We look but we don’t see : its time to get uncomfortable

On 30th July a new short movie by Timothy Gaekwad (also the director of IMCARES) premiered which will be a watershed for the subject matter it addresses and for its painfully honest, hard hitting and fearless portrayal: the reality of sexual abuse of the boy child.

On my way to Mumbai to attend the premiere , I was reading a government of India report which carried out a survey among school children in different parts of India found out of the total of 2211 respondents, 42% children faced at least one form of sexual abuse or the other. 48% of boys and 39% of the girls faced sexual abuse.

Sex is a taboo issue to discuss in India and for that matter in Asia. There is a lack of legal safeguards and laws to protect the boy child and also a general lack of awareness on the matter .This makes it very difficult for people suffering from abuse, even more so for the boy child and men.
Let us hope and pray that this movie may be a driving force in opening eyes, galvanising and inspiring the church and society to accept this reality as well as begin to fight back.
One other recent movie by Timothy is ‘Zindagi : breaking the cycle’ which deals with the issue of trafficking in India , more specifically , the trafficking of girls from poor rural areas to urban areas and into prostitution . India has emerged as one of the main Asian hubs for trafficking.
These works are a window into lives and situations which are desperate, degrading and soul destroying. If you may be interested to obtain copies of these movies, please contact IMCARES, their contact information is:
Phone: ++91 22 2380 6237 Fax: ++91 22 2380 3278
E-mail: agape@imcares.org
Suman and Reema , CMS co mission partners have been working with IMCARES. Suman works with HIV/AIDS awareness activities and Reena is involved in helping with day care centres for vulnerable children. Both of them also are involved in reaching out and building bridges with the girls involved in commercial sex trade in Mumbai’s red light district.
I spend four days in Mumbai in course of which I visited some of IMCARES projects. It was wonderful to see their passion and commitment to those living in the fringes of the society, visible everywhere but rarely ‘seen’ …….people living on the pavement, sex workers living and working in appealing circumstances, children of sex workers who have a precarious existence; marked by stigma and vulnerable to abuse , people living in slums trying to make ends meet .
This was a surreal experience for me, a widow into a world which I had hardly encountered before at a human

level. I felt inspired, meeting people like Mrs.Jha , who inspite of having a family of her own , travels three hours every day , five days a week, to teach young kids in a small and filthy slum cluster right next to a glass and chrome oil company building . Discouraged, as I understood the web of sex trafficking, easy to enter but difficult to exit . Uplifted, by lives and stories of courage against all odds . outraged , seeing the apathy of society and especially the church to the issues and people who made them uncomfortable . Heartbroken, hearing how Eunuchs (transgender) who wished to attend churches were not allowed to do so . A Methodist preacher, told to leave when he brought people from the community to worship. Pastors preaching from pulpits that people with AIDS are sinners.
I sometimes wonder how we as Christians manage to limit and set up rules and regulations to govern grace when we claim salvation through it being given to us from God ,without limit. The established norms of society, morality and ‘what would people think’ driven attitude governs us and so often makes us behave like the very same Pharisees we love to condemn. Reflecting on the life of Jesus Christ, whom do we think He would prefer to reach out and have fellowship with if he was here? The answer is obvious and the challenge is clear. We need to get out of our comfort zones, we need to raise our voices for those who have none and we need to shed our prejudice and reach out to our brothers and sisters in pain and suffering right under the shadow of our steeples.