I went to a hindu temple with my mum today, she wanted to light oil lamps for Lord Ganesha to mark my birthday, so we were there at the temple and I was watching people light up hundreds of oil lamps...usually giving thanks for what they have received or perhaps they were also putting a prayer out for what they wanted. As I watched this, my mind kept wandering back to a TED talk I watched on the net last night. It was by a lady called Sunitha Krishnan. She spoke about how we need to raise our awareness to the fact that many children and women get raped and abused in such horrific ways on a day to day basis. She herself was a victim of a gang rape by 8 men and she spoke about the anger that she had and how she chanelled it into rescuing more than a 1000 children. She spoke about how we pretend its not there and how we need to accept this part of our lives... yes it is a part of our lives...because I do believe that we perpetuate this ugliness in the world. We create it with the way we abuse power in our own lives and by the way we look the other way when we hear of such things. I know I used to say that its not a part of my reality and I foolishly believed that by not thinking about it , it wont be a part of my reality!
Recent statistics show that one in three women have some sort of abuse in their lives...I wonder how many more helpless children share the same plight? After listening to her I felt that what I am doing for street children by raising funds for them through my art is such a small drop in the ocean. I wanted to do more, so here I am writing about this. Below are links to Sunitha's TED talk and also the art auction site that I initiated for my company with the Christina Noble Foundation. Please tell your friends or as Sunitha says " can you break your cultural silence ...to tell this story to two other people and encourage them to tell 2 more people" She made a request... asking us to open our minds in our limited world to accept and include these people into our lives. Perhaps if we did that, we can shine the light on these issues and flush the perpetrators out of the shadows. This is why I have put the pictures of the oil lamps from the temple this morning because I want a hundreds lamps of awareness to reach out to the world and multiply... its the least we can do...afterall the real hard, heart wrenching work is done by people like Sunitha who give so much of themselves to make a difference to the world of these victims of abuse. Lord Ganesha is said to be the remover of obstacles, so my prayer this morning was for him to ensure the safety of every single child today who may be in a threatening situation and ensure that they get timely help... when I did that, my initial thought was that there was no way we, the human race or even God can protect every single child!... why not ? what is there to stop us from thinking about what else we can do to offer safety to every single child out there? what stops us from raising human consciousness and doing our share on a day to day basis....only our limited thinking!
http://www.ted.com/talks/sunitha_krishnan_tedindia.html
http://www.artwithadifference.org/
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