by Ashley Judd
As this powerful imagery was coming to me, I received it as a gift being washed up on the shores of my conscious mind by something preternatural inside of me. I knew that it would work for me throughout my life. In my mind’s eye, I was on the brothel roof. I picked up each child one by one. I cradled them, kissed their foreheads, tenderly said their names, and squeezed them into me, swaying gently as I walked them to the river’s edge. There, like Moses’s mother, I accepted my limitations and set them in the river of God’s love, which could take them someplace I never could.
Aadarshini
Yamuna
Nabhendu
Asiya
Aarti
Utterly drained, but now with some degree of peace, I thanked Tennie and hung up the phone. I carefully placed the small pieces of paper in a small fabric bag, and set them on my bedside table by a flower and a picture of Dario. I lay on my side, staring. I could put the kids in the river, but I couldn’t quite let go of the scraps. I trusted I would know when it came time, whether casually or in ceremony, and I knew it would be an enormous act of faith on my part that I wasn’t ready for just yet. The scraps were a way of hanging on, just a little longer, to the delusion that I have some control, some influence. Giving them up would mean accepting my limitations all over again, knowing there are things I cannot, and will not ever, know, such as how each child’s life turns out, if there would ever be peace. But I can hope, and I can believe. Along with hard work, it’s all that is asked of me.
That evening, I invited our group to a sharing circle in my room, during which each one could, if she wished, process their Mumbai experiences. Seane regaled us with her thoughts about her time with the women of Sanghamitra. It was ironic for a Westerner to teach yoga in the country where it all began, but the prostituted women of India are so isolated from their society that the benefits of their great traditions are often lost to them. Helping them to bring some healing to their own bodies, an antidote to the abuse heaped on them for years, was her dream. As always, Seane received much more than she gave in this simple act of service. She came back bursting with respect for their activism, heralding their life experience as the expertise the policy-makers and governments actually need.
We tried to process together every night as a way to release the emotions that surfaced during our time in the field. It is important to name our feelings, out them, and release them before they have a chance to become toxic to our bodies and our souls. So many aid workers (and others in helping professions, such as nurses) anesthetize themselves at the end of the day with alcohol, cigarettes, food, or even drugs to numb the effects of what they’ve witnessed. Too often, gifted, compassionate people burn out. Seane and I encouraged the humanitarian and aid staff to join us to talk honestly about what we had been seeing and feeling, even if those thoughts were not exactly politically correct. In our circle, it is okay to admit, “The stench of that person made me want to gag and run away,” or, “I wanted to smash that pimp’s head in with a brick.” We would listen without judgment in a room filled with candles and friends. We considered how we could overcome the anger, revulsion, guilt, and fear that we weren’t doing enough and carry on with greater love.
Our staff members were so used to stuffing down their emotions that this process was alien, even frightening to some of them. Some later confessed they thought it was compulsory, because I was on PSI’s board of directors, and I felt bad about that. For myself, I have made it mandatory. Feelings are not facts, and in order to endure in this work, not burn out or give up or just stay home on the farm, I need to express my feelings, even the crazy ones. I need the support of others as I do so, to know I am not alone in my internal struggles. And I certainly need spiritual tools to go the distance and stay present in the work, when it is so tempting and easy to become hopeless, apathetic, cynical. Because if I am one with every being on earth, then I must keep growing in order to arrive at the place of not just intellectualizing, but feeling my shared humanity with both the prostitutes and the pimps, the abused and the abusers, and locate within my own heart compassion for both, equally and unconditionally.
Easier said than done.
I knew that my compassion was going to be tested at the next big event on my schedule: an afternoon with hundreds of truck drivers who exploit men, women, and children to satisfy their alleged sexual “needs” during the long separations from their families. As I said my evening prayers, I wondered how my tools were going to see me through that one.
Chapter 18
ADVENTURES IN BOLLYWOOD
Geeta (who died in the streets shortly after this photo was taken) and Sushmita Sen.
Leadership is taking responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.
—MARSHALL GANZ
hey don’t call me the Vanna White of condoms for nothing. To teach correct and consistent condom use during these field trips, I travel with a life-size wooden replica of a penis in my shoulder bag. At appropriate times, I whisk it out to demonstrate how to unroll and apply a condom, often to the mortification and amusement of the women, teens at drop-in centers, HIV-positive couples, and others who are not accustomed to openly discussing sexual behavior. I have performed the ritual for thousands of people over the years, but never, until India, all at one time.
This day, I stood on a small wooden platform beneath a colorful tent while five or six thousand Indian truck drivers crowded around for some good ole behavior change communication. They were piling on top of their trucks and hanging off light poles to get a glimpse—not of me, but of my partner in this demonstration, Akshay Kumar, one of Bollywood’s biggest action heroes, the Indian equivalent of Will Smith or Bruce Willis, but with a fan base of a billion people. Kate Roberts had done a sensational job of reaching out to India’s major film stars to help us in our awareness and prevention campaign. And now I passed my wooden dildo to this gracious and charismatic actor, who held it in one hand while he translated my instructions into Hindi through a megaphone held in the other. The truckers watched, grinning and slack-jawed, while I tore open a condom packet and did my thing: “And make sure you roll it all the way to the base of the penis!” It was a lesson in HIV prevention and unintended pregnancy that they would never forget. And with any luck, the message would sink in and save hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives.
This particular event happened in the Nagar trucking “halt point” outside of Jaipur, on the last leg of our trip through India, and it was the culmination of a remarkable and, for me, life-changing journey that had begun in Mumbai’s Cotton Green terminal.
On any given day, between two and three million long-distance truckers are crisscrossing the giant subcontinent that is India on its thousands and thousands of miles of national highways. At the end of their runs, they park in huge open-air terminals like the one at Cotton Green, often waiting for days while goods arrive and are loaded for the return trip. The trucks are charming works of art, hand-painted with colorful religious symbols, flowers, and adornments that signify their pride of ownership (I took lots of pictures for Dario). Men live, work, and sleep in their trucks and cook underneath them on tiny kerosene stoves. There is a public bathroom block that charges 5 rupees, or you can pee against the wall, as I saw many doing. Otherwise there are no services. Cotton Green is like a mobile village filled with thousands of idle men, which is a recipe for trouble.
Away from their wives, they often go to Kamathipura for sex—or the prostituted women come to them—which puts them at high risk for contracting STIs and HIV and taking the virus and STIs home to their wives. Rural married women are the highest new infection group in India. About three hundred thousand of these long-distance truckers are already living with HIV, making them one of the most critical groups for interventions.
Our outreach program in Cotton Green has been in place since 1998 and was an absolute joy to see. Interpersonal communicators wearing bright yellow coats were stationed intermittently along lines of trucks that stret
ched as far as the eye could see. One group was staging a very dramatic and loud play, punctuated by an attention-grabbing drumbeat, the plot of which was safe sex. Another group offered a ball toss game (I missed both my tries). The results lead, win or lose, to dialogues about sex: what is safe sex, what kinds of women might be HIV-positive (Any and all, dude! Looking healthy doesn’t mean for sure she’s not! Use protection with each partner!), how does one reduce risk (Well, reducing the number of partners would be great, but that’s a tough long-term sell with these guys), where products and services are available, and the importance and confidentiality of HIV testing.
I meandered from truck to truck. I chatted with hundreds of men, it seemed, and I was followed by more. I called them my “posse.” I sat with them in the dirt under their trucks, where they seek shade from the scorching sun, disregarding the rubbish. We talked about faithfulness, prostitution, and masturbation as an alternative to reduce the number of partners. (Maybe, I was told. But abstaining? No way.) Next we talked about sex with children. I assured them I knew they were good people and that they themselves would not have sex with children, but did they see children in the brothels or know men who did this? Oh, yes and yes, they said.
One new and especially garrulous friend, Yasin, said although he personally would not, he would never tell someone else not to! I challenged that heartily and asked if he, as my friend, would be willing to reconsider. I explained that children were meant to be just that, children, and not to be used for sex by adults, and that it was up to us to stand up for children, who alone were vulnerable and defenseless. We spoke at length, and he said he would share his belief that it in fact was not right the next time he saw or heard of a fellow trucker doing so. He told me how children were pimped and made available and described the little signs used to indicate their availability all along the trucking networks. I told him I had heard. And I looked at him and wondered if he was just telling me what I wanted to hear, that perhaps he knew about these heinous acts because he himself was a perpetrator.
And then the most amazing thing happened. I did not judge him.
I suddenly realized that I was in a truck stop cavorting with men who paid for sex, absolutely loving them. I was amazed and grateful for my growth. When I began this work years ago, I was sick and shattered by brothels alone. The idea of facing a man who went to a brothel was impossible; I thought I’d implode because of his shameful behavior. Now I had journeyed from wanting to kill (oh, I mean that seriously) the clients with my undiluted rage to standing among thousands of them and chatting comfortably, momentarily blessed by knowing the difference between their souls and their behavior, sensing the God seed in each man. I felt the same open-mindedness, acceptance, compassion, love, and concern for them that I did for the women they exploited. It was a total and complete miracle. It was not that I had joined the oppressor or that I suffered from a kind of Stockholm syndrome, whereby one is converted to the kidnapper’s point of view; it was that I had dealt with my own shame and now I could stand with others in theirs with an open heart. In no way did I excuse their behavior, but something about regarding them as the sick and suffering had freed me of the extremity of my own emotions that had previously rendered me useless to them.
Truckers in India are themselves exploited at every turn, much like prostituted women. Indians generally believe they are responsible for HIV and ostracize them. One man with whom I spoke longed to marry, but each time a woman’s family discovered his occupation, they withdrew her availability to marry him. The police harass them with fraudulent infractions: Your cargo is taxed, give me so many rupees, your truck is overloaded, give me rupees, there is a temporary fee for using this road, give me rupees, your papers are not correct, give me rupees. Of course, the police harass prostitutes, too, so for a few hours I thought, Aha! I’ve found the bad guys in this scenario: It’s the police! Then, of course, someone told me how the police were not paid a living wage, either, and their standard of living was also horrible. This person said it so well: “Poverty and corruption go hand in hand.” So yet again, compassion extended to another group of people I moments ago had blamed, and once again it was confirmed that poverty is the worst form of violence. Poverty reduction solutions are what each of these groups, without exception, need. My dad taught me a long time ago that shit trickles down; in India it goes sideways.
Well, if you really want to jockey for title of most marginalized group in India, men who have sex with men would be hard to beat. I sat with a group of men who cruised the area to service the truckers. Yasin and I had talked about this aspect of paid sex; it’s an option for most truckers, who are quite indiscriminate. The attitude is “any port in a storm.” I had also heard that some had sex with other male truckers in the sadly misguided belief that HIV couldn’t be spread by sex with other men.
About fifteen of us sat in a small yellow room in a shabby building block in Cotton Green, which was a drop-in center for men who have sex with men. It was decorated with tattered curtains and empowerment decals, where the prostituted men gathered to discuss their challenges, their solutions. Some wore eyeliner, one sported a glittery top, all of them were sassy and chatty. I visited with a bewitching, kind, and utterly unique transsexual named Kausur/Mamuia. Kausur was her male persona, which she used in her capacity as a peer educator for truckers who had sex with men, and Mamuia was her female identity, which was where she felt most at home. She was gorgeous, carefully attired, made-up, dainty, delicate, and very sure of herself. As a teen boy, she felt inside she was a girl and began to live her truth regardless of the cost. Her mother had accepted her (and lives with her), her siblings had not. She shared a bisexual husband with a straight woman. She was monogamous and had been since marriage; when she learned about HIV, she immediately began using condoms. Along every step of what was to me a bizarre sexual journey, she had nonetheless exemplified responsible behavior. Of course, we talked about our faith; what else could sustain a person through a story like hers?
She sang two folks songs for me, complete with poised and well-executed dance moves in the classical tradition. In return for the mesmerizing entertainment she provided, I took out my iPod and played Eva Cassidy’s version of “People Get Ready.”
I was deeply honored by the way people shared their stories with me, with the way they trusted me. Today, that was what floored me, the gratitude and sweetness. And whatever gifts I gave by allowing them to be truly heard returned to me tenfold.
Next morning I did my usual routine of meditating, eating quickly according to my meal plan (protein, starch, fruit, and fat for breakfast), making a five-minute attempt at looking sort of maybe kind of cute if you closed one eye and squinted the other, and surrendering the day and the outcome to a Power greater than myself. I knew I’d need to do that more than once, as I was in brothels again, this time with a woman who was a stranger to me but a beloved star to millions of Indians: Sushmita Sen.
As anyone who follows the movies already knows, India has the biggest, most dynamic film industry in the world, and it’s based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay—hence the name Bollywood. Indians are absolutely crazy for films, and they follow the Bollywood stars in numbers that make Hollywood agents swoon. That is why it can be so useful to recruit actors to lend their social capital to marginalized and despised populations, to dispel myths and stigma through public conversations and the media about a range of vital issues, from medically accurate sex education and HIV to access to education for girls. But Indian society is so conservative that it’s been hard to convince anyone to speak out.
That a person of Sushmita’s stature even deigns to talk about this issue, much less hangs out in a brothel, is shocking in Indian society. We approached her to join the campaign because of her willingness to break with convention in her personal and professional life. She was a single mother with an adopted daughter and had played the role of “immoral” (whatever that means) women in films. Typically, the big stars in the global South do not touch roles
that are not virtuous, and I was curious to meet her.
At a Catholic school compound (of course I managed to find a priest with whom to talk for a few minutes), I sat in an austere room with nothing but a chair. A tall, regal woman in a lovely pale blue sari came in and immediately captivated me with her womanly brilliance. She reminded me of Salma right away (although let’s be clear, S.H. is in a league of her own). Even though she had worked until three a.m. the night before, she was focused, clear-eyed, intent, attentive, dazzling. Her wild, dark hair was unbrushed, she wore no makeup, and her only dressed-up detail were long, lilac fingernails. She oozed star: that “It” factor of confidence, poise, carriage … and killer eyebrows!
As we readied for the film crew, she asked me a few questions about my work and shared some of her own story. She is a former Miss Universe who went into modeling and acting. In a maverick move, she chose not to marry and had to fight in the courts to adopt her daughter seven years ago. Her longtime personal assistant had recently died of AIDS. He had been so afraid of the stigma of his disease that he’d told no one, not even her. He might have received treatment and lived a long life, but the shame of AIDS killed him as surely as the disease. It was because of him that Sushmita decided she would campaign to end the stigma and raise awareness that there is help and hope for people living with HIV.
Hope, however, had already run out for the first woman we visited together at the Marwari Chawl brothel in Kamathipura. Geeta Sulunke was from Nepal and in her early thirties. Years ago she’d had her name tattooed on her arm; it was misspelled. Her luck went down from there. She was drugged one day at home and woke up in a Mumbai brothel. She waited a month, trapped in karza behind a curtain, before she succumbed to her first buyer. It’s such an Indian process, that. While rape, and certainly gang rape, is not unheard of in the Indian sex trade, it is not the dominant method of breaking a woman, as it is in Cambodia and Eastern Europe. In India, many girls and women are simply left to sit there in this new, squalid, dark, frightening place until they are hungry and hopeless enough to surrender.