Born into Commerce; Dead at Birth.

Met some great folks the other day. Walked into a home, crowded with pieces of a long life waiting, it turns out, to get out. My hosts, Peter and Juthika Stangl, were moving and their life needed to be off the walls and floors of their Palo Alto home to make sure that others could reimagine their own lives in the space.

First, Peter and Juthika warmed me immediately. In short order I learned more about the foundation they’ve been running for a while now – Shadika – my Saturday blind date for volunteering hours. Not that I did any volunteer work that Saturday, but I did a lot of volunteer basking in the glow of something very very good.

Shadika garners funds from the SF bay area, and delivers it to the door of projects that serve sex workers and their children in Kolkata (the Calcutta of my past). I thought – aha ! isn’t this the same domain as the film ‘born into brothels’ that just won the oscars? So up I piped with (the obviously obvious) tip – why not use the publicity around the film, and screenings of the film, to help fundraise? The depressing answer: we contacted the film maker, but after what seemed like a positive start, we were told, that a deal was made with a distributor, and when the time was right we should talk to the distributor.

I stood aghast. I know I know there are multiple complex politics on who represents, who uses, who gives back to the represented, academic articles, activist tomes, many hours of many peoples lives discussing – but this was just very simply unbelievable. A film made to highlight the plight (and creativity from disaster) of the children of sex workers in Kolkata was not available to those who have worked to serve these people for more than a decade. I can think of many well-meaning ways to explain the mindset of those behind this travesty, or the series of small decisions made, and larger ones never considered, that brought us to this point, but the thing of it remains too hypocritical to comprehend. Perhaps its because I’m immersed in a world where we already understand the implications of default copyright, restrictive distribution agreements, etc. But help me, anyone, to understand how this makes sense.