A Boy’s Dream By Marc Gold
Atlantic City, New Jersey - 1956 My father, Albert Gold, was a photographer of bathing beauties, conventioneers, mobsters, celebrities and other notable characters. I was a hyperactive child and, quite frankly, a bit of a pain in the ass. So one day Pop sat me down with a pile of National Geographic magazines and said, “Look at all the pictures, read all the captions and as much as you will of the stories. I‟ll give you a nickel for each issue you report on.” In those days you could actually buy things for a nickel so I was willing to play along. I still remember the first issue that I looked at and the first photo. It was a pull-out, double page panorama of the impossibly humongous Himalayas and the article was about India. I gazed upon rickshaws, sari-clad women, teeming cities, rice paddies, water buffalo, the Ganges, the Taj Mahal, markets, crowds of people, villages, men in turbans, temples, tigers, elephants and monkeys. Compared to New Jersey it looked like another planet. I knew right then that I wanted to go there and as soon as possible. Two weeks later, I had a dream. In this quite vivid dream, I was standing in a t-shirt and shorts on the top of Mt. Everest and I could see all of India. In a spot that I later determined to be the vicinity of Hyderabad, I could see a family of four, a father with a white beard and a turban, a mother dressed in a sari, a small boy, and an even smaller girl. They were all waving at me and gesturing as if to say, “Come here to see us and visit India.” I woke up and told my dad, “I want to go to India.” He laughed, “India! Way too far - try Indiana instead.” “No, I really want to go there, even if it takes months by boat.” (Very expensive to fly in those days!) Dad replied, “Well, okay, but if you go you‟ll have to do a mitzvah (Hebrew for a good deed), many of the Indians are very poor.” “But what can I do, I‟m only a kid!” I protested. Dad answered, “Don‟t worry. If you go, you‟ll be a man and you‟ll know what to do.” This started a lifelong interest in the people of the Himalayan region.
Berkeley, California - 1989 One night, 32 years later, I had the same dream. The exact same dream. It blew my mind. I decided that then and there, I would go to India. I arrived in India in January, 1990. While I was there I met a Tibetan woman in the Himalayas who had terrible ear infections and I was able save her life with antibiotics that cost about $1.00. For another $30.00 I purchased a hearing aid that restored her hearing. I was shocked to learn that something so important could be accomplished with so little money. A short time later, I began raising money among my friends, whatever they could give, as little as $1.00 or as much as they were able to donate. I came back to India two years later with over $2,200 in donations (65,000 Rupees at that time) with the goal of distributing it directly and intelligently, and as culturally appropriate as possible. The rest, as they say, is history. I started the 100 Friends Project and, to date, $65,000 in funds have been donated in India, Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet, Nepal, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Mozambique and Turkey. I feel like I have only just started and this project has become the greatest passion of my life. This website shows what I have done with the donations: http://www.100friends.com/giving.html. Here is the story of one place where I have been focusing my time, attention and donations. 1990 - Calcutta, West Bengal, India Calcutta is the first place I landed on the first of my nine trips to India. I have always had close ties to this remarkable city and have many friends there. I was the manager for Nikhil Banerjee, perhaps the finest sitar player of the 20th century. On my first visit I had an opportunity to work closely with the dying at Nirmal Hriday; Mother Teresa's home for the dying and destitute in a slum known as Kalighat. I returned again and again and in 2002 I met a social worker named Urmi Basu. She was working with the sex workers, their children and the surrounding community. Her center, called New Light, is a five minute walk from Nirmal Hriday. To this day I am always especially happy in this neighborhood slum.
Kalighat is one of the oldest red light areas of Calcutta, housing sex workers from the city, the districts and the neighboring countries of Nepal and Bangladesh. The New Light shelter operates in a rented space, 24 hours a day, and seven days per week. The building is also used as a drop-in center for all of the children. They can come there anytime and use the toys or relax. They have a pre-school group, primary education and secondary education for the kids. Most of the children have never held a new or unbroken toy in their hands. The center is the only place where they can play and enjoy activities that other children of their age take part in. Music, art and yoga lessons are also offered. All children attending the center get a wholesome meal at night. New Light and 100 Friends have started a second center for the children of the Doms, which is a caste that has traditionally been marked as „untouchable‟ because they take care of burning the dead bodies. There are 25 students at the new center. All of the children have been vaccinated for hepatitis B, and other medical expenses are provided as needed. Both a pediatrician and a gynecologist come weekly to the center. They do all of this with very little money and I have been lucky enough to get to know the staff, the sex workers and their children rather well. This center is literally a lifesaver on many levels and I have watched many miracles occur before my eyes. There are numerous problems that people face in Kalighat, but one problem in particular moves me the most. It all revolves around the fate of 20 young girls. They range in age from 10 to 16 years old. I know these girls personally. They have the same hopes and dreams of young girls everywhere but they are at grave risk of becoming sex workers just like their mothers. They do not want it and their mothers do not want it, but because of complex cultural issues, economics, reasons that involve kidnapping, problems related to debts, crime, drugs, deception, greed, and the lack of education, it is very hard to escape from the poverty and the sex work that seems to be their destiny. Often the prostitute mothers are helpless, as they are in the clutches of pimps and brothel-keepers. In such situations, girls find it difficult to escape having grown up in violent and exploitative atmospheres and they know little else. The mothers that I interviewed have always expressed the desire to educate their children and to keep them out of the business. "Do something for our children" they have said to me.
Research in India demonstrates that 70% of women are forced into prostitution and 20% of these are child prostitutes. Also, 25% of the child prostitutes have been abducted and sold. An additional 8% have been sold by their fathers after forcing them into incestuous relationships. One can hardly imagine the extreme trauma that a child undergoes when this transpires. There is a case of a child prostitute who lost her speech after being raped by someone who had hired her. She has since been placed in a deaf mute school for speech recovery. In Bombay, children as young as 9 years old are purchased for up to 60,000 rupees (US$2,000) at auctions where Arabs bid against Indian men who believe that sleeping with a virgin cures gonorrhea and syphilis. One girl named Mira was forced into a brothel. When she refused to have sex, she was dragged into a torture chamber in a dark alley used for „breaking in‟ new girls. She was locked in a narrow, windowless room without food or water. On the fourth day, one of the madam‟s thugs (called goonda in India) wrestled her to the floor and banged her head against the concrete until she passed out. When she awoke, she was naked. A rattan cane, smeared with pureed red chili peppers, had been shoved into her vagina. She was later raped by the goonda and subsequently complied with their demands. The madam told Mira that she had been sold to the brothel for 50,000 rupees (about US$1,700) and that she had to work until she paid off her debt. With interest it will take many years, if ever, to pay off the balance due. New Light and the 100 Friends Project are now working together to create a home several kilometers from Kalighat. There, the girls will be safe, can finish high school, learn a trade, get married, and break the cycle for a chance at a different life. We are already on the way toward raising the $8,000 needed to start the home. The money will pay for the rental and furnishing of the house, hiring and paying staff salaries, school expenses, medical costs and everything else for the first year. The home will support 20 girls and after the first year, it will cost about $5,000 per year. I am writing this story to help raise funds for this much needed home for the girls of Khalighat. Here is a photo that I took of some of the girls from Kalighat who are at risk.
Kolkata, India -- These young girls from the city's slums are in peril of being involuntarily drawn into the sex trade. The New Light Project is planning a shelter to protect them and give them new opportunities.
Marc Gold (marcgold@hotmail.com), 55, is a counselor and psychology instructor who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He received his Bachelor‟s degree from City College of New York and his Master‟s degree in counseling psychology from U.C. Berkeley. He taught high school in New York City for six years and was named Manhattan‟s “Teacher of the Year” in 1977. He did research on AIDS counseling and substance abuse when he worked at the University of California Medical Center. In 1985, he developed the first HIV counseling program for AIDS testing in California. He has managed the renowned Indian sitarist, Nikhil Banerjee. While living in New York City in the 1970‟s, he produced a radio program for several years on WBAI called, "Global Music." He has two sons, Alexis and Dylan. Marc founded the 100 Friends Project in 1990 and maintains his role as director. He has completed nine humanitarian missions overseas and is relocating to Thailand in June, 2005. Additional resources: www.100friendsproject.org