A One-Woman Army That Waged A Battle For Empathy

Alka Gujnal has ensured that destitute sex workers are treated with dignity

- Swapna Majumdar

When she was a child, Alka Mallapa Gujnal would often wonder why women wearing loud make-up and shimmering saris would walk up and down the street where she lived. It was only a few years later, when a man approached her asking her ‘rate’ that she understood.

Her initial shock on learning that their poor financial condition forced them to stay in a ‘red light area’, turned into empathy for the sex workers when she interacted with them and heard their stories. One day, a young sex worker she had befriended was thrown out on the street because she had Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection. But before Gujnal could do anything, the sex worker died. Seeing her lie on the street, alone and unwanted, with no one willing to perform her last rites, had a profound effect on Gujnal. This incident was to change her life.

“I couldn’t accept that women could be stripped of their dignity just because of an illness. It was inhuman. I decided then that I would work to reduce the stigma and discrimination against sex workers,” recounts Gujnal.

Gujnal, then in Class 12, kept her word. Once she completed her education, not only did she start confidence-building sessions at her house in Pune for children of the sex workers in the area but she also took responsibility for two of them. The mother of both these children was a sex worker who died from HIV-related illnesses. “I promised their mother that I would look after her young children. So, I am trying to give them the life their mother had wanted,” says Gujnal.