Today was my last day volunteering at the Mother Teresa home.
For the past week, I’ve tried to be especially mindful of how I begin each day. I wanted to return to this quote - Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.
I wanted to spend time with each of the women my last day here. Focus all my attention and energy on the woman in front of me and let them know what they mean to me. And even if they couldn’t understand what I was saying, they could feel that I genuinely cared about their wellbeing, that I will never forget them.
I am going to miss seeing each of these women’s faces in the morning, getting to care for them, wash them, simply be with them. I’m going to miss getting to hold their hands and dance for them, because that never fails to make them smile. And I’m going to miss getting to speak with the nuns about what it means to give of your self and see them practice this every day.
I was standing on the roof of the hospice this afternoon, looking at Kalighat Road spread out below and felt an immense mixture of love and sadness.
I understand what the patients at the hospice here endure, what the women of the Red Light District endure. I’m deeply grateful for the chance I've had to love and respect these women and am torn because I get to go home and they have to stay here, struggling to simply survive. The lucky ones end up here at the hospice, in the Aanchal project at New Light, receiving micro credit loans from New Light or rescued by other non-profits established in Kolkata.
But there are still thousands of people trapped in the trafficking world in Kolkata, forgotten.
If you get caught up in how many there are it’s overwhelming. But just because it’s overwhelming doesn’t mean you don’t take time to acknowledge and sit with the hard truth-there are over 60,000 brothel-based women and girls in prostitution in Kolkata alone and 1.3 million girls and children disappear into the sex industry every year in India.
There’s a tightening in my sternum when I acknowledge this, a tightening that makes it difficult to breathe.
How do you face numbers like this? Huge numbers that are made up of individual human beings - each of them deserving a life where they are loved, protected and genuinely happy.
I’m trying to focus on the individuals committed to this cause-to the Urmi Basu’s of this world-who will never leave Kolkata, who will never stop raising their voice and will never stop rescuing one woman at a time simply because the numbers are overwhelming.
And each woman rescued, this is their whole world.
I can never forget these women and continue to raise awareness about this cause and volunteer my time for survivors in the United States who need just as much support and empowerment as the women here in Kolkata. I can stay in touch with New Light and return to Kolkata in a couple years.
I can do all this but I know this tightening in my sternum isn’t going to completely go away.