Close X
Thursday, January 16, 2025
ADVT 
International

A Sex Worker In India Confided Her Story To Bill Gates. It Made Him Cry

Darpan News Desk IANS, 30 Nov, 2018 08:18 PM
    Bill Gates during one of his several visits to India as part of the AIDS prevention programme of the Gates Foundation couldn't hold back his tears on hearing the story of a sex worker whose daughter committed suicide after being harassed and ostracised by her schoolmates, says a new book.
     
     
    Ashok Alexander, who headed the Gates Foundation's HIV/AIDS prevention programme Avahan for over 10 years, has come out with a book "A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, leadership and Courage from India's Sex Workers" in which he talks about the country's sex workers, their lives, how India is a success story in the epidemic and what leadership skills and life lessons can be learnt from them.
     
     
    The author mentions true stories of the lives of sex workers in India that are about finding hope and redemption amid heartbreak and despair.
     
     
    During their visits, Bill and wife Melinda had the ability to completely shut out everything extraneous and focus on the community of sex workers, the author says.
     
     
     
     
    "They sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the community members who were sitting in a small circle. Melinda asked some of them if they would relate their stories. All the tales were sad ones - of rejection, utter poverty, and then somewhere a spark of hope. They were brutally honest and raw."
     
     
    One of the stories is about an incident that took place during Gates' visit to India in the early 2000s. A woman confided with Bill Gates on how she had hidden the fact that she was a sex worker from her daughter, who was then in high school.
     
     
    When her classmates found out the truth, they relentlessly teased, harassed and ostracised the girl, who soon went into deep depression.
     
     
    "One day her mother came home to find her child hanging from the ceiling fan, and a note left behind saying she could not take it anymore. I noticed that Bill, next to me, had his head down and was crying quietly," Alexander recalls in the book, published by Juggernaut.
     
     
    When Alexander left a high-profile corporate job to head Avahan in 2003, he was plunged into an India far removed from the comfort zones he had lived and worked in all his life.
     
     
    It was a grinding place where women sold themselves for Rs. 50 and 14-year-olds injected drugs. It was the shadow world of transgenders and of young gay men in a country that criminalised same-sex love then.
     
     
    It was the strange world of truckers, lonely journeymen along forgotten highways. Above all, it was a place where valiant battles for a barely decent life were being fought every day.

    MORE International ARTICLES

    I Love Indian Media, Says Donald Trump Jr

    I Love Indian Media, Says Donald Trump Jr
    Donald Trump Jr, son of US President Donald Trump, on Friday said he loves the Indian media as it is "mild and nice" compared to the "aggressive and brutal" American media.

    I Love Indian Media, Says Donald Trump Jr

    US Teachers Say #ArmMeWith Resources, Not Guns

    US Teachers Say #ArmMeWith Resources, Not Guns
    Teachers across the United States have come up with an innovative campaign to reject President Donald Trump's controversial proposal of arming teachers with concealed guns and weapons.

    US Teachers Say #ArmMeWith Resources, Not Guns

    Quebec Woman Pleads Guilty In Australian Cocaine Smuggling Case

    Quebec Woman Pleads Guilty In Australian Cocaine Smuggling Case
    MONTREAL — A 24-year-old woman who was one of three Quebecers in Australia charged with drug smuggling has pleaded guilty to importing cocaine in commercial quantities.

    Quebec Woman Pleads Guilty In Australian Cocaine Smuggling Case

    Trump Floats Two-Step Plan For Gun Control: More Guns, More Control

    Trump Floats Two-Step Plan For Gun Control: More Guns, More Control
    President Donald Trump is floating a unique two-step move on gun control. It involves both more guns and more controls. The additional guns would be inside schools.

    Trump Floats Two-Step Plan For Gun Control: More Guns, More Control

    Road Crash That Killed 8 Indians Was ‘Entirely Avoidable’, UK Court Told

    Road Crash That Killed 8 Indians Was ‘Entirely Avoidable’, UK Court Told
    One of Britain’s worst road accidents that claimed the lives of eight Indians last year was an “entirely avoidable” collision with the most “catastrophic” and tragic consequences, a UK court has been told.

    Road Crash That Killed 8 Indians Was ‘Entirely Avoidable’, UK Court Told

    Indian Origin Professor Gets $600000 Grant To Develop Lupus Cure

    Indian Origin Professor Gets $600000 Grant To Develop Lupus Cure
    Lupus is quite common among African-Americans and Hispanics in US, and also common in Asia

    Indian Origin Professor Gets $600000 Grant To Develop Lupus Cure