Raise your hand if you’ve seen Born Into Brothels. Yeah, I didn’t think so. Well, it was a critically-acclaimed and award-winning documentary released in 2004 documenting the lives of eight children of prostitutes in Calcutta’s red light district. Now one of those children featured in the documentary has grown up and escaped the life he once knew. Avijit Halder is entering his freshman year here at NYU this fall, and he was recently interviewed by the New York Sun about his experiences growing up and his initial reactions to the hustle and bustle of New York life.

Amid the James Francos and the Liam Aikens and the Mary Kate and Ashleys of NYU’s notoriously celebrity-studded campus, Avijit Halder has a different kind of fame. He probably won’t be recognized on the street. Not because Born Into Brothels wasn’t important, but because he was 11-years-old when the footage was shot, and, well I don’t know about you, but I look much different now than I did when I was 11. And he probably won’t have groupie students hanging around outside the Tisch building chain-smoking without inhaling hoping to catch a glimpse of him (à la Franco, yeah you know who you are). Instead he was a part of something much more significant than a summer blockbuster or a Hollywood reputation - an insightful documentary exposing a facet of the third world that is often overlooked.

I won’t even pretend that I’ve seen Born Into Brothels or that I’ve done extensive research into the content of the film and the impact it has had on sex work in the third world. I do know, however, that the documentary has garnered 96% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 103 reviews), and that it won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2004. If I hadn’t canceled my Netflix subscription I’d be adding it to my queue, but instead I’m going to have to venture to Blockbuster this weekend because after reading Avijit’s interview in the New York Sun, I’m very, very interested to see the documentary.

I think Avijit’s presence on campus brings a much-needed diversity that the university claims to have, but students never experience. In my opinion this university, while arguably ethnically diverse, is completely homogenous in most other ways. Mostly that NYU doesn’t give out much in the way of financial aid, so most students are pretty well-off. That, and that most people come from affluent, coastal suburbs. Avijit brings a new kind of diversity to campus in that he grew up in a third world country in unfavorable conditions, and he still made it all the way to New York City. He’s getting a world-class education, and he didn’t do it with the help of a legacy or a check book.

I, for one, hope I run into him. He’s studying film, so maybe I’ll pretend to inhale 15 cigarettes while loitering outside the Tisch building until he comes out.

Photo by Flickr user roxyworld used under a Creative Commons license.