It's been 3 weeks now that I've gone without eating meat, and I'm doing surprisingly well. Most of the dishes that I'm eating here taste fine without meat, and I feel like I'm getting enough protein through various legumes, cheese and nuts. There have been a couple occasions where non-veg options on the menu looked enticing, but I haven't found it that hard to choose a veg option instead. Until this weekend.
Saturday night I went to an event at the Sofitel here, where they were streaming the European Cup soccer finals. Two German teams were playing each other for the championship, and so the event was German themed - several German beers, potato salad, pretzel bread, and....sausages. They had several different kinds, all of which smelled heavenly. I went with a group of about 10 people, none of whom are vegetarians, so they were all enjoying the German meats as I stood by, drooling. One of my friends - Ritesh - was very kind and kept checking to make sure I wasn't dying of hunger - he even went so far as to go get me a plate of veg-friendly foods that they were offering so that I wouldn't starve. So sweet. Anyway, I made it through the night without eating any meat, but I have to admit that I was very jealous of the people who were enjoying the various wursts. Food cravings aside, the night was a total blast. Given the time difference, the game didn't start until 12:15 am our time, but the event started at 10 pm to give people time to have some German fare before sitting down to enjoy the match. There were quite a few expats there who I met - I even had a conversation in German with an Austrian guy who works for Siemens here! He was impressed with my German-speaking ability, or at least he was nice enough to pretend that he was. Given my current frustration with the fact that I don't understand the majority of conversations happening around me on a given day, since they're spoken in Hindi or some regional dialect, I was slightly proud to be able to show my Indian friends that I'm not completely inept when it comes to foreign languages.
The second round of temptation came in the form of Mexican food for dinner last night. I had met this woman - Priyanka - at the Booth women's networking event a few weeks ago. She and I had gotten along very well, so we had exchanged information and agreed to meet up for dinner in Bandra. I told her to pick the restaurant, and she chose a place called Sancho's, which offers (relatively) authentic Mexican and Tex Mex food options. The menu was extensive and offered all of the usual suspects, and my eyes kept drifting to the non-veg options. Chicken fajitas, lamb barbacoa burrito, mmmmmm. At most restaurants here, the veg option appears to be at least as attractive as the non-veg. For example, I'm fine eating egg fried rice instead of chicken fried rice. Paneer tikka masala is just as good as (if not better than) chicken tikka masala. But a fajita just filled with peppers, onions, and the fixings just does not sound appealing. I need the meat. Still committed to my personal vegetarian challenge, I ordered vegetarian enchiladas, hoping that the sauce would allow me to forget that the dish was missing the best ingredient. The frijoles in the enchiladas helped, and the vegetables turned out to be summer squash and zucchini, so I left satisfied. Still, I should probably avoid going back to that restaurant because I'm not sure if my willpower could withstand another round of Tex Mex temptation...
On a side note, I really enjoyed my time with Priyanka - she's an amazing person. She hasn't applied to business schools yet, so she's still a prospective student, but she has an interest in going into healthcare consulting, which I know a little something about. We spent most of our time talking about the plight of the poor here in India, and what can be done about it. She has a masters in public health from Boston University, and when she returned from living in the US, she said she had a really tough time adjusting to life here again because she was that much more aware of the tragic circumstances of people she passed on the street every day. To compound that awareness, her first job after completing her masters was with an NGO here in Mumbai that works with the prostitute community in the slums. She has some incredible stories from her time working there and I spent most of dinner quizzing her on women's rights and prostitution in India.
The NGO she worked with is focused on helping the children of these prostitutes. They don't spend their efforts trying to get women to leave the business, since they know that there is really nowhere else that these women could earn a living, especially after they've been doing it for many years. Instead their mission is to prevent second generation prostitution with the children of the prostitutes. The prostitutes will be living in brothels, which they have been sold into through human trafficking. There will be a small room with just enough space for 5 beds - maybe with curtains separating them. The beds will be propped up on a few bricks, leaving space underneath. The children of these women live underneath the beds. That is their only living space. And yes, they're underneath the beds while their mothers are servicing customers. The NGO has started daycare centers in the red light districts that the mothers can bring their children to, so that they are not surrounded by prostitution all day. The centers are still close enough that the mothers can visit their kids during the day or vice versa, but the kids have somewhere else to be aside from inside the brothel. The NGO's other work involves helping these women start savings accounts. These brothels will become completely flooded during the monsoon seasons, so the women have no way to earn a living. If they don't have savings, some of them starve while the rains continue. The NGO encourages these women to start saving, and they will act as a bank by collecting whatever spare change the women can afford at the end of each day. Once the woman has deposited 1,000 rupees (about $20) with the NGO, the NGO will open a bank account in her name. It's not much, but it helps the women save for (literally) a rainy day.
These women are kept in some of the most horrendous circumstances imaginable. A brothel will literally buy a woman from a pimp or human trafficker. The woman will then be subjected to all kinds of horrible treatment, intended to get her to submit and be willing to act as a prostitute. Women are beaten, raped, demeaned, imprisoned, and God knows what else is done to them. Once they've been "broken" they start working. The prostitute has to pay rent to the brothel for the bed that she uses. On top of that, she owes a large sum of money to the brothel to make up for the fee that the madame paid from the pimp. Prostitutes in this red light district are paid anywhere between 20 rupees to 500 rupees per customer. In USD, that's between $0.40 and $10. If a prostitute takes in 500 rupees in a day, she will pay out 100-120 in rent for the day plus maybe 200 rupees to pay down her debt of 100K-1M rupees, and what's left over she will use for food. It takes years to pay down the debt to the brothel, and even once they have "earned" their freedom, the prostitutes are left with no life skills apart from the only trade they've ever known, so many of them just continue doing what they've always done. If a woman tries to escape before she pays down her debt, she is hunted down and killed - maybe tortured. They don't tolerate disobedience. The prostitutes with the least amount of freedom are the minors - which here means anyone 14 and below. The legal penalties for underage prostitution are very high here, so the brothels keep these girls under lock and key at all hours of the day. The NGOs are not allowed to know where they are - only the high paying johns get to see these girls. Some of these women (not the minors, but the adults) develop relationships with their customers and even end up saying that they're "married" to them (without a formal marriage ceremony).
The majority of prostitutes here are either from India, Nepal or Bangladesh. The Nepalese women are kept in the best conditions (relatively), since they are the fairest in skin color and fetch higher prices. The Bangladeshi women are known for being willing to do the most "dangerous" sex acts. Prices go higher for more "dangerous" activities - including not using a condom. The HIV rates are high here, but apparently it varies by regional population. Priyanka was telling me that most of the HIV-positive populations live in prostitution shacks located on India's major highways. Another interesting fact that she told me is that a lot of Bangladeshi women are actually married back home, and their husbands send them to India to become prostitutes. The money that they make is sent back to Bangladesh for a house to be built for their families, and the idea is that once the house is completed, they go back to Bangladesh to live with their families. Unfortunately, in some of the worst cases of hypocrisy you can imagine, not all of the husbands accept their wives back once they've completed their duty, and they are shunned once they return. Their husbands are despicable if you ask me. The worst story that she told me, however, was about prostitution that takes place in Bangladesh itself. Bangladesh is a very poor country - markedly poorer than India. Therefore, in that culture, any woman who is buxom or plump is considered very beautiful because it means she's healthy and has had something to eat in the past few weeks. Some madames in Bangladesh started giving pills to their girls - pills that are meant to be used on cows to make them lactate more. These pills make the girls develop curves at an early age, so that 13 year-olds will look like 30 year-old women. The pills make the girls retain water, so they end up looking plumper, which makes them "attractive" and drives a lot of business their way. The pills have horrible side effects - including psychosis, and many of the women taking them end up committing suicide, but they still don't stop taking these pills. Each pill costs less than 1 Bangladeshi taka (unit of currency), which is a fraction of a US cent. I'm not sure what sick and twisted mind came up with the idea to start giving these pills to these women - it's a kind of evil that I just cannot fathom.
Hearing these stories makes me sick to my stomach, but at the same time I think it's important that I become aware of these things. Just down the road from me here, I'm sure there are women who are being abused. I don't see it and will probably never meet them, but it's happening. If people like me turn a blind eye to these things and stay intentionally ignorant, then these women will never get help. Things will stay the same. If I hear these things, then it's my duty to tell others (perhaps via a blog post), and then those others can similarly spread the word. I'm not sure exactly how to fix the issue, but I know that pretending it doesn't exist is going to make things worse rather than better. Priyanka has been talking with the NGO about volunteering with them - she's going to keep me posted if there's a way I can get involved.
The rest of the weekend has been pretty uneventful. I slept in on Sunday - successfully this time! It seems that the breakfast and cleaning crews got the message from Saturday that they should ignore me on weekend mornings. The soccer game didn't end until 2 am or so, so it was a late night on Saturday. The championship match for the India Premier League (cricket) took place last night - Mumbai won against Chennai. I went out to a bar/restaurant with a group of friends to watch the cricket, and then we went dancing at another place to celebrate Mumbai's winning their first-ever IPL title. There are whispers about the IPL match being fixed - in this country, with the corruption that's present everywhere, I wouldn't dismiss those rumors very quickly. But who really knows?
Saturday night I went to an event at the Sofitel here, where they were streaming the European Cup soccer finals. Two German teams were playing each other for the championship, and so the event was German themed - several German beers, potato salad, pretzel bread, and....sausages. They had several different kinds, all of which smelled heavenly. I went with a group of about 10 people, none of whom are vegetarians, so they were all enjoying the German meats as I stood by, drooling. One of my friends - Ritesh - was very kind and kept checking to make sure I wasn't dying of hunger - he even went so far as to go get me a plate of veg-friendly foods that they were offering so that I wouldn't starve. So sweet. Anyway, I made it through the night without eating any meat, but I have to admit that I was very jealous of the people who were enjoying the various wursts. Food cravings aside, the night was a total blast. Given the time difference, the game didn't start until 12:15 am our time, but the event started at 10 pm to give people time to have some German fare before sitting down to enjoy the match. There were quite a few expats there who I met - I even had a conversation in German with an Austrian guy who works for Siemens here! He was impressed with my German-speaking ability, or at least he was nice enough to pretend that he was. Given my current frustration with the fact that I don't understand the majority of conversations happening around me on a given day, since they're spoken in Hindi or some regional dialect, I was slightly proud to be able to show my Indian friends that I'm not completely inept when it comes to foreign languages.
The second round of temptation came in the form of Mexican food for dinner last night. I had met this woman - Priyanka - at the Booth women's networking event a few weeks ago. She and I had gotten along very well, so we had exchanged information and agreed to meet up for dinner in Bandra. I told her to pick the restaurant, and she chose a place called Sancho's, which offers (relatively) authentic Mexican and Tex Mex food options. The menu was extensive and offered all of the usual suspects, and my eyes kept drifting to the non-veg options. Chicken fajitas, lamb barbacoa burrito, mmmmmm. At most restaurants here, the veg option appears to be at least as attractive as the non-veg. For example, I'm fine eating egg fried rice instead of chicken fried rice. Paneer tikka masala is just as good as (if not better than) chicken tikka masala. But a fajita just filled with peppers, onions, and the fixings just does not sound appealing. I need the meat. Still committed to my personal vegetarian challenge, I ordered vegetarian enchiladas, hoping that the sauce would allow me to forget that the dish was missing the best ingredient. The frijoles in the enchiladas helped, and the vegetables turned out to be summer squash and zucchini, so I left satisfied. Still, I should probably avoid going back to that restaurant because I'm not sure if my willpower could withstand another round of Tex Mex temptation...
On a side note, I really enjoyed my time with Priyanka - she's an amazing person. She hasn't applied to business schools yet, so she's still a prospective student, but she has an interest in going into healthcare consulting, which I know a little something about. We spent most of our time talking about the plight of the poor here in India, and what can be done about it. She has a masters in public health from Boston University, and when she returned from living in the US, she said she had a really tough time adjusting to life here again because she was that much more aware of the tragic circumstances of people she passed on the street every day. To compound that awareness, her first job after completing her masters was with an NGO here in Mumbai that works with the prostitute community in the slums. She has some incredible stories from her time working there and I spent most of dinner quizzing her on women's rights and prostitution in India.
The NGO she worked with is focused on helping the children of these prostitutes. They don't spend their efforts trying to get women to leave the business, since they know that there is really nowhere else that these women could earn a living, especially after they've been doing it for many years. Instead their mission is to prevent second generation prostitution with the children of the prostitutes. The prostitutes will be living in brothels, which they have been sold into through human trafficking. There will be a small room with just enough space for 5 beds - maybe with curtains separating them. The beds will be propped up on a few bricks, leaving space underneath. The children of these women live underneath the beds. That is their only living space. And yes, they're underneath the beds while their mothers are servicing customers. The NGO has started daycare centers in the red light districts that the mothers can bring their children to, so that they are not surrounded by prostitution all day. The centers are still close enough that the mothers can visit their kids during the day or vice versa, but the kids have somewhere else to be aside from inside the brothel. The NGO's other work involves helping these women start savings accounts. These brothels will become completely flooded during the monsoon seasons, so the women have no way to earn a living. If they don't have savings, some of them starve while the rains continue. The NGO encourages these women to start saving, and they will act as a bank by collecting whatever spare change the women can afford at the end of each day. Once the woman has deposited 1,000 rupees (about $20) with the NGO, the NGO will open a bank account in her name. It's not much, but it helps the women save for (literally) a rainy day.
These women are kept in some of the most horrendous circumstances imaginable. A brothel will literally buy a woman from a pimp or human trafficker. The woman will then be subjected to all kinds of horrible treatment, intended to get her to submit and be willing to act as a prostitute. Women are beaten, raped, demeaned, imprisoned, and God knows what else is done to them. Once they've been "broken" they start working. The prostitute has to pay rent to the brothel for the bed that she uses. On top of that, she owes a large sum of money to the brothel to make up for the fee that the madame paid from the pimp. Prostitutes in this red light district are paid anywhere between 20 rupees to 500 rupees per customer. In USD, that's between $0.40 and $10. If a prostitute takes in 500 rupees in a day, she will pay out 100-120 in rent for the day plus maybe 200 rupees to pay down her debt of 100K-1M rupees, and what's left over she will use for food. It takes years to pay down the debt to the brothel, and even once they have "earned" their freedom, the prostitutes are left with no life skills apart from the only trade they've ever known, so many of them just continue doing what they've always done. If a woman tries to escape before she pays down her debt, she is hunted down and killed - maybe tortured. They don't tolerate disobedience. The prostitutes with the least amount of freedom are the minors - which here means anyone 14 and below. The legal penalties for underage prostitution are very high here, so the brothels keep these girls under lock and key at all hours of the day. The NGOs are not allowed to know where they are - only the high paying johns get to see these girls. Some of these women (not the minors, but the adults) develop relationships with their customers and even end up saying that they're "married" to them (without a formal marriage ceremony).
The majority of prostitutes here are either from India, Nepal or Bangladesh. The Nepalese women are kept in the best conditions (relatively), since they are the fairest in skin color and fetch higher prices. The Bangladeshi women are known for being willing to do the most "dangerous" sex acts. Prices go higher for more "dangerous" activities - including not using a condom. The HIV rates are high here, but apparently it varies by regional population. Priyanka was telling me that most of the HIV-positive populations live in prostitution shacks located on India's major highways. Another interesting fact that she told me is that a lot of Bangladeshi women are actually married back home, and their husbands send them to India to become prostitutes. The money that they make is sent back to Bangladesh for a house to be built for their families, and the idea is that once the house is completed, they go back to Bangladesh to live with their families. Unfortunately, in some of the worst cases of hypocrisy you can imagine, not all of the husbands accept their wives back once they've completed their duty, and they are shunned once they return. Their husbands are despicable if you ask me. The worst story that she told me, however, was about prostitution that takes place in Bangladesh itself. Bangladesh is a very poor country - markedly poorer than India. Therefore, in that culture, any woman who is buxom or plump is considered very beautiful because it means she's healthy and has had something to eat in the past few weeks. Some madames in Bangladesh started giving pills to their girls - pills that are meant to be used on cows to make them lactate more. These pills make the girls develop curves at an early age, so that 13 year-olds will look like 30 year-old women. The pills make the girls retain water, so they end up looking plumper, which makes them "attractive" and drives a lot of business their way. The pills have horrible side effects - including psychosis, and many of the women taking them end up committing suicide, but they still don't stop taking these pills. Each pill costs less than 1 Bangladeshi taka (unit of currency), which is a fraction of a US cent. I'm not sure what sick and twisted mind came up with the idea to start giving these pills to these women - it's a kind of evil that I just cannot fathom.
Hearing these stories makes me sick to my stomach, but at the same time I think it's important that I become aware of these things. Just down the road from me here, I'm sure there are women who are being abused. I don't see it and will probably never meet them, but it's happening. If people like me turn a blind eye to these things and stay intentionally ignorant, then these women will never get help. Things will stay the same. If I hear these things, then it's my duty to tell others (perhaps via a blog post), and then those others can similarly spread the word. I'm not sure exactly how to fix the issue, but I know that pretending it doesn't exist is going to make things worse rather than better. Priyanka has been talking with the NGO about volunteering with them - she's going to keep me posted if there's a way I can get involved.
The rest of the weekend has been pretty uneventful. I slept in on Sunday - successfully this time! It seems that the breakfast and cleaning crews got the message from Saturday that they should ignore me on weekend mornings. The soccer game didn't end until 2 am or so, so it was a late night on Saturday. The championship match for the India Premier League (cricket) took place last night - Mumbai won against Chennai. I went out to a bar/restaurant with a group of friends to watch the cricket, and then we went dancing at another place to celebrate Mumbai's winning their first-ever IPL title. There are whispers about the IPL match being fixed - in this country, with the corruption that's present everywhere, I wouldn't dismiss those rumors very quickly. But who really knows?
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