Being the Change

Recently there was an interesting deal on Living Social.com. ``Purchase a $5 donation through Living Social and the popular online business would double the amount and donate it to the Red Cross relief efforts for Japan. My initial reaction was, “Wow, what a great idea! Just click to make a difference.” I believe Living Social ended up raising close to a million dollars through this scheme. However, later that day, I had an interesting conversation with a close friend. He had seen the deal as well and for some reason, the idea didn’t sit well with him. He later understood his uneasiness when he came across a blog entry on Charity Focus.org. After the writer of the blog came across the Living Social deal, his first thought was, “Wow, now donations are for sale!”

It’s interesting to examine the multiple facets of service. The Living Social deal, for example, could be a terrific way to make a quick impact for a worthy cause. In just one day, Red Cross’s budget for Japan relief efforts increased by a million dollars. But what the Charity Focus blog went on to describe was the human to human transformation that is lost in this type of transaction based giving model. Clicking to purchase a $5 donation not only creates zero connection to the individuals in Japan that you are hoping to help, but because of this lost connection, you become detached from a global catastrophe, limiting your own reflection on your individual accountability. In other words, the “click and give” model generally doesn’t lead us to question how our micro decisions impact the world at the macro level, and how these decisions may contribute to global warming, climate change, and an increase in natural disasters.

Without going off on too much of a tangent, there is something to be said about a giving model that creates a human to human connection. While volunteering with Be the Change in DC, I realized at a more profound level the impact of direct service. Offering sleeping bags to homeless individuals huddled under blankets in the cold DC night created a beautiful opportunity. I was able to engage with the homeless at a level which is difficult to achieve when you are rushing to work or some other appointment with a million thoughts flying through your mind. At times, guilt muddled with misplaced generosity might lead you to donate a few coins or bills without making eye contact and rushing onwards. But the opportunity to spend time talking to the homeless, through the medium of a sleeping bag, allowed me to remember how much we fundamentally have in common. So many of the individuals that I met shared with me their struggle to remain positive and revealed terrible instances of misfortune and bad luck. Their personal stories led me to question the impact of my own thoughts, decisions, and actions on the world around me.

Nothing could replace the human experience of direct service. And this is why my friend had that unsettling feeling when he came across the Living Social deal. Choosing to purchase a $5 donation, while honorable in its intent, forgoes the opportunity to connect with each other and experience an inner transformation. I could easily donate $35 for Be the Change’s sleeping bag fund but how would this create a deeper understanding of what homeless people are dealing with and how their dreams are so similar to my own? Why is this important? Because it reminds us that we are not alone….that we are all connected in our desire to live in a better society. Ultimately, to create sustainable change in this world, the kind where all of us are accountable for the impact of our individual decisions, human to human giving is essential. It makes you work harder to be the change you wish to see in the world.

Breathing Prana

As the sun began rising and the ocean waves lapped gently against the shoreline, my body curved into a backbend, creating a shadow in the sand. Sweat dripped down my face in crooked streams. Suddenly an ocean wave crashed against a nearby rock, breaking the rhythm of silence. I fell into the warm sand, salty water gushed into my pores, and my eyes squinted against the sting. I felt so alive. As my energy flowed into the ocean, its waves gave back a cool, refreshing embrace. The sun was now half awake, stretching its golden rays with a slow and thoughtful yawn. Yoga on the beach with the rising sun is like no other experience.

I began practicing yoga near the end of law school because I heard it was supposed to be a great stress reliever. I could honestly say that I felt exhilarated after my first yoga session and wished that the feeling would last throughout the day. Everything seemed possible and not as daunting as before and my head cleared of all the clutter. While all forms of exercise release endorphins, the difference I have experienced with yoga as opposed to running or aerobics is the concentration of my mind on the rhythmic flow of my body in harmony with my breath. For several minutes throughout a single yoga session, I find myself truly living in the present moment and there is something inexplicably amazing about this simple achievement. After continuing with my yoga practice for a few more weeks, I began to think about its larger purpose other than to release stress.

There have been several articles recently, for example in the New York Times and the Guardian, which explain how living in the present moment impacts our overall state of happiness. Without regretting or reliving the past or worrying about or planning for the future, we find ourselves simply content with what is right now. Echart Tolle, in The Power of Now, elaborates on this idea. He articulates that by being present in the here and now, we can release ourselves from all the anxiety and stress that blocks our life force, our prana. He describes the million worries we carry with us from the moment we awake to the final seconds before we fall asleep, but he asks an interesting question. “What percent of our list of worries and stresses are responsibilities that we actually need to address right now at this moment?” Usually, not a huge percent. By concentrating on this present moment, we can be content, or at least feel less weighed down than just five minutes ago.

Now imagine repeating these five minute cycles for only twenty to thirty minutes a day, just focusing on your breath in seated meditation, through pranayama, or with the flow of your body during yoga. These cycles of concentrated breathing in the present moment have the power of creating ripples of positive energy that radiate from your core into the universe you live in. It’s these positive ripples that flow from within us and around us that have more impact on helping us to fulfill our responsibilities than all the precious time lost in worrying and fretting. Just twenty minutes after one yoga or meditation session, makes me feel infinitely times better than before I started. It’s an amazing response that I can feel and see.

Having grown up in the Jain tradition, I began observing the meditative postures of Bhagavan Mahavir and the other great Jinas and asking myself about the significance of yoga in Jainism. Ahimsa is more than being vegetarian and living in peace; it’s also about controlling our unproductive and counterproductive thoughts in order to prevent the creation and attraction of negative energy to our souls. Sending negative energy out into the world and attracting it to our being is another form of violence, and sometimes an even more powerful force because our thoughts and resulting vibrations ripple around us, impacting our friends, family, co-workers, and even people we pass on the sidewalk. There is a domino effect and through yoga, I feel like I am able to control the force I release into the universe, at least for a few hours a day. Contemplating on this peace of mind through meditation is even more powerful.

I remember when I first began learning pranayama in order to complement my yoga and meditation practice. I was asked, “Imagine how your breathing changes with your emotions. For example, it becomes fast when you’re nervous and heavy when you’re sad. Now, imagine utilizing your breathing to control your emotions, and ultimately, to control your life.”

Women Rise in Egypt

The past few weeks have represented a dream come true for the women’s rights movement. Across Egypt, women and girls united and stood as one alongside their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons in the country’s fight for democracy. As the world watched the celebrations in Egypt, news analysts began discussing the country’s future, debating whether a true democracy will have an opportunity to emerge in the coming months. Thus far mainstream media has failed to point out both the integral role of these brave women in the protests as well as the incredible opportunity the Egyptian revolution presents for realizing women’s rights not only in Egypt, but also in other countries in the Middle East.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to befriend an incredible woman from Egypt named Ms. Fatma Emam Mohamed Mokhtar, who is a Research Associate for the Nazra Association for Feminist Studies based in Cairo. Fatma is a passionate, young woman in her late twenties, who has struggled to realize her identity in the midst of gender inequalities that are entrenched in this country’s public and private spheres. Despite being raised by a traditional Nubian, Islamic mother that strongly opposed Fatma’s participation in the protests, Fatma found the courage to join her fellow Egyptians in Tahrir Square. On her first day of joining the protests, she was wary of identifying with any sub-group, focused instead on supporting the great movement for a democracy in her country. But after some time she was truly amazed by the general unity that was demonstrated between all Egyptian women, regardless of their political or religious beliefs. This is not what she had expected.

This uprising unintentionally created a public space for all Egyptian men and women to come together and hear each other with open minds because they were unified behind a common purpose. The kind of revolution that resulted, where the government was overthrown not by a military coup or a political or religious ideology, but by a people that were united in their thirst for freedom and equal opportunities, this kind of revolution presents the foundation from which women’s rights in Egypt can be realized in an organic way, from the bottom up. Egypt’s new government has the potential for involving women at the grassroots level in an honest conversation about their country’s future but in the coming months this conversation must involve both men and women. Without undermining the unified force that overthrew the regime, it is imperative that Egyptian women play a key role by voicing their opinions and shaping legitimate political parties with meaningful solutions for improving gender disparities. The firecracker that set off the uprising was large numbers of unemployed or underemployed youth, frustrated with the status quo. If the male Egyptian youth are looking to create a more robust economy for their future, equal opportunities that allow women to fulfill their potential and contribute to a thriving economy is essential.

A debate between overlapping individual rights and religious and cultural norms is surely to arise at home and in public life. The women’s rights movement within Egypt is complicated. There are religious Muslim women who believe there should be a completely secular legal system and religious Muslim women who believe the Sharia legal code, the system of laws based on the Koran that determine women’s personal status rights, should continue to be applicable to family law cases. In Tahrir Square, there were women with head scarves standing with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim women without head scarves standing on their own, and Muslim women like Fatma, standing with head scarves but unaffiliated with any political party or ideology. It has only been one week since the revolution, but as they begin organizing around pressing issues, the old debates that not only divide men and women, but also women from women, are already returning.

According to many western scholars and policy makers, Fatma represents the next generation of Muslim feminists in Egypt who are integrating and harmonizing Islam with progressive feminist ideologies. In college, she was greatly influenced by the Arab feminist Fatima Mersini, whose criticism of religion opened the door for Fatma to begin questioning current Islamic jurisprudence. Ms. Mersini describes how men in Arab society supplement personal status Sharia laws with customary privileges that favor men while subjugating women, causing a view of themselves as lesser beings and discouraging full participation in public life.[1] Both Ms. Mersini and Fatma argue that a correct interpretation of the Koran empowers women and values their contribution to society as equally as men.

Currently, Fatma is working with the, “Going Visual” unit of the Nazra Association for Feminist Studies, in order to develop advertisements that depict women on the streets doing what is only socially acceptable for men to do. For example, there are snippets of women smoking hookahs and getting their hair cut in public by street barbers. They are meant to be provocative and humorous at once, with the aim of planting seedlings of change in the minds of both Egyptian men and women, leading them to question mainstream Islamic identity. Forcing Fatma’s generation to examine how and why they identify with the Islamic faith is crucial to Muslim women’s rights as well as Egypt’s advancement.

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[1] Elhadj, Elie, “The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms,” 52.

Stuck in a Moment

Yesterday afternoon there I was, stuck in a moment. It was pouring beyond the glass doors of the University and as I watched people around me preparing to get soaked before they pushed through the barrier of protection, the sound of the train suddenly replaced the zoom of cars in the student parking lot.

I was leaving Mumbai. It was the last day of my summer break and my plane for the United States was departing that evening. And so, typical of my nature, I had about twenty bags in all shapes and sizes strewn about me on the floor of the tiny green room I had begun to call home. I am a perpetual bag woman and in this instance, my suitcases had already been shipped off, filled to the 50 pound limit with kurtis and salwaars. The monsoon rain was coming down in droves beyond my bedroom window and I knew a taxi to North Mumbai, where my uncle resided, would take at least two hours in the traffic. And all I wanted to do was pretend like I wasn’t really leaving.

I cursed my bags. I loved the rain. If I had to leave the city I had come to love as my own, then at least let me walk through its cluttered streets one last time. Every Mumbaiker has a plan of action for when the rain begins to pound down like thundering drums. The paani puri wala snaps up his plastic tarp to protect the special water made with a recipe known only to the rest of the paani puri walas in Mumbai. After moving to shield his income generating business, he pulls out an old umbrella and stands there patiently, taking a smoke or watching the droplets form puddles around his kiosk. Like the paani puri wala, there’s the corn wala, the chai wala, the phav bhaji wala, the newspaper wala, the fruit wala, the sabji wala, and so on. Each of these business men have a quick plan to cover up their living, pull up their trousers, and patiently wait under the shelter of an umbrella.

The traffic during the rain is horrendous. It is quicker to walk. Rickshaws that were dozing along the gulleys suddenly appear like a shiny army of black bugs, armed with blue tarpaulins to shield the “madums” in their saris and salwar kameez. And yet it is almost impossible to catch one of these rickshaws while you’re getting drenched to the core. They come out of nowhere and they are filled in a matter of seconds. With a city of roughly twenty million inhabitants, I suppose this makes sense. The thing about the Mumbai rains that you love and hate at once is the suddenness with which it comes. It teaches you to forget about muddy jeans and frizzy hair and just be...let it all go

ode to my dear friend

i wanna close my eyes and click my chappals and transport myself onto his balcony...he's sitting on the rail and I'm standing in the corner gazing into that scene below that I have a million pictures of...let's take a walk together, what do you say? I'll even let you hold my hand in yours:)...let's take a walk along the bandstand and maybe we'll stop along the rocks and share a smoke, lookin out into the sea...and then for some reason, he'll remember an anecdote from the past and then retell it, anticipating my laughter, which may or may not come...I sit quietly for a few minutes and analyze what he has said...do I understand his "joke":)? and then, if I don't understand it, I make fun of him instead...that way, I still have something to laugh about! haha:)...i miss my best friend in this world...someone who saw somethin special in me...don't know why but I'll let him be fooled a little longer...haven't been able to stop dreamin images of Mumbai...because of him, I had three of the most reflective and amazing months of my 27 years...so you still feel like takin a walk with me? Can we stop for paaaaani puri:)? Please:)? Did ya know that it's Guju creation:)? haha....my dear friend that somehow stole my heart when my mind was driftin in another land...I awoke from another daydream and there he was, standing there smiling at me in the pink fog...he picked me up on that awful bike of his and we went for a ride to Haji Ali and Lonavla...and the tighter I held onto him in the cold, pouring rain, the wider that space in my heart opened up to someone new..."you come from far away with pictures in your eyes"...can you pick me up and twirl me in your arms? let's close our eyes and drift off into the pink fog...

Lady with Jasmine...incomplete story

Down a narrow, winding side street in an unknown section of Mumbai is the jasmine lady. Every morning she seems to emerge from the droplets of mist in the early dawn with her fresh garlands of milky white jasmine. The fragrance travels like a magical spell through the clusters of sari clad aunties, tirelessly bartering in the midday heat with vegetable and fruits vendors.

This street has become quite renowned for the sweet tempered old lady, settled like a lotus on a soft, white sheet. No one is sure where she lives or where she has come from, but she has been there for so many generations that her presence has been permanently etched into the painting of this famous street. A deep ocean blue sari flows forth like the ripples of a river, its velvet soft texture as soft as rose petals. Her eyes are like lucid pools of crystal water and her smile makes you feel like you’ve awoken from a hundred years of mystical dreams. She is known throughout simply as Sarawaswati.

Where do all her milky white garlands disappear to at the end of the day? For it seems that the layers of necklaces only increase in number, even as they’re sold one by one. When the rest of the city as fallen asleep under the spell of darkness, Sarawaswati calls upon the Devs and Devis. Festooned in her garlands, they flutter through the night, squeezing sweet drops of it fragrant juice on the children of the streets.

ONE WORLD

Tired of playing rewind on the legal case before me, hoping that I would finally focus this time around, I gave up this round and let my mind have its way. It’s a strange entity-the mind that is. It always wants to live the lives of two separate people-the relentless tug of war between “focus” and “wanderer”. Eventually, it seems that “wanderer” always takes the lead.

But today, in particular, “focus” was fighting a duel already lost. How could the detached legal memo that would someday lead me to the promise land of “meaningful career”, possibly compete with the background cacophony of Bandra or painted images of Chechnya?

“For a party to fulfill the elements of bystander recovery for the negligent infliction of emotional distress he must 1) be a close relative of the victim, 2) be present at the scene of the accident and be aware that the victim is being injured, and 3) as a result of experiencing the accident, suffer serious emotional injury that is accompanied by physical symptomatology.”

Whoa, right? I know, you’re probably thinking, “Where did that come from?”

Well, that’s what my mind has been battling with all day! After reading that statement in my legal memo for the umpteenth time, “focus” was given permission to take a guilt free nap.

Last night, I stepped outside of myself once again and watched as I engaged in a conversation about that week’s most surreal NY Times article. This time it was about the condition of Malawi prisons and decrepit legal system. There were graphic photographs of hundreds of black men jammed like snails into tiny cells that had the capacity for less than a fourth of them. Until mid morning break, they slept on their sides, permanently glued in that spoon like position, silently praying that that night, they would not be the victims of sex starved men. Some of them lived like this, without knowing why, for more than a decade. One meal of porridge a day and drinking water from the toilet if they were lucky.

I watched as I described these horrific images to the man next to me, as we sat amongst young “intellectuals” in a shishi restaurant located in one of those quaint, yuppie neighborhoods in the upscale part of town.

Why do people…why do we spend Friday evenings discussing such horrendous realities as we sip our bottled H2O or pinot grigio? Why do these images, presented in story like mode, fascinate and intrigue us?

Sometimes, it hits us that these “images”, brought to our doorsteps, IBMs, and Blackberries, are, in fact, not imaginary. Nor are they merely evocative photographs from the National Geographic’s 100 Best Photos.

They are real. The people, captured through the imaginative eyes of the artist, are real. They are depictions of real people.

Real black men born into the same world as mine, packed like spooning snails in dark cement rooms in a place called “Malawi” that if you wanted to, would be able to locate on world map maybe just XXX miles from us.

As I write these thoughts, an email from Chechnya evoke more images. In the middle of the night, bombs are heard exploding outside the windows of a friend’s apartment.

A telephone call to India, with the wonderful new Reliance minutes, allows me to hear noisy scooters mingling incongruously with bartering vendors outside another friend’s apartment in Bandra, somewhere in the heart of Mumbai.

And here I sit, in the southern United States, fixated on this idea of one world. Because for some reason, I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s all a sham. “Unity” “Solidarity” “One World”-all of these ideas have established the façade of a single unit that is divided by inequality and disparity.

And then people like you and me intellectualize and ruminate for hours about how these conditions can possibly exist in the same world as our own. We soothe our heightened senses through philanthropy and “human rights” initiatives. Internationally authoritative bodies are created to break down the complexities. And NGOs flow like the uncontrollable tears of guilt ridden conscience throughout the campos, ghettos, slums, ghams, (etc) of this “world”.

Out of complete fixation, I began having one of those ridiculously “deep, I’m high on weed” sort of moments and I had the urge to research the etymology of this word “world”. But since I didn’t have online access at the moment, I ventured to think about this on my own.

Isn’t the word “world” only supposed to encompass one entity? But if it’s a single entity (or unit), like my body or your automobile, shouldn’t all the individual components of this world work in harmony to create a smoothly functioning system? Sure, my body or your automobile may break down once in a while…the imbalance of nutrients or insufficiency of transmission fluid sometimes results in temporary lapses in harmony. But there is never a complete systematic breakdown unless the body is attacked by an incurable disease or the automobile is so ill maintained that one day it coughs its last breath and slowly sputters to death.

But the entity called “world”, despite endless battles with horrific imbalances and insufficiencies, just hasn’t seemed to experience this complete systematic breakdown yet. On the contrary, while some parts are dying a slow death, other areas are thriving, fully functioning components that have the energy to discuss for hours, over intoxicating beverages like rich, dark Kenyan coffee and full bodied, Italian wine, about the slow death of our fellow “organs” and “engine parts”.

Wow…I guess in this particular entity called “world”, some components are pretty insignificant while others run supreme. What a strange entity, don’t you think?

a work in progress...

I know there is a philosopher that believed everyone has a place, an identity that they are meant to fulfill…some people happen to stumble upon the main road early on while others spend many of their formative years meandering up tedious mountains only to discover another detour half way up. Maybe it was Plato but at this moment I can’t remember.

Well, since I’m definitely the latter but how I so wish at times that I were the former, many nights have been spent wondering when I will stop taking these detours. It can be a pretty inadequate and lonely feeling…but lately, I’m beginning to accept that perhaps this penchant towards the side roads and detours is, in a way, my main road.

…I’ve been brainstorming on an idea for an advertisement I came across in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristof…one of those amazing humanitarians/writers that I look up to…he is asking a masochist to accompany him on a reporting trip in Africa…it’s the opportunity of a lifetime…So I must apply…it would be absolutely unjust if I didn’t…all I need is 700 words…

And that’s where I come to a standstill…why should he choose me? When I read this advertisement, I had a familiar sensation run through my veins…I’ve only felt this one other time…one fortuitous afternoon, when I was fifteen, I decided to attend a high school Spanish club meeting. That day there was a girl with a video that probably changed me for the rest of my life. It was a video about a program called Amigos de las Americas…I was transfixed…I don’t know why…the humbleness of the one-room adobe, thatched roof homes, the humility in the mother’s charcoal eyes, the sun baked children running through the dirt yard in their tattered hand-me-down Save the Children clothes…though the colors were faded and tired, a certain, peaceful glow illuminated the scene…I just knew that I had to volunteer…it felt so right…and that’s a lot coming from me because I’m a perpetually confused person… and reading this advertisement, it was that sensation all over again….

…but now I’m trying to answer the “why?” Why do I want this more than my J.D.? (Well that doesn’t say a lot but you know what I mean.) I don’t know what to tell him except the truth except the truth sounds so trite…I doubt everything that comes onto the screen…it’s all been written before when experiencing some mood or emotion, in some shape or form…

…I want to tell him about 1995, a cold, starry night in Puerto de Nieto, Guanajuato, Mexico when my partner and I were standing mid-calf deep in a cool, grainy mixture of horse manure, dirt, and sand…it was 10:00 at night, only half-way through the construction of the fifth lorena estufa (wood/coal burning adobe stove with a chimney) that week and we were delirious! So I grabbed one of the tin chimneys and started doing some weird dance in the middle of the all the horse shit (for those of you who have seen my “dancing queen” video, you’ll know what I’m talking about)…and first the goats (really), Oscar, the kids, and then my partner followed suit…we laughed so hard…I thought my empty stomach, from amoebas and diarrhea, would cave inwards in exhaustion…

…I want to tell Mr. Kristof about this pure amazing rush when I feel inextricably linked to the human race…those moments when we are not strangers that measure each other’s worth because we are insecure…those moments when we are united by compassion and not the ticking clock of places to be, people to see, and impressions to be made… 1998, las montanas rurales de Lempira, Honduras, dark, overcast sky pouring down in sheets around a very scared nineteen year old girl…I was supposed to be a supervisor and I didn’t even know where the hell I was. The hitchhiking truck to brought me to this middle of nowhere lonesome tree could no longer be heard. I was supposed to survey a village, los Tablones, but far into the distance, all that could be seen was more of the narrow, harrowing mountain pass…not a single adobe home, yellow squawking chicken, or humble compesino. For a moment, I gazed at the sky only to be greeted by torrential rain…it wasn’t the kind of fear that slowly creeps up your spine with a scary movie…it was a completely pervasive trepidation that permeates your cells and the air you breathe with dark, lonesome solitude. It was the kind of fear that will only let you curl up in a ball and pray (after you’ve finished crying and realized that your tears were only adding to the obstacle)…you know the times when you were concentrating so deeply on your prayers that you lost track of the minutes? I don’t know if it was only one minute or ten minutes later…but I heard something…a friendly chicken squawking in the background…I quickly staggered to my feet and turned around…high above there was a single thatch roofed hut…I could see the warm smoke swirling around the tin chimney…I half ran, half stumbled up the hill…ten minutes later, this poor Honduran grandmother was offering me warm corn tortillas out of the modest stack on a cracked plastic plate…someone to whom I was a complete, mud-drenched, teary eyed stranger…but all I had to say was estoy perdida…puedes ayudarme?

…the less they had, the more they improvised…the less there was left to measure, the more worthy I felt. I’m just another Gujarati-American twenty-six year old girl…but I want to work in solidarity in order to make sense of this world spinning around me…I wonder what Nick Kristof is looking for in his companion? I spent my Friday afternoon deconstructing a UN Commission on Human Rights Report that documented the situation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay…there was no tangible purpose and I even wondered why I wasn’t studying when finals are five weeks away…but understanding how the hell it is possible for the United States to get away with subjecting prisoners not of war to inhumane, stomach churning conditions when it is a party to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant Against Torture took precedence over writing an appellate brief on Miranda rights…

…like you, my emotional reactions to the monstrosities visualized are searing…torture inflicted through hot tongs shoved up a twelve year old vagina…from an idealist point of view, what action can be taken to stop words from forming such horrid depictions? The cancer of oppression is no less widespread today than it was during the Roman Empire or Spanish conquest or British colonization or (the list goes on and on…). Human beings were forced into slavery a thousand years ago just as they are being forced into it today. The difference today is that our senses are awoken by this gut wrenching abuse and oppression through the media, the Internet, photographic art exhibits, literature, and you can continue adding to this list. Through each of these mediums, we are reminded of how similar we really are to each other…

…think about Sajana Singh, a young Muslim woman with a tenth grade education that believes in the children in her Mumbai slum community…take away her squalid environment and abusive husband and instead, imagine her as a young Muslim woman attending the tenth grade at your neighborhood high school. She has ambitions just like you and me…the only difference is that education was so easily available to us…but despite her limitations, she is changing lives…

…think about Geeta, a prostitute in the red light district of Calcutta…take away her garish make-up and skimpy clothing and instead, imagine her standing in your closet, selecting today’s outfit from amongst your countless designer clothes and standing in your bathroom, looking at her beautiful face in your mirror, deciding whether or not she wants to wear make-up that day…she wants to be respected and admired, feel attractive and intelligent just like you and me…the only difference is that she was kidnapped while walking to school one day, and then drugged and forced into prostitution…there is no walk-in closet or brightly lit bathroom mirror to examine her blemishes when no one is watching…instead, she is surrounded by the smell of cheap, forced sex and filthy men that force themselves on her before she could even dream of being held by someone that loves and respects her…

…think about Mayur…when I met him five years ago, he was only a ten year old boy who walked me through his “neighborhood”…he hopped over ponds of sewage and turned around to make sure my sandals stayed clean…he led me to his home, a one room tin box filled with a weary, creaking cot, not a single book except the one give to him by Pratham, and a lot of love. He held his mother’s hand and without a hint of doubt in his eyes, he explained to me why he desired an education. His dream was to become a doctor in order to give his mother injections when she became old and sick…

…why do I want to meet people like this and tell their stories? I realize there is no selfless reason…on the contrary, I am a selfish individual like everyone else. Because their stories amaze and inspire me and because the details of their struggles imbue my mind with vivid imagery, I can’t wait to share with you what I have learned…