All That Is Bitter and Sweet (60 page)

Before we left the center, I sat with a group of young women and listened to their stories. One girl shared that her parents had chosen her husband, and she was resolutely denying the marriage. She insisted she would marry in her own time, for love. She was learning there were alternatives; there
should
be alternatives. Her folks were furious. “Apne Aap is spoiling your attitude and mind,” they told her. She just kept coming back.

When we talked about abuse, one girl said, “Oh, when they beat us, it’s okay if we’ve done something wrong. That is not abuse.” I died a thousand deaths. Cultural change is so slow. I anguish over it sometimes, it is so slow.

I wanted them to know that we were all on a level playing field. When I asked, “Who among us has been abused?” I raised my hand, as did most of the others in the small group traveling with me. I noticed there was a writer from Reuters in the room, and I briefly worried that he would spin a story about how I raised my hand to my own question. Then I thought:
So be it. Most folks know I am in recovery, and I wouldn’t be if I didn’t have something from which to recover—the logic follows
. At this stage, I am actually beginning to have gratitude for my painful past, in that I may be
qualified
to sit with oppressed people all over the world, to be a part of a grassroots social justice process that speaks volumes about the promise of ending poverty, of an age of justice.

As our time drew to a close, each of us offered something we loved about ourselves. To break the ice, I held my bosom and said, “I love my boobs!” Peals of laughter erupted. Most girls were able to find something … teeth, hair, hands, eyes. Oh, but the struggling few who could not put words to one single admirable thing about themselves. Surprisingly, a girl who had been speaking up a great deal was one of these. When I said to her, “Well, I
love
your voice!” she was so pleased. The girl whose parents were attempting to force her to marry was also too ashamed to say anything good about herself; I told her I loved her strength. Funny, isn’t it, that the ones who are so visibly special, so clearly gifted, carry so much shame?

That night, Seane came to my room and we each shared about our touching yet simultaneously troubling and triggering experience with Ruchira and Apne Aap. We were on our way to yet another cocktail party. Seane looked gorgeous, of course; my hair was wet, and my dress was still wadded up. As we were dashing off, I realized I hadn’t said my prayers. I ran to the bedside, fell to my knees, and lo and behold, there she was beside me, also on her knees, hands clasped together earnestly. That’s a friend, on her own path, a challenging and empathetic witness of my own. We finally made it out the door for what I hoped was our last late evening event for this trip.

The party was hosted by Vinay Rai, a huge philanthropist in India, whose Rai Foundation supports education for girls and women. Mr. Rai is an industrialist, engineer, and philosopher who is spiritually inspired to give back parts of his family’s great wealth to help lift up his nation, especially through education. The foundation’s motto is
“Manav Sewa Madhav Sewa”
—“Service of Humanity Is Service to God.” Right up my alley.

I sat on a small stage while the Rais’ well-dressed, beautifully mannered guests took slipcovered seats. Mr. Rai said nice things about Kate and me, described how his family’s education fund was endowed with $150 million to send poor girls to college, covering even their clothing, so they would blend well with wealthier students. Then I took the stage.

If do say so myself, I gave was one fired-up, kick-ass, hyperlucid, emotional, effective, come-to-Jesus-meeting of a talk. I had called Bono earlier that night just to thank him so much for having reached out to me five years ago, for getting me into this “holy mess,” as I called it. And as I was speaking, one of his great lines came to me:
This is not about charity, this is about justice
. The whole trip and especially the stories of Neelam, the orphan, and Naina, the trafficked girl in the detention home, lit a fire in me. Tonight, I would
not
back down.

I told the stories with all the passion in my soul, then I did something simply not done in Indian society: I asked the guests to give money. I knew most Indians’ spiritual practice required them to give anonymously (“the right hand should not see what the left hand gives”). But the point was to break the seal, be mavericks. And it worked. We raised $25,000 on the spot. The money was used for the nutrition camps that provided food for Neelam and others like her.

Mr. Rai retook the stage and seemed not at all perturbed by my impertinence. In fact, he made a surprise announcement: He was going to take care of all the orphans I had met on my trip and pay for their educations! What a remarkable, humbling, and rapturous answer to my searching prayer for these girls. What a priceless, indescribable gift. It seemed it would be radically life-altering for these children. Education is the surest way out, and tonight theirs was guaranteed.

The spectacular nature of the night was not yet over. After Mr. Rai’s announcement, I spontaneously decided to retake the podium and make a special plea to the guests. “There is a gross miscarriage of justice to which I would like to draw your attention,” I said. “I am a white American. What judge here is going to listen to me? I urge each and every citizen of India here tonight to use your voice to help Naina, a child born in a brothel, rescued by her mother, but now, insensibly, by a judge’s order, in a remand home …” and I told the story.

Before the evening was over, Mr. Rai told me that two very prominent lawyers had agreed to help Ruchira with the mother and daughter’s case. He explained that the lower courts, where this judge made the obscene ruling, are corrupt, inefficient, bothersome, mired. But in India, cases may be taken directly to the highest court in the land—which the lawyers were willing to do to reverse such a travesty of justice. I was ecstatic (and even happier when I learned that Naina was soon released and reunited with her mother).

It was ironic that in the days after such good news about the lawyers’ intervention on behalf of Naina, and the scholarships for my girls, I finally hit the wall. I was so homesick and allowed myself to go through all sorts of petty angers: I resented that I was going to miss the lilacs and the Bradford pears back home. I looked at India’s pollution, the slum visible from my hotel window, and I hated it all. I had been increasingly bothered by what was going on outside of me, unable to withdraw my attention and senses from irritants the way my meditation practice advises. Things clanging, banging, scraping, and slamming in the noisy hotel. It all triggered anger and hopelessness and obsessive worry (“I’ll not be able to sleep, it’s going to wake me up early, I am going to be tired …”), which usually indicated internal anxiety.

I was weary of working so hard at not letting it rankle me, the noise, pollution, sprawl, pouring my soul out in an honest desire to be useful and ending up on the fashion page (and misquoted to boot), watching smiling girls suddenly go blank when asked what they loved about themselves. I was haunted by Neelam’s neighborhood, the river of sewage, the family living alongside it, the robotic, exhausted man I saw on the sidewalk ironing still-dirty clothes (who for some reason devastated me especially), the three generations of women sitting in the garbage pile sorting trash, saving useful bits for themselves. I was terrified of my own inadequate vocabulary to describe all this, my own bargaining brain that prevented me from truly grasping it all. By processing, I realized I was in a very negative head and heart space about India. I hated its government, policies, and history and the overpowering magnitude of its problems. Yes, many creative grassroots programs work, lives have been touched, but all of the fixes that any NGOs and government programs offer barely touch the tip of the iceberg.

It was overwhelming. I didn’t want to spend any more time sifting through epic despair to find that one shard of hope. I was done. I just wanted to go home.

And then I came down with a case of “Delhi belly,” a bout of sickness that nearly rivaled my meltdown in Bangkok. I gave up trying to move or sip even water; everything I did created worsening cramps. Apparently, my body was purging everything I had taken on board. I had to respect its wisdom and accept that for the next little while, I was a passenger.

My sweet friends sat with me for hours to comfort me. Papa Jack read a recovery text to me while I lay still like a wretch. Seane “niced” me, rubbing little circles on my back, so-called because it feels nice, and listened while I sobbed about that man ironing dirty clothes, whose traumatic image kept returning to my mind. I told them about my transformative (though painful at the time) experiences at Shades of Hope, and soon, through fellowship, the downtime became a blessing.

I was reminded once again that I could have serenity in spite of circumstances, in spite of people, places, and things. And I also knew that this despair, too, would pass, despite the impression that everything was hopeless and futile.

I recovered quickly enough to fulfill my obligations in New Delhi and to travel to Jaipur, where Akshay Kumar and I reached out to thousands of truckers with the message of prevention. I was holding it together quite well, in fact, until my very last day in India, when I met a group of homeless children.

Anubhav is an NGO that rescues homeless boys from the railway station, where children end up after they have been abandoned or orphaned or have escaped from abusive families. The outreach workers try to save the girls, too, but the gangs/pimps/traffickers are too slick and usually nab them first. In fact, the director sadly told me they have never once been able to rescue a girl. The boys, some of them just toddlers, scavenge for food along the tracks that run through the grubbiest, nastiest, most gruesome slum I’ve ever seen. The children look like lunatics with their never brushed hair in wild nests around their grimy faces, standing with shoeless feet on garbage heaps and industrial scrap metal piles. The malnutrition was so bad, their hair was two-toned, orange and dull brown. Their homes were rotting sacks stretched on bricks.