NOT JUST ANOTHER STORY (PB)

When the rags-to-riches hit
movie Slumdog Millionaire swept the Oscars in 2009, a Kolkata journalist was
tasked with tracking down Lakshmi, a young girl from Sonagachi who had been
part of an award-winning documentary about sex workers and their children.
When the journalist finally tracked down the elusive Lakshmi, she was
surprised to see how much the young girl had changed. Lakshmi, now called
Anjali, was a high-class escort?astute, beautiful and ambitious, she had
found peace with her place in the world. As the journalist slowly got to know
Lakshmi, she found out more about her mother and grandmother and the
circumstances that had brought them into the brothels of Kolkata?s red-light
district. The poignant chronicle of three generations of sex workers?Saraju,
Malati and Lakshmi? takes us from a village in Bangladesh to a refugee camp
in India in the years before the Bangladesh War to the murky alleys of
Sonagachi to the posh Salt Lake area in Kolkata. At the heart of this
compelling narrative is Lakshmi?s tenacious struggle to lift herself out of
the squalor and unpredictability of Sonagachi?s brothels to find power and
stability in her life.