Hope in the holy city By Ajay Uprety/Varanasi Ajeet Singh has rehabilitated more than 100 sex workers and put an equal number of their children in schools.

Hope in the holy city

By Ajay Uprety/Varanasi

Ajeet Singh has rehabilitated more than 100 sex workers and put an equal number of their children in schools. http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekSectionView.do?tabId=13&programId=1073755753&BV_ID=@@@ Lessons from Masterji Ajeet Singh with his students on the floating school / Photo by Sanjay Ahlawat Most Viewed Bright minds and Dark Angels Course of action Brave new Baghdad Methodology of the Survey: How we did it Temple of learning Everyone wants a Bhagat Singh to be born, but not in their house If not this, what would have been your career?I started early so I never thought of anything else. I was just 17 and I thought with my heart rather than my head. What has been the biggest challenge?Social ostracism. It was quite contradictory to what I was taught in school. You are told to become crusaders like Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Bhagat Singh, but when you try to emulate them in real life,... Floating dreams Guria's floating school on the Mansarovar Ghat in Varanasi is popular among children at the ghats. The school—a 250-square-foot- boat—has been rented for 06,000 a month. It has 70 students on the rolls, mostly children from the boatmen community. Singh hopes the school is successful in minimising the vulnerability of these hapless children to abuses. The school runs for two... Fading red Shivdaspur, the red-light area of the holy city, is about three kilometres from Varanasi railway station. Narrow alleys, dingy buildings and shops dot the small locality. According to a rough estimate, Shivdaspur is inhabited by 10,000 people, of whom 46 per cent are female. When the flesh trade was at its zenith, before the intervention of Guria, there were about 1,000 active sex workers in the...