A Teenage Kung Fu Champion Fights Sex Traffickers
March 16, 2023
In Ruchira Gupta’s debut novel I Kick and I Fly, Heera escapes from being forced into a life of prostitution in India. The teenager finds her inner strength through martial arts, stays in school, and inspires her community to fight the sex-traffickers.
Gupta is the founder of Apne Aap (self-action), a non-profit seeking to rescue children and women from prostitution in India. Since 2013, Gupta has been teaching at New York University. Earlier from 2006 to 2008 she worked for the UNICEF in New York.
Gupta started her career in India as a journalist. She earned degreesa in English: an M.A. from Mumbai University, 1987; and a B.A. from Loreto College, Kolkata, 1985.
Gupta, who is also a self-taught artist, divides her time between New York and Bihar, India.
I Kick and I Fly, published by Scholastic, will be available in stores starting April 18. It has been praised by Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, and other authors.
Here is an extract from the book, followed by an interview with Gupta.
Extract From I Kick and I fly
"The winter condensation is as thick as a brick. I turn around and can make out that it’s a man, much larger than my brother, enveloped in the foggy universe. I hear his breath and realize that the blur is getting closer, following me as I begin to run.
Sweat breaks though my skin even in the freezing cold. My feet take off in the opposite direction and I scream as loud as I can.
His footsteps become louder.
A hand comes down over my mouth. Another arm holds me in an iron grip. The man is strong, but so am I.
I do a back kick into his groin as hard as I can. He yells in pain. Even if I can’t break free, I can slow him down. The next thing I know my mother is shouting, “Let her go! What are you doing! Let her go now!”
“Get out of my way!” the man yells back. He’s still holding me tight.
I jab him with a back elbow thrust and we stumble onto the uneven earth. The cold ground gives me some relief. I’ve put up enough of a fight to prevent him from dragging me too far away from my hut.
More voices take up the space around us, people who have come out of their homes—my aunt, a neighbor or two.
“What’s happening here?” another woman yells.
I can see his fury through the fingers spanning my face and use the distraction to open my mouth and bite as hard as I can.
The man lets out a yelp. He stinks—a body odor of country liquor, sweat, and grease. Finally, his grip loosens enough that I squirm away. As soon as I’m free, I take gulps of clean air.
A crowd has formed, and it is formidable. I’m safe. My lane feels different even in the short time since I got the medal. As if my Kung Fu medal is for all of us—a source of pride.
Ruchira Gupta
AN Interview With Ruchira Gupta
Q:What is Kick and Fly about?
A:The story is about 14-year-old Heera who is from a nomadic tribe in India. She is about to be sold into prostitution by her father, to help feed the family and repay his loans.
A woman's rights advocate, working in the village, enrolls Heera in a kung fu program. Through the practice of kung fu, Heera learns the power of her body and that it is worth fighting for. She wins a gold medal at a local competition.
Heera’s courage and determination to save herself and improve her life inspires the community to take on the local crime lord who trafficks their girls. They fight him and his goons and protect the daughters who stay and finish school.
The story begins in Bihar, India, and ends in Queens, New York
Q: How big is the problem of human trafficking?
A: Sex trafficking remains the second largest source of income for criminals around the world, after drugs, with billions of dollars in annual revenues. The human cost is that it enslaves more than 25 million human beings, most of them women and children.
Q: What made you write about this subject?
A: In 1994, I was a journalist hiking through the hills of Nepal, when I came across rows and rows of villages with missing girls. I asked around and, following the trail, found that they were sold. Girls as young as 13 and 14 were locked up in brothels in Mumbai, nearly a thousand miles away.
I wanted to publicize this injustice. In 1996, I made a documentary The Selling of Innocents about the trafficking of girls from Nepal to India.
It won an Emmy award. It was shown at the United Nations and the U.S. Senate. It contributed to the passage of the UN Protocol to End Trafficking and the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Unlike in India, most of the kids trafficked in the U.S. are from inside the country. Typically, they are teenagers from poor, often broken homes. Many are from marginalized races, Black and American Indians. Most of the white victims faced physical and sexual abuse.
In 1998, I left journalism and started the non-profit Apne Aap that is helping girls and women return to safety.
Q: Why did you write Kick and Fly?
A: I began writing the book in 2014. This was after a girl just like Heera, we were working with at Apne Aap in Bihar, India, won a gold medal in karate. I stopped after writing a few chapters. Then, during the pandemic lockdown, I resumed writing and finished in 2020.
My story is based on what I witnessed and what I heard from my fellow social workers. We come across many Heeras – diamonds in Hindi - in our work.
The average age of a girl being sold into prostitution is between nine and thirteen in India - and between thirteen and fifteen in the US.
There is nothing like a story to create empathy. I wrote this book for teenagers – as well as parents, families, and teachers. I want them to know that some young people, who are not as fortunate as them, are sold like commodities into a life of forced, repeated, daily abuse and violence.
I want people to find clues to help those who may be at risk. I want many more to raise their voices and join the movement against sex-trafficking. It’s a major global problem not widely covered in the media or a focus of politicians and policy makers.
I want people to know that those who stand up to such inhuman exploitation and cruelty can win.
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