My first day at Prerana


August 28, 2010

My cab pulls onto Shuklaji Street, I am aware of the looks I am receiving
from the people in the street. Shuklaji is the main street running through
the red light district of Mumbai and I am sure they imagine I am heading to one of the hundreds of brothels in the lanes off of Shuklaji Street. My cab stops at the corner of Shuklaji and Lane #7, where the UN honored Anti-Trafficking organization, Prerana has one of its main centers.

For over twenty years Prerana has worked with sexually trafficked women and their children. Prerana began primarily as a night care center to provide the children with a safe, nurturing place to stay at night while their mothers are working. Before Prerana, many of these children roamed the streets at night or were drugged and put under brothel beds to sleep while their mothers worked on top of them.

Over these twenty plus years, Prerana has grown into a complex effective program providing not only shelter but education, vocational training and counseling to the moms and children. They are putting an end to second generation trafficking for thousands of children. Without Prerana, at least 70% of these children will end up in the sex trade as prostitutes, pimps or drug peddlers. Check out their web site http://prerana.org/ for more details on the wonderful work they are doing . Two quotes from Prerana:

In a community where women are bought and sold like slaves, their children
live in constant danger of sexual exploitation, and at a tender age helplessly
witness their mothers stripped of all dignity at the hands of pimps, customers,
and brothel keepers.

40% of Mumbai's prostitutes are estimated to be children, with girls aged
10-12 being viewed as lucrative commodities.

When I got out of the cab, Saumya and Vaishali were there to meet me. Saumya and Vaishali are two Prerana workers who will assist me in my work with the twelve Prerana children. Janet and I had come here six months ago to perform for a couple hundred of Prerana's children. That visit led to me coming here today to begin a whole new Magicians Without Borders project. I have made a commitment to Prerana to come every three months and train these children to become magicians. My hope is, like the children we have been training in El Salvador these past six years, the Prerana children will learn not only magic but more importantly they will develop self esteem, self confidence, focus, discipline and a deep sense of personal power and presence. I began to see that happen as the first two days unfolded. Next entry you will meet some of these delightful children as they began to become magicians. Namaste.

At Ajanta with Walter Spink

August 24-26

The emerald parrots swoop and sing through the blooming teak trees as I carefully navigate the steep stairs leading to the Ajanta Caves.Between me and the caves is the Waghora River. In this monsoon season the river is a tumbling torrent of seven water falls spilling into seven pools. The pools are held by immense water smoothed rocks suggesting gigantic Henry Moore sculptures. If this was all there was here it would be enough, but now I cross the bridge and up the path that leads to the great UNESCO World Heritage site of Ajanta.

As I arrive at cave number one Walter is there, carried in a sedan chair by four men -he is still recovering from a hip operation. It feels fitting that this man who has come to Ajanta twice a year for the past forty years should be carried through the site in a sedan chair. Everyone greets Walter with respect and admiration for the work he has done all these years unraveling the mysteries of this amazing place. His art historian friends joke with him that he has studied the Ajanta caves for more years than it took to make them.

Walter struggles up the steep stairs inside Cave 6 to a second story porch from which we could see most of the site in the glorious late morning light. We sit there for an hour talking about this awesome place. We then go on to look at a number of the caves in some detail. I have enclosed a link to a short film of Walter talking about the caves, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZsAbzR1-vk --a few of the shots he is sitting on that second story porch of cave 6.

I will be coming to India regularly to train the children at Prerana to become magicians. I hope on some of these visits to return again to awesome Ajanta, to visit the caves and wonderful Walter. The next morning, a friend of Walter's drives us to Bhushawal so I can catch the train back to Mumbai to begin the work with the children at Prerana http://prerana.org/ I am sad to say good bye to Walter, our visit has been so short, but I know in my bones I will be back.


I am excited and a bit nervous as I head to Mumbai to begin this exciting new adventure of working with these children of sexually trafficked women in the red light slums of Mumbai. I know Prerana is thrilled that I am coming and they will do every thing they can to make my work with their children a success. In my next entry I will let you know how my first meetings with the children went. Namaste.

Monsoon Season in India
A New Adventure Begins


August 27, 2010

Greetings from steamy monsoon Mumbai. So marvelous to be back in India to begin this new adventure of teaching magic to twelve children of sexually trafficked women in the red light district slum of Mumbai. This is my sixth time in India, but I've never been here during monsoon season.
"Incredible India" the tourist posters announce -and so true. Every five minutes I see something I have never seen before in my life or certainly have never seen in Lincoln, Vermont. No wonder I am usually exhausted at the end of the day -taking in so many new things every few minutes wears one out. I guess this is why babies have to sleep so much -- exhausted from "beginner's mind."

My plane arrived 2 a.m. Tuesday morning --four hours late. We sat on the tarmac in JFK for six hours. Air India even served us dinner on the tarmac before we took off. Delicious Chicken Briyani was the 'non-veg' offering. Delightful, attentive, friendly flight attendants in their gorgeous red and saffron saris -making you feel as at home and comfortable as you can on a fourteen hour flight. Fortunate for me, unfortunate for Air India, the plane was not even half full. So I had three seats to stretch out and sleep when I wasn't eating one of the three meals, reading Melville's short stories, or watching the selection of movies.

After the hour taxi ride -the slow descent into the wild and wonderful world of Mumbai and India, I arrived at the Garden Hotel about 3:30 am, checked in and slep for four hours.
After breakfast I headed off to Mumbai's ornate Victorian Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train terminal to catch the train for Bhushawal to meet Walter Spink. Walter is an old friend and major supporter of Magicians Without Borders -Walter funded the film shot by Dominic Howe that is now posted on our website -in six exquisite minutes Dominic captures the mission and feel of our work. Check it out! Walter Spink is the expert in the world on the monumental Ajanta temple caves. He is working on volume seven of the most comprehensive study of perhaps any monument in the world. Thursday I went to Ajanta by rickshaw, Walter would meet me there to show me around.

Gandhi once said, "India is in her villages." The rickshaw took me through villages where life goes on as it has for thousands of years. Women walking in threes in an unimaginable riot of color and pattern of sari and dupats (scarves) with stacked gleaming ornate silver water jugs balanced on their heads; earings and bangles, toe and nose rings, and glistening black black hair falling to their waists, and all laughing as they bounce along the dirt roads. Men making chapatis and samosas in roadside stalls, working on trucks and tractors, herding goats and cows. Children every where. In one village a Islamic mosque, Hindu temple and Buddhist stupa all within a stone's throw of one another.

And all around the villages and along the roads the fields are ablaze with monsoon green and flowers of unimaginable shapes and colors, corn and cotton, rice and vegetables of all kinds. And through all of it birds of uncalled-for color -flocks of emerald green parrots, shockingly blue kingfishers and birds I have never even imagined -if I was an Audubon birder with my life list in hand, I would have been madly checking off species as the rickshaw bounced along. The rickshaw dropped me off at "the viewpoint," from which you have a spectacular view of this most awe-inspiring, breath taking, beyond belief that human-beings-could-have-created-such-a-marvel, Ajanta. As they say of the rock hewed churches of Lalibella in Ethiopia, maybe "angels came at night and did the real work." Going to Ajanta through the villages is a perfect way to begin my time here in India.

The next blog entry will give an account of my walk down to the caves through the blossoming teak trees and the magical seven pools filled by seven waterfalls and my day at the caves with wild and wonderful Walter guiding me through its marvels. Namaste.