In her memoir, a sex traffic activist writes about those who made the most impact on her life

I knew I had to deal with the consequences of my actions. But it stung that my family suffered by association. Maybe being out of sight, out of mind was the solution – that might cut down on the gossiping and baseless rumours. I made up my mind to leave Bangalore. But where would I go?

Back in late 1995, around the time that I had just completed a project for the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED) and was about to join Janodaya, I’d attended a conference organised by the Peace and Justice Forum in Mumbai at the invitation of some Catholic sisters involved in development work in Bangalore. While the conference itself wasn’t of great significance to me, I had met some interesting people, one of whom had been Brother Varghese Theckanath. He was the founder of the People’s Initiative Network (PIN), an organisation which worked in the slums of Hyderabad.

We had ended up chatting, and after learning about my interests, he’d invited me to work with him. It had been over ten months since we’d last spoken. I mulled over it for a while and decided to give it a shot. Going to Hyderabad made sense. I contacted...

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