Kolkata, Oct 14: An unusual boutique will open its doors on Wednesday. Ananya, located in a respectable south Kolkata residential area, will be manned and managed by sex workers.
However, no eyebrows are being raised and the locals seem as excited by the boutique as the owners.
The boutique, which will sell dresses, paintings, pottery and jute works made by the sex workers and their children, is housed in a three storeyed building on Harish Mukherjee Road. The building, funded by the Irish government, also has a training centre. The entire project cost 50,000 euros. The project which is part of the Kalighat Women’s Income Generation Programme, an initiative of the Indian chapter of the Irish Hope Foundation in 1999, the women at Ananya were trained by professionals in various crafts.

Kalighat, the oldest red light district in the city, has 9,000 sex workers living in the maze of narrow by-lanes and alleys. These ‘women’, often girls of 13 and 14 years of age, approached the Hope Foundation requesting a training that could offer them a realistic alternative to the sex trade. The boutique is the stepping stone to the realisation of this bold dream.
Maliya (name changed), a 14-year-old sex worker, reflected the excitement of her co-workers. “We are all very excited. This is the ray of light that we have been waiting for. We are hopeful that it will ensure a safer future of our children,” she said.
Project secretary Deepak Biswas said, “We have been preparing for this boutique for the last three months. This is a very posh area and we are hoping to do good business. The quality of our products is very good.”
There was a flurry of activity at Ananya on Monday afternoon as girls added finishing touches to the various products. Some were busy embroidering sarees, while others were busy putting finishing touches to umbrellas amid the busy hum of sewing machines. In another room three women were busy making beautiful mugs, pen-stands, letter-racks and table mats all out of jute.
Earthen mugs were simply bordered with jute linings, giving them at once the elegance and exclusivity that is so much the demand of the time. Plain white Kurtas were painted in rainbow hues with different motifs. Greeting cards were stacked, with faces of Tagore embroidered with colourful threads on thick paper.
Director of the Irish Hope Foundation, Maureen Forrest, who will be inaugurating the boutique, said there is a great demand for Indian embroidered products in Ireland. “We have already got an export license and we are thinking about opening a branch of the boutique in Ireland too.”