Jump to navigation. For almost three decades, Aruvacode, a village of potters, was known as the "prostitutes' village". The men remained idle or acted as pimps. The potter's wheel had stopped turning in this hamlet outside Nilambur town, which is nestled in the teak forests and hills of Kerala's Malappuram district. Today the potter's wheel is spinning again. Aruvacode is once again being called a "potters' village". And there are many Sumathys behind those wheels.
While some 35 girls between the ages of 10 and 20 are involved in pottery projects, about women - most of them former prostitutes - and as many men work as construction and plantation labourers. Enrolment in schools has gone up from 15 per cent in the '80s to 90 per cent now, and about 10 boys and girls go to college. Aruvacode now basks in the reflected glory of year-old Bindu, who has come first in the higher secondary examinations and wants to be a doctor. All this would not have been possible had it not been for some unsung heroes.
In the early '90s, when the media spotlight was trained on Aruvacode and its odd families, the village was referred to as an extended brothel. But people like V.
Radhakrishnan, a year-old police officer, wanted to change this. After he was posted as a sub-inspector to Nilambur in , he made it his mission to rid Aruvacode of prostitution. Many houses which operated as brothels were burnt down and several prostitutes and pimps arrested. But he knew that these were only temporary measures - poverty would force the women back into the business.
Rehabilitation was imperative. The Gulf money induced boom in the construction industry came as a godsend. Persuading contractors to employ the villagers, Radhakrishnan found jobs for hundreds of women and men as labourers, plantation workers and helpers in the hotels of Nilambur. Another hero in the metamorphosis of Aruvacode is year-old K.
