Hello, Hello, and good morning. How are you good morning? I
gotta tell you right from then, how are you fantastic? Right from the
very start, I gotta tell you this is an amazing work of words.
And I don't want to get lost and not bring up this question. But
is there a place where people, the average person can go to help,
because I mean, is there a website? Because I want to make sure
that we're that people understand how serious this this story is. Thank you.
So they can go to ikicknifly dot com. They're building a community. There,
there are resources and there are ways to volunteer, take action and help.
They can also go to my NGO website up nay up dot org,
which is apneap dot org. And they can go to my website Ruchira Gupta
dot com, which will also lead them to wherever they want to go.
If they want to act, there are calls to action. If they want
to find resources, there are resources, and they take them to my nguo
to volunteer your internet. This is an amazing story of inspiration and empowerment.
Young adult readers have got to get into this story and basically become aware of
what's going on as well as you know, protect themselves absolutely, because you
know, human trafficking is a big problem and the majority of those affected our
young people. The averages of a girl being sold into prostitution in India is
between nine and thirteen, but in the United States it's between thirteen and fifteen.
And the statistics show that, you know, more than three hundred thousand
people are trapped in situations of sex trafficking in the United States right now,
and most of them are from United States, not from India. This affects
me because Charlotte, according to research, is number four in the nation for
human trafficking, and it just shocks me that that we're still not talking about
it the way we should be, and books like this I Kick and I
Fly really will start a conversation. I wrote Iki Can I Fly so that
I could reach young people and tell them a story about standing up to human
trafficking, sexual abuse, bullying, body shaming and winning. You know that
they can stand up to injustice and win. Iki Can I Fly is about
like a fourteen year old girl who's about to be sold into prostitution, but
becomes a kung fu champion instead with a little help from a woman's right advocate
and her mother and a community of women who stand by her. And you
know, the thing is, Iki Can I Fly is based on true stories
generated in my own Engeo Up Nap, where girls just like the girls in
Iki Can I Fly did win gold medals in karate, did finish school,
finish college and have jobs now and have helped their mothers out of sex trafficking.
So this can be done. And the reason I wrote Iki Can I
Fly, and the reason I chose to publish Iki Can I Fly It's called
a Stick, was because I wanted to get the book out to young adults.
I want to talk to young people about things which matter to them,
which are prevalent in their lives, but nobody talks to them about and what
better way than through the voice of a young girl. So true, so
true. But you know what's you know what's interesting is that I'm going to
see a lot of adults picking up this book, and even though it is
a YA book, they're they're gonna find their their own stories in there as
well. So I really do see it to be a wide open book for
everybody. I think it's a crossover book also because you know, the character
of the woman's right advocate. You know, how she tries to overcome so
many difficulties and challenges to help this most marginalized girl, or even the character
of the mother my you know she's dirt poor, but how she fights for
her daughter in spite of it all, and how she has to take on
an alcoholic husband who reforms maybe maybe not, and a community which is totally
against her. A hostile owner changes the shape of the story. It puts
faith in forward motion. What was it like to build from this point forward?
Now that now that we've got an open door for there to be safety,
how did it grow inside your imagination? The characters began to talk to
me, and so I knew that the characters would tell me what to do
at some point. I knew the beginning and the end of the story.
When I began writing the plot, I knew there was a girl who was
expelled from school because she kicked the class bully. I also knew that she
wins the gold medal in karate and gets out of prostitution. In between,
you know were the challenges that she has to overcome. Her father wants to
sell her into the cattle fair. Her mother wants to protect her. The
roof is leaking at home, there's no food, and the entire lane is
full of brockles, and the girl has to walk past the lane every day
to be able to go to school. It's like walking through a river of
crocodile And the way I imagined it was exactly that that. How would I
navigate river of crocodiles, you know? And what would they do to me?
They would snap at me, they would crawl closer to me, and
how would I take it? Some of it is based on my imagination by
because I try to put myself in the shoes of each of the characters that
I write about. The boys who's the brother of the girl, is kind
and gentle, and he's willing to sacrifice his dreams so that he wants to
be a scientist. But he's willing to give up going to school and become
a porter so that his dat sister can go to school. But on the
other hand, I also had like these crime lords, you know, who
just sit and watch the girls walking by, chewing some tobacco with gold chains
around their neck, and I could actually see them when I was writing.
And the failed mother who has to break stones, cut up stones and still
can't keep her daughter in school and has to look for food in the trash
near the railway tracks. And I could see it all as I was writing,
and some of it I could see because I'd actually seen it working in
my ngo up near the red light area is near the railway tracks. I
have seen people look in the trash for food along with pigs. And I
have seen the traffickers prey on little girls. And I had to in my
own hostel which I started for the children to be able to study safely.
I had to make the wall at the hostel higher because the traffickers were trying
to jump over the walls to kidnap the girls. I had to put a
security guard at the gate. So a lot of it is based on true
experiences and a lot of it is imagination. To go from your eyes to
the page, to the book to the reader to the activation around the world.
What an amazing journey that you have been on. You've got to come
back to this show anytime in the future. The door is always going to
be open for you. Than so much do share. I can apply with
as many people as you can, because they will find inspiration, hope and
courage. Oh, I love your heart. Please come back anytime. The
door is going to be open for you. Okay, thank you, thank
you. I love your program. Thank you. You be brilliant today