by Ashley Judd
I was so excited to tell Seane Corn all about Sanghamitra when she arrived in Mumbai with Kate Roberts on Sunday night. While I dragged the National Geographic film crew across India (or were they dragging me?), Seane was scheduled to go on an overlapping tour with Kate. It was such a joy to see her lioness mane of golden curls and hear her unmistakable New Jersey accent echoing off the alabaster ceilings of the Taj Mahal Palace. I think of Seane as so sophisticated it touched me to see how giddily thrilled she was to be here, how energized she was by our local missions. We began our time together setting our intention with a seated meditation, at the end of which we looked at each other, heavy-lidded, relaxed, and with a sense that we had been kissed by the divine.
Seane has a remarkable history of resilience and service. She was just seventeen when she moved to New York City by herself and went to work as an illegal underage bartender in a gay sex club. Seane also became involved in drugs. It was the early 1980s, when HIV was quietly surging through the gay community, and one of her closest friends succumbed to AIDS before anyone really knew what it was. Before he died, he passed on a gift: He told her that God was in every person she met, even leather boys in gay bars. “Ignore the story and see the soul,” he told her. “And remember to love—you will never regret it.” She has said it was her first lesson in the central tenet of yoga—that we are all one. Eventually, she was able to overcome her addictions through a powerful yoga practice and soon became an inspired teacher, verbally brilliant, boldly devoted to Spirit. After she moved to Los Angeles, Seane became an evangelist for yoga as a healing art and spiritual practice. She started a workshop in Van Nuys, teaching yoga to child prostitutes as a way to help overcome their trauma.
Although we come from very different backgrounds, Seane and I have much in common. She’s very much a leader; she can hold the space in any circumstance. There’s reciprocity in our work. She taught me how to make my physical practice a prayer. I, in turn, have encouraged her social activism. Our relationship deepened after I called her for help when I was so sick in Bangkok, on my first trip for PSI, and she talked me through a night of cramps and mental anguish. I took Seane out to lunch soon after I returned from Asia, to thank her for her kindness. She was full of questions about my activism, and it planted a seed in her soul to use her platform in the yoga community as a launching point for large-scale service work. The conversation eventually led to Seane’s becoming the global yoga ambassador for YouthAIDS, bringing the message of AIDS awareness to the twenty million people doing yoga worldwide, and tapping into a billion-dollar industry for fund-raising. She adopted the slogan “Off the Mat—Into the World,” cofounded an organization that offers leadership training sessions for yoga practioners who then joined or found community service projects all around the country. It also raises money through service projects that bring yoga students to places like Cambodia, Uganda, South Africa, and Haiti.
On top of that, she’s a fun girlfriend who loves to shop. Seane is blessed with the gift of gab, and I couldn’t wait to hear her stories after her appointment to teach yoga to the women of Sanghamitra. I would have loved to go with her—but first I had a slum to visit.
Everything in Mumbai is extreme: the heat, the traffic, the noise, the crush of human bodies everywhere. And nothing I’ve done or seen could have prepared me for what passed for a housing compound in the depths of Dharavi, the sprawling area made internationally famous in the film Slumdog Millionaire. We were surrounded by dozens of squealing children as soon as we parked the car. I emerged at the opening of a tiny dark tunnel running between two shanties, from which a tiny figure in a bright sari materialized. It was Nasreen, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Kausar, a peer educator, who lived at the other end of this ghastly passageway. It was entirely black, no light source at all, about eighteen inches wide and less than six feet high. The uneven cement was wet from an unseen water source. Was it sewage? I hunched down, let my eyes adjust, and held Nasreen’s hand as she escorted me into the reality of this “apartment” complex that accommodates ten thousand people. Our route twisted and turned unexpectedly, I never found my bearings. The sounds of people living their lives was all around us, animated conversations, a TV blaring (there is more jury-rigged electricity around here than I’ve ever seen, it’s amazing none of it catches fire), babies crying. The children who had been at the car when I arrived would crazily appear in cracks in the tunnel along our way, popping out of crevices so small that I hadn’t thought they were passageways, yet from floor to ceiling, the narrow dark space would impossibly fill with faces. It was like being in a nightmare version of a fun house at the fair, the type where you are constantly jolted by unexpected, unwelcome distortions and surprises … but there was very little fun at this fun house.
Eventually, Nasreen and I arrived at a crude wooden ladder, which we climbed up into the two tiny rooms she shared with her HIV-positive mother and her brother. Incredibly, this was a duplex affair, one hovel stacked on top of the other once the horizontal space ran out. I was speechless at the desolation of their living space, which Nasreen had spiffed up by plastering recent newspapers soaked in flour and water over the corrugated tin walls.
When Kausar found out she was HIV-positive in 1999, the doctor told her, “There are drugs, but you cannot afford them, and you’ll be dead in five years anyway.” Indignant, she ripped her test result paper in half and slapped him across the face. He pressed charges. In court, she spoke out on her own behalf. “Have I raped someone? Killed? Stolen? Kidnapped? What have I done?” The judge saw things her way and demanded the doctor pay her a small fee in damages. Hence, a spitfire of an HIV activist was born. Kausar now worked for PSI, escorting other HIV-positive patients when they went to doctors, mentoring and coaching them through their care.
Kausar has a very charismatic faith and credits God for her strength. When troubled, she prays for thirty minutes, then “goes out and gets the job done.” She prayed for me, a long, intent, sincere petition that culminated in a joyous series of alleluias. Like Luz in Guatemala and so many others I had met, she had transformed her life through service to others. It was deeply moving to me.
I was told how, during their hard times when Kausar was so sick from AIDS, Nasreen scrounged for her family to stay alive. She begged. She worked. Eventually, she herself went hungry; a teacher finally reached out to her, learned the story, and personally gave her money for food. A lovely girl, Nasreen wants to be a doctor. I braided her hair, undid it, and braided it again, just to be able to nurture her more. The sweetness of the moment was almost unbearable. Before I left, we had a little talk about our bodies, because Kausar admitted that she hadn’t ever discussed sex with her nearly adult daughter. Nasreen leaned into me, holding my hand (she grabbed it back whenever I released hers), listening. I said to her, my own voice surprising me, as it was now thick with emotion and I was flailing inside, trying not to break down. I had suddenly been sucked into a squall of emotion that it took great control to modulate. “Your body is beautiful and sacred. Do you believe me when I say that?” (Yes.) “You are beautiful and sacred. Do you believe that about yourself?” (Yes.)
I came to India for Nasreen.
My next meeting was with a very different group of peer educators, ones whom I found especially touching. They were four empowered, recovering, formerly hard-core, hope-to-die, stealing-robbing-thieving-abusing-pimping-homeless street drug addicts who shared with me the miraculous stories of their individual salvation through a Twelve Step program. It was their unyielding devotion to carrying the message to the addict who still suffers that led them to work with their peers. Nearly one in four injecting drug users (IDUs) is HIV-positive; they spread the virus by sharing dirty needles. PSI in Mumbai reaches about four thousand of them through the Green Dot program, which provides clean needles and syringes to keep the addicts from spreading HIV. It also has a drop-in center for them to rest and get cleaned up and where a visiting doctor treats their injection-related wounds.
&nb
sp; IDUs constitute one of the most underserved populations in the world. Many aid organizations simply will not work with them, and donors shun them, too. I am proud that PSI is not one such agency, even as we have our own troubles raising “unrestricted” money for their programs, because some governments and foundations stipulate that their funding stream may not help injecting drug users.
My new friends had scars on their faces; one was missing half an arm. They had hellish stories to share; one used to beat his mother for money. Addicts are the scourge of society here, ostracized like the “untouchable” caste. When the police round up suspects for a crime, any crime, they go straight for the addicts, whether or not they were anywhere near the scene. Each of these men managed to clean up and was given a job. However, one in particular was so grateful for his recovery that after putting in a day at PSI, he would leave work and spend hours at the train station reaching out to addicts still in their lowlife using careers. Through his passionate example was born our IDU program. It is now the full-time and paid occupation of all four men, outreach workers who visit the addicts in the streets to exchange needles and syringes and provide counseling.
Sitting on mats in the PSI office with these men, hearing these powerful stories of lives turned around, is absolutely what keeps me going. Gentle, sweet souls, one and all—it was impossible to envision the craven, remorseless shadows they insisted they once were. Like so many of us, they know they cannot keep what they have without giving it away.
Except for some lethargy, probably caused by jet lag, I was feeling so very well and balanced on this trip. My first night, I almost skipped the daily inventory of my day, and I am very glad I did not. By keeping it in place, I provide my potentially turbulent days with stable bookends that ground me in familiar spiritual routines. Each morning I study recovery and spiritual readings and then spend thirty minutes in seated meditation (although admittedly some mornings I seem to spend more time checking how much time has gone by, than actually meditating), during which I slowly repeat internally deeply inspirational passages that embody my highest ideals. Sometimes it’s the Prayer of St. Francis, sometimes it’s the Serenity Prayer or the Imitation of Christ, the Twin Verses from the Damamapada, or the Great Spirit Prayer by Chief Yellow Lark. And each evening I review my conduct, knowing that to spot, admit, and correct mistakes is the essence of character building. I ask myself questions such as, When was I selfish, self-seeking, dishonest? Did I use all my tools today? Did I reach out when I needed to, sit quietly when that was best? Was I on time? Was I kind? Do I owe any amends? Did I allow myself to become hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? Did I repeat the Holy Name, did I surrender, did I have expectations, did I let go of the outcome? How were my boundaries? These routines have brought me so far. They have helped me maintain my commitment to honesty and accountability and created changes in both my thinking and my behavior that I am enjoying.
Yesterday, for example, I began hearing a critical voice in my head: I am not doing enough, I need to do more, I have to do more, I need to work with more NGOs that complement PSI’s public health mission, I need to go see the prostitutes around the corner who hollered at me, go back to that one brothel where I held the schoolgirl but couldn’t talk because I was getting the “come on, Ashley” wink from Papa Jack, I need to pay for the kids’ educations. It was mental panic. Shortly, though, my recovery rose up to meet this insanity and call it what it was: selfishness and self-centeredness. I was able to hear all the “I, I, I, I, I” that my ego was shouting, and all the other words receded. To the untrained ear, it might have sounded like compassion and goodwill; to me, it was all about what “I” needed to do, which is “edging God out” (ego) in an attempt to stifle my powerful emotional responses to the things I had seen. I was able to remind myself that all that is asked of me is that I increase my conscious contact with the God of my understanding, ask for knowledge of Her will for me and the strength to carry that out. Have I done that as best I can today, understanding that my best fluctuates? Yes. Am I continuing to? Yes. Well then, I can stop abusing myself with perfectionism and trust that, as Father Merton wrote, “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.” I am cleaning house, trusting God, doing what is in front of me. That is good, and that is enough. I am enough.
I spent time in a secretive brothel in Kamathipura, where cotton cloth covered the entry to each room. These are girls and women who are truly sex slaves, unable to physically leave their rooms, even to go to the health clinic. They do not see the outdoors for years; their only walking is to the toilet at the end of the hall. They are in the karza or indentured servitude phase of sex slavery. They have been brought in against their will, tricked by someone they knew in their home village, purchased by a madam for as little as $100 U.S. Each slave has to “earn” back her money, in addition to whatever the madam spends housing and feeding her. They are young, rural, terrified, and unable to speak the local dialect, which intensifies their helpless isolation. If they do dare to flee, heavies are stationed at obvious places such as rail and bus stations to bring them straight back.
The women I met in this human storehouse were actually from Nepal, which has seen tens of thousands of its young stolen for Mumbai’s sex trade. Their poverty is so bad, their desperation so intense, that they are often forced to work here with an impossible number of clients per day. They even offer anal sex for a modestly higher fee (about 100 rupees more, about $2 U.S.). It’s hard to know the exact HIV rate of trafficked women, as those who are karza can’t be tested. However, in 2007 the HIV rate of women tested at the Falkland Road Clinic was 37 percent.
This obscene situation was brought to the attention of both the Indian and Nepalese governments by health workers from NGOs who were finding alarming rates of infection in the brothels. The result is that trafficking from Nepal to India has been significantly reduced—an exception being, of course, the women I met today.
It was a relief to leave that stifling room and climb up to the roof of the brothel for some air. I found about ten children there and a woman washing her dishes while rotten food floated in a growing puddle. They were dusty, filthy, but playful and animated by having a foreigner visit. I asked their names, but they wanted to go further, and those who could wrote their names for me on scraps of paper, so I would remember them. The whole life of a child, scrawled in a name. Against the plastic wall of a makeshift room on torn, small pieces of paper, they wrote:
Aadarshini
Yamuna
Nabhendu
Asiya
Aarti
I put the damp, dirty scraps carefully into my tote, and when I returned to the hotel, the instant I hit the door of my room, something exploded in my chest. I was suddenly clawing at my tote, dropping to my knees, nearly vomiting up grief as I crawled to the coffee table, where I laid out each child’s piece of paper, looking at their names, seeing the uniqueness of each one’s writing, imagining a bit of their essence on the paper from where their hands had touched it.
I thought of their lives—born and raised in brothels, and likely condemned to brothels as adults; the boys were already doing chores to keep things running, and the girls were often sold to men as early as age eight. It was too much for me to reconcile, their free-spirited joy on the roof in spite of the odious reality in the crowded rooms below. Why? How? What was I supposed to do now that I knew this, now that I knew them?
I called Tennie in Texas, described the brothel, and told her of the children I had met on the roof, how they played using that small bit of elevated space to escape their mothers’ sex acts and the equal dangers of the streets below.
“How do I pray for these children?” I asked, sobbing. “I don’t know how to begin, if I am not supposed to pray for specific outcomes.”
In her gentle voice, strong with experience and made gentle with empathy, Tennie began to tell me about her daughter, Kim, and the years Kim lived on the streets, in active addiction and anorexia. Tennie relied on Twelve Step
programs as well as professional help to learn how not to enable, how to detach with love from a person’s problems and to cope with her own desperate impulses to continually rescue and caretake her daughter. She had to let Kim go, to allow her to find recovery on her own. Tennie even held a symbolic funeral for Kim to assist her as she let go of her daughter. She described to me how, over and over, hundreds of times, as her fears about Kim resurfaced and reanimated her grief process, she would visualize her daughter. In her mind’s eye, she gently held her daughter in her arms and carried her to the God of her understanding. Tennie described her God concept as a conventional image of a loving father and said she would lay her daughter in her God’s lap, turning Kim over to a Power greater than herself, who could do for Kim what no earthly parent, however loving and dedicated, ever could. Tennie would repeat this prayerful visualization as often as necessary.
I pondered my God concept and to what I might be able to turn over to each child, what I could entrust to them. A river’s edge came to me, and I saw a beautiful, mighty, flowing river, which I realized represented God’s will. I thought of myself and how I sometimes wade right in, abandoning myself to the care and protection of God’s will without hesitation. Sometimes, though, I sit on the riverbank, stuck in my self-will, watching the river flow right by, unwilling to take the steps necessary to put me in the graceful currents. Other times I step in, but only to my ankles, back turned on the river, staring at the bank, thinking about why I can’t have it both ways, self-will and God’s will. Or I come to God as I did tonight, on my knees, crawling, begging for it.