All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [151]
And then I could not resist throwing in a small request for myself: “Oh yeah, and I’d really like not to get diarrhea like I did in Thailand, and I’d love to see a pretty temple.”
I finally dozed off, to dreams of henna tattoos and homespun cloth, of lotus petals borne on sacred rivers.
The tires bumped and the giant jet shuddered to a halt on the runway at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. As we taxied to the terminal, I saw an entire family near the runway, using pails to pull water out of a filthy ditch, in which the children were also playing. Welcome to India.
Marshall Stowell and Papa Jack were waiting, as always, to scoop me up at the gate and sweep me into town. With a population of sixteen million, Mumbai is the third-largest city in the world and the most populous in India, which is saying a lot. The scenery along the route to the hotel hummed with vitality and desperation: the monochromatic shanty roofs of Dharavi, a million-person slum where I would spend much of the next week, in the shadow of business towers and shopping malls under construction. There were families living on sidewalks, beggars, some of whom have maimed their children in a desperate attempt to manipulate money from tourists, hundreds of thousands of matching little taxis, all manner of rickshaws, flowing somewhat miraculously in multiple directions at once, accompanied by a giant symphony of horn honking. They do love to lean on their horns in ole Mumbai.
The Taj Mahal Palace was an oasis amid the chaos, a massive architectural marvel of a grand hotel. My comfortable suite looked out over a motley flotilla of ships bobbing in the Arabian Sea, and I allowed myself to feel for a moment as if I were living out my childhood fantasies of adventure.
While I took a day to rest, Papa Jack and Marshall went off to scout our locations in and around Mumbai—no mean feat in such a congested and unpredictable environment. By now Papa Jack had become an invaluable asset for PSI, which used his services to advance important trips even when I was not traveling. In fact, he had seen more of our platforms than I. Jack and Marshall had already been in India for days, making sure all the venues I would visit were as safe as possible and the contacts lined up by our local staff were appropriate and reliable. Jack keeps up with U.S. State Department safety bulletins, he trains the drivers in defensive and getaway driving.
I frankly like the dangerous stuff, the realism and undisguised nature of life as others are living it. I reluctantly accept the security and the help. My husband understandably insists on it, and because I am a kidnapping risk (even though I refuse to see myself that way), PSI and other organizations’ insurance also require it. But I dislike the feeling of being set apart, approaching the reality of daily life differently from the citizens I am there to meet, the humanitarian and aid workers who do not have the benefit of such protection and resources. I enjoy journalists, for example, who can blend in and watch life unfold without the distorting presence of SUVs and “fixers.” Nonetheless, it’s fun traveling with Papa Jack, and reassuring, because of our history, when the going gets weird, which it sometimes does in brothels and seedy neighborhoods. But none of us expected the most dangerous moment of the trip to take place in a movie theater lobby.
The plan was to showcase a dynamic street theater program that sensitizes Indians to the reality of sex trafficking in their communities, to de-stigmatize and correct myths about women trapped in prostitution, and raise awareness about the public health crisis of HIV among them. In this case, it was the audience at a theater on the edge of Kamathipura,