People | My Journey So Far….

When was the last time you have given advice to someone? It could be just few minutes back or a week back or maybe a month back. It is in our nature to give advice and help others, regardless of the fact that the person on receiving end, is asking for it or not. :O

So, what if the other person does not want to accept our help? What if, he does not wants to be saved? What if he wants to drown? Drown in front of you?

What will you do, then?

Human tendency is strange in so many ways, sometimes we want to drown people so that we can rise in their absence, but most of the times, we want to save people. We want to help. We want to give advice. Why we may want to save others? It can be a totally different agenda. We prefer to save those, who we think can save us in future, or who have saved us in past so as to pay their debt, or we may want to save others, just so that we can feel good about ourselves, but most of the times, we always want to save those who we love or we wish well for. We want to give them directions on how to live a better life.

I have seen people giving advice to total strangers, specially if you are a Mom, you will get plenty of parenting advice from everyone around you, even from those who are not yet parents. I love giving advices too. It does feel nice, infact feel like that you are saving other persons life. So, even when I am giving advice to do some physical exercise and eat healthy food, to one of my friend, who is growing in size due to inactivity and negligence towards health. I do feel like I am the one who is trying to save this persons life. I feel good about myself. It does not matter much whether that person will actually start acting on my advice or not.

When it does matter is, the fact when someone close, or a loved one is involved. Our kids, our younger siblings and our family friends; we like them to grow and prosper. We like them, to listen to us. We like them to behave in a way we expect them to be.

All the time, that we are expecting this from them, we forget, that they maybe wanted to have their own mistakes. How can I save you, if you do not want to be saved?

When I tried to teach my kids, how to swim or cycle. I have to first teach myself, on how to loose them? How to set them free? So that, they can fall, swim on their own. Even when they learnt, it was hard for me to let them go. How as parent, as guardian, we always want to hold their hands, always trying to steer them clear of any troubles, how always trying to judge and decide what is best for them.

What we think is best for our kid, may not be what our kids have thought of as best. They can have different aspirations. They are allowed to think differently, to go different ways. They may or may not be as successful as we want them to be (in our perception), but they will be a person of their own.

That is most important. Isn’t it?

Kavita seems to be an ordinary looking middle aged woman working her way out to earn a living, but look deep inside her eyes and you will see the pain and humiliation that she has gone through. To make the matter worse, what happened to her was done all in the name of God. How can any God be so merciless to deny a girl the right to study, right to stay with her family, right to have a family of her own, right to have a decent relationship in her life, right to marry a man, right to dream, right to be her.

Kavita was a Devdaasi, translated it means Slave of God. In actuality it means more than just a slave, it means married to the God for her entire life, but serve all the Men.

Devdaasi was a very old system practiced in India. Some say that it is still active in some of the rural villages of India. In this system, girls of 5 and 6 years of ages, were given to the temples, where they were married to the God in big ceremonies. The girl thus married to the God, can not marry anyone else, and served all her life in the temple as a slave. But, this was not all. Girls who were married to God, had no free will and thus mostly she was forced into prostitution. Only god knows how many girls have faced this humiliation of serving these devilish desires of men. Irony being a prostitute has a right to say no, but being slaves a Devdaasi didn’t even had that right. They were just reduced to being a Temple Prostitute.

Now that this practice is almost in extinction phase but still the ones like Kavita, who have come out of the system are working hard to make their ends meet. Being a single mother of two teen age children in a small village of Karnataka, India, she finds it hard to even manage the school fees of her kids. To top it all, as the stigma of Devdaasi is attached to her now for permanently, she and the likes of her do not find any job opportunity. Only thing that is left for them to live a dignified life is to start their own small business.

How can you Help Kavita?

Kavita has started a small business of selling textiles. But she needs more support to scale up her business. Her friends Kasthuri and Mallava also have the same stories. They are in buffalo and goat rearing business. What all of them need is some support from all of us so that they can scale up their business, and help their families to build a better future. These 3 women seek a loan of Rs.45,000, repayable over 18 months, to expand their small scale businesses. To help them and learn more about the cause, please visit Milaap’s site here.

Milaap and Mass are NGO, working with ASSET India Foundation for the empowerment of these women. These organizations are helping these women to come out of the Devdaasi system by providing them small support to start their own business and be financially independent. They are also helping their kids against human trafficking and giving them opportunity to study.

You can help Kavita and her group by lending her a helping hand in scaling up her business by lending a loan. In case you can not lend a loan, then do spread the word so that others who can, come to know of her plight and help her.

Please visit the Milaap’s site here to help Kavita. Because slavery to Man or to God, slavery is still slavery and there is nothing more valuable than Freedom.

Help her.