Emmy award winner, renowned activist, former reporter, and founder-president of women’s self-empowerment group Apne Aap, Ruchira Gupta is now an author whom people like Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem are applauding. She talks about her debut novel I Kick and I Fly —When The World Is Against You...Fight Back! that saw its Calcutta launch on January 20, and more. Excerpts.
The opening paragraphs of I Kick and I Fly... grab the attention of the reader with uncanny power. “May be they can hear my stomach growl. May be they know food is why I really come to school.” Throughout the telling, you capture the pangs of hunger and what I would term “the abject poverty of womanhood” — the plight of millions of women in India. Tell us how this debut novel was shaped over many years of your creation and work with Apne Aap, the marginalised women and sex workers.
I began writing I Kick and I Fly when a real 14-year-old girl from a nomadic tribe in a red-light area in Bihar won a gold medal in karate. She was a student in my NGO Apne Aap that works to end sex trafficking. I knew the odds of hunger, homelessness, discrimination and threats she had overcome. I wanted to share her story of courage and resilience with everyone. I finished writing the novel during the Covid-19 lockdown, when I was at home for five months with my parents in Forbesganj.
By then, we had educated more than 3,000 girls through school and college. They were daughters of sex workers growing up in red-light areas. Education prevented their trafficking. Today, they are nurses, teachers, petrol pump attendants, chefs, animation artists, and more. I Kick And I Fly is about one girl called Heera. But actually, it is a composite story of all the girls, boys, women and men that I witnessed and experienced over the years.
Why did you choose fiction as a genre? What made you comfortable with the first-person narrative voice? The reader is often of the opinion that you the writer and the protagonist in I Kick And I Fly are the same.
I chose to write I Kick And I Fly as fiction because I wanted to reflect the feelings, thoughts and emotions of my characters. Very often society sees poor people, especially prostituted women, as cardboard characters with lipstick and mascara standing at street corners. If they read my book they will find flesh-and-blood creatures. They have fear and courage, complicated family relationships, love and betrayal, loyalty and friendships.
You will not find the novel preachy at all. It’s a fast-paced page-turner written in the voice of Heera. And Heera is a fighter who takes on the class bully, criminal gangs and ends up in Queens, New York, to rescue her best friend. I have flipped the narrative from the usual white, male saviour to a brown girl. I call my novel a social justice adventure. I have seen it happen.
When did you first feel the tug to actually shape your career to be a formidable agent for changing women’s lives?
I was on stage in New York to receive an Emmy for a documentary I had made on sex trafficking. When I looked at bright lights and the applauding audience, all I could see were the eyes of the mothers in the brothels. They had overcome their fear to speak in my documentary because they wanted to save their daughters from prostitution. In that instance, I decided I would not use my Emmy to build a career in journalism but to make a difference.
I showed the documentary at the United Nations and the US Senate and spoke in both places for laws that punished traffickers and provided services to victims. I am proud to say that I ended up contributing to the passage of the UN Protocol to End Trafficking in Persons, and the US Trafficking Victim Protection Act. I sit on various boards and committees and help NGOs, foundations, universities and governments develop laws and policies to protect children and empower women against sex trafficking. I teach Human Trafficking at New York University.
I am now a lifelong activist for a world in which no child is bought or sold.I Kick And I Fly is the baton I am passing to the world to join the movement. I want everyone to read it and share it to create awareness and knowledge. Gloria Steinem says the book could save lives. They can also sign My Freedom Pledge on my website ruchiragupta.com.
You were educated at Modern High School for Girls and then studied English at Loreto College. That, some might say, is a privileged upbringing. How and where did you find the passion to become an activist?
I was hiking in the hills of Nepal when I came across rows of villages with missing girls. I followed the trail and found little girls locked up in small rooms for years. I was sad and then angry and then determined to do something about it. I was a journalist then and decided to break the silence. I made a documentary The Selling of Innocents, and spent a long time talking to the women and children. That changed my life.
What do you think you have learned from Gloria Steinem and other women activists about how this terror that women face can be wiped out? Of course, with martial arts and self-defence as taught by Rini-di in the novel, but what else?
Social activist Gloria Steinem reading I Kick And I Fly
I have learned from Gloria Steinem these important things: Change is like a tree, it begins at the bottom and transforms the top. Listen to those affected by the problem, they know the solution. Don’t think what you are doing is big or small, do it as if it matters. Honour your sisters with the truth. We are linked not ranked. Courage is contagious. Don’t look up, look at each other.
There is no such thing as defeat. You quote Bruce Lee in Chapter 3. Would you tell us how this aphorism has informed your life?
I never give up. I was passionate, stubborn and determined even as a child. I truly believe that small acts of kindness can accumulate to become a flowering tree that will bear fruit and provide shade.
One aspect of masculinity you must have found close to impossible to figure out is how some men at once are ready to sell their girls, rape women and assault them, and at the same time revere idols of clay and worship them as Goddesses. In your work with these women who have been possessions of men, in your mind, how do you figure out this binary?
Patriarchy and hypocrisy are part of every religion now. First, most religions were nature, we used to worship flowers and trees. Then we worshipped fertility Goddesses. Then the Goddess began to have a consort. Soon the male consort became the main figure and she the companion. And images of her pressing his feet or sitting in a docile way next to him became prevalent. Nature disappeared and so did she. Male Gods replaced her. In almost every religion.
This was accompanied by stories that speak of male superiority. Origin myths were replaced by stories of male superiority in the scriptures. Witches who were midwives were burned so that men could control production and reproduction. Over time, women became cheap labour or produced cheap labour. The inferiority of women is fiction that is perpetuated through scriptures, rites and rituals. In my book, I Kick And I Fly, Heera is going to be married to a banana tree before she is sold into the sex trade.
Tell us about your childhood and growing-up years. The memories about your mother, father?
I grew up in a household influenced by (Mahatma) Gandhi and (Ram Manohar) Lohia. We were wealthy but always looking out to make the world a fairer place. My home was like a salon with writers, artists, poets and politicians. I was always listening to these conversations and learning to speak up. The big question at home was not what will you be but what will you do for others.
What kind of future do you think the girl child has in India — after 10 years will there be a difference?
I hope that school budgets increase, food programmes include protein like eggs, men who rape and assault girls are held legally accountable, marginalised communities and women get safe and independent housing, loans and legal protection. I hope love and equality replace hate and hierarchy. Then girls will be able to fulfil their full potential. Basic needs are human rights. Hope is a form of planning.
Julie Banerjee Mehta is the author of Dance of Life and co-author of the biography Strongman the Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen. She has a PhD in English and South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto, where she taught world Literature and Postcolonial Literature for many years. She currently lives in Calcutta and teaches Master’s English in Loreto College