![]() I am thirteen years old," until she perfects it. ![]() During their lessons, Lakshmi pretends she is back in school, repeating the English phrase, "My name is Lakshmi. One day, Pushpa's eight-year-old son Harish offers to teach Lakshmi Hindi and English. Lakshmi distracts herself from near-constant abuse by daydreaming of home and watching television. Lakshmi's friends teach her how to survive in the brothel, warning her against venereal diseases and American customers. Lakshmi befriends the other women in the brothel, including Shahanna, a kindhearted girl from Nepal Anita, a woman whose face is disfigured after a brutal assault by Mumtaz's henchmen and Pushpa, an ill mother of two who entered Happiness House after her husband's death. Mumtaz promises Lakshmi will be released from the brothel and return home once she repays her ten-thousand rupee debt. Mumtaz beats, starves, and drugs Lakshmi until she submits to prostituting herself. She is sold to Happiness House, a brothel run by the tyrannical Aunty Mumtaz. A series of traffickers who pretend to befriend Lakshmi smuggle her across the border into India. After a drought and monsoon destroy Lakshmi's home and her stepfather gambles away the family's few remaining possessions, Lakshmi's stepfather sells her to a sex trafficker under the guise that Lakshmi will work as a maid. ![]() Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi lives in a remote Himalayan village with her mother, Ama, and her gambling-addicted stepfather. ![]()
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