as well as computer and English classes, Kranti’s programs focused on healing and self-discovery. Not only were we required to attend yoga, meditation, and therapy every day, we also had the chance to express ourselves through art and theater.

Kranti’s programs for healing, social justice and self-discovery slowly unleashed the dormant artist in me. I loved my art and painting classes, I loved painting murals in the red-light area, I loved documenting sex workers’ lives through (phone) photography. But more than anything else, I loved the sense of freedom that art gave me. The freedom to live, to breathe, to be seen, to be valued, to be ME.

Then, one day, my world was shattered once again. Age 21, I held in my hands a $5K Nikon camera and clicked my first real photographs. At that moment, I knew that I had been born to be a photographer. That all the people, stories, experiences, hopes, fears, and everything that lived inside of me would someday be shared with the world through a camera lens.

So I went back to my community, Kamathipura, and once again walked the streets of Asia's most infamous red-light area. Not as an outsider whose camera couldn't be trusted, but as someone who could hang out for hours in the brothels, drinking endless cups of chai, laughing as women made fun of their customers, and listening to women who had loved and cared for the mother I had barely known.

As I photographed, they shared - about my mother's life, my own childhood, and about a sister I didn't even know I had. This time in the brothels helped me realize that my community was so judged and stigmatized due to the lens from which outside photographers and storytellers perceived, and therefore portrayed, it. I decided then and there that I would use photography to capture not the dirt, grime or crime of my community, but of every sex worker's strength, courage, beauty, wisdom and resilience.

Through photography, I know I have the power to break down society's walls of prejudice, hate, judgment and discrimination. Through photography, I know I can carve a direct path straight to people's hearts. Through photography, I can help others see beyond the surface and directly into the depths of their own hearts. Through photography, I want to show that every human being is a masterpiece unto themselves, carved with life experiences of unfathomable colors, shades, shapes and angles.

Will you please help me pursue my MA in Photography? (I have been given free room & board so I am only fundraising for the tuition!) I was also EXTREMELY fortunate to receive a full scholarship to Ashoka University, where I studied Sociology & Anthropology, but my degree just reminded me that Photography is my true passion in life. I would tremendously appreciate your support to make this lifelong dream a reality. Thank you!!