When an Indian sex worker's tale brought Bill Gates to tears!
New Delhi, Nov 30: 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 related to Gates 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 couldn't 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.
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Another North Goa nightclub sealed; Kejriwal says corruption led to fire tragedy
Panaji (PTI): As part of a crackdown against tourist establishments violating laws and safety norms in the aftermath of the Arpora fire tragedy, Goa authorities on Saturday sealed a renowned club at Vagator and revoked the fire department NOC of another club.
Cafe CO2 Goa, located on a cliff overlooking the Arabian Sea at Vagator beach in North Goa, was sealed. The move came two days after Goya Club, also in Vagator, was shut down for alleged violations of rules.
Elsewhere, campaigning for local body polls, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal said the fire incident at Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub at Arpora, which claimed 25 lives on December 6, happened because the BJP government in the state was corrupt.
An inspection of Cafe CO2 Goa by a state government-appointed team revealed that the establishment, with a seating capacity of 250, did not possess a no-objection certificate (NOC) of the Fire and Emergency Services Department. The club, which sits atop Ozrant Cliff, also did not have structural stability, the team found.
The Fire and Emergency Services on Saturday also revoked the NOC issued to Diaz Pool Club and Bar at Anjuna as the fire extinguishers installed in the establishment were found to be inadequate, said divisional fire officer Shripad Gawas.
A notice was issued to Nitin Wadhwa, the partner of the club, he said in the order.
Campaigning at Chimbel village near Panaji in support of his party's Zilla Panchayat election candidate, Aam Aadmi Party leader Kejriwal said the nightclub fire at Arpora happened because of the "corruption of the Pramod Sawant-led state government."
"Why this fire incident happened? I read in the newspapers that the nightclub had no occupancy certificate, no building licence, no excise licence, no construction licence or trade licence. The entire club was illegal but still it was going on," he said.
"How could it go on? Couldn't Pramod Sawant or anyone else see it? I was told that hafta (bribe) was being paid," the former Delhi chief minister said.
A person can not work without bribing officials in the coastal state, Kejriwal said, alleging that officers, MLAs and even ministers are accepting bribes.
