All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [153]
I was a little shaky from adrenaline, but I didn’t want to waste the rest of the afternoon, so we decided to take a quick side trip to a site I’d long wanted to see: the Gandhi House and Museum. What better way to come down from a narrow escape than to pause to honor the champion of peaceful resistance?
Well, the paparazzi had caught wind of our change in plans, and they were waiting in throngs outside the museum. Marshall bargained with them: Taking a cue from my experience with pesky lookie-loos while filming movie scenes outdoors—a problem I had encountered especially in New York City on Someone Like You, when paparazzi actually interfered with our shooting until they were granted snapshots—he told them I would give a quick photo op and say a few words if they would agree to leave me alone to tour the house. To their credit, unlike American paparazzi, they kept their end of the agreement and allowed me to have my sacred moment in Gandhi’s home in peace.
The tranquility inside the three-story colonial-era building was palpable and holy. It had been Gandhi’s home in the city between the years of 1917 and 1934, when Mumbai was known as Bombay and Gandhi was organizing the satyagrahas and acts of peaceful disobedience that would eventually bring down British domination of India. After Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, the house was preserved as a museum and turned into a center for Gandhian studies. I read every plaque, studied every picture on the walls. It made such an impression on me: this mighty, humble man, wearing peasant’s attire and sandals in the wet and cold, carrying in his arms all he owned at the time, moving nations. I spent some quiet time in front of the plain, thin pallet where he slept, in a room still neatly arranged with his simple possessions, including a spinning wheel. I imagined his hand on his walking staff and was moved by the crude mug from which he drank. It was wonderful.
Of his many, many inspired teachings, perhaps I love best that he said, “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew!” I am a devout follower of his teachings and believe without reservation that nonviolence is the way toward peace. And as I prepared myself for a week in multiple red-light districts and in the vastly sprawling slum of Dharavi, I meditated on Gandhi’s unequivocal assertion that poverty is the worst form of violence.
To that end, I was working to help reach the poorest and most exploited for an immediate health intervention at the most basic level. In addition to helping India curb its HIV emergency, preventing unintended pregnancy is a deeply moral issue with profound implications. While we cannot change the living status of these vast numbers of poor overnight, we can help women not have more babies that bind them further to destitution and condemn the infants to needless suffering, to powerlessness, to pimps and madams. We also have programs for malaria prevention, safe drinking water, micronutrient delivery, child survival. But perhaps most exciting for me to see was the Sanghamitra women’s collective, a partner that uses Gandhian principles of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and unified action to empower prostituted women, perhaps the most destitute and oppressed population in all of India.
Sanghamitra is the brainchild of Dr. Shilpa Merchant, who at the time was state director of PSI. The prostituted women who founded Sanghamitra named it after a great mythical figure, the wise daughter of Emperor Asoka, who transformed her father from a ruthless tyrant to a peaceful follower of Buddhism. The work of the collective is likewise transformative, turning once isolated, disempowered women into a sisterhood where they can help one another as they learn how to advocate for their own human and social rights. Their motto? “In Unity There Is Strength.” Members of the collective and their children are provided a place, called a drop-in center, in the heart of the Kamathipura red-light district to rest and relax