Hope can be found in the darkest of times

“After the lockdown, we had no income and no food. My mother was planning to resume providing sexual favours to men. I couldn’t stop crying” said Shyamala. Seventeen-year-old Shyamala belongs to the Devadasi community in North Karnataka, a marginalised section of society who take up sex work as their livelihood as part of an age-old tradition. Generations of women in the same family perform sexual favours to men, and this becomes their role in society.