How free are you? Lets take a quick quiz shall we?
Do you get to pick your friends? Do you get to choose where you could go on a holiday? Do you get options on where you eat from tonight? Do you have choice when it comes to your healthcare options? Do you get to choose how to make a living for yourself? Are you having trouble answering these questions?
I'll make it easier on you. Open your social media page and take a look at the things that You have Instagrammed, Facebooked or Snap chatted about. A highlight reel of these would probably be your #ootd (outfit of the day for those born in the sixties and seventies, xoxo), a picture of your lunch or dinner (dramatic eye-roll here), an outing with your besties (my english lit pandit grandma would turn in her grave); your salon date with yourself (no time like me time!!) or that mandatory work selfie with a strategically placed laptop and pin up board behind you. While I have no issues with such content on social media I wonder if maybe we take our freedom for granted.
Think about the millions of young women who are held captive by trafficking rings far from their home of birth. They are drugged, beaten, sexually exploited and this is all in a day's work for them. Girls who don't get to choose their friends, their jobs, heck, they don't get to choose their hairstyle or their favourite shade of lipstick but instead are herded like cattle into decrepit sheds and dark warehouses and are beaten into submission and abused till they forget they had a different life before this nightmare began. I think about migrant workers who are promised jobs with a decent pay so they can look after the needs of their families and loved ones only to find these are empty promises. They are forced to work long hours doing back breaking work meant only for beasts of burden not for any human being. The nights are short and equally hard where scores of labourers are squeezed into tiny housing units and fed meals with barely any nourishment. Their wages are minimal and will not provide any relief to the families of these individuals back home. I'm not talking about Europe circa 1940 i'm talking about India in the 21st century. Come on Millenials !! and you pre-millenials too ! How can we stop this? How do we actually bring some hope to the lives of those trapped in slavery and bondage?
We cannot stay silent anymore! This October 20th as a first step we Walked For Freedom. We walked in silence to show our support and solidarity of the millions of lives trapped in horrors not of their own making. What next? You could keep you're eyes and ears open. Trafficking happens in our cities right under our noses. If you see or hear anything suspicious or untoward in your apartment complex call the police or (if you have trust issues with them) contact NGOs that work in this area. Do you employ a young child to look after your children or to clean your home? Send that child back to her village and give her the means to an education. Pay your household help the right wage and don't overwork them.
They are human just like us after all.
Encourage young boys who work in your suburbs as errand boys to pursue their education and work in the evenings alone to make ends meet for their families.
Have you been yearning to start a family but it seems like it's just not happening? Why don't you explore the option of adoption? You don't just give some child somewhere a chance at having an amazing life but your heart will be filled with a love that you cant contain and your life will have renewed purpose.
Do you have time on your hands or are you between jobs? Why don't you help organisations that work to abolish slavery in a way that you are uniquely suited to help, be it with IT, their public relations, communications or just as to sit and listen to the stories of the rescued.
Rehabilitation is complete when a survivor can sit with us and have a normal conversation about just about anything and not feel left out or different. We live in a time when although the problem is overwhelming our opportunities are endless . We must get in it to end it!!
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