A minibus rattles through the dusty streets of South India carrying a small group of Americans. They are led by Katrell Christie, owner of a tea shop in Candler Park and founder of a grassroots project that houses and educates young, lower-caste women in India. She is on a mission to expand the success she’s had in Darjeeling in this sprawling port city on the Bay of Bengal.
Known as Madras during British rule, Chennai has for centuries exported India’s exotic spices and textiles. Referred to as the “Detroit of India” for its auto industry, it’s been a key player in the nation’s industrial boom. Yet it’s not uncommon to see a water buffalo roam the city streets. Women in saris perch on the backs of scooters whipping through the traffic at breakneck speed. The sun is unforgiving.
In Darjeeling, a major problem for young women is sex trafficking. In this region, it’s bonded indebtedness — put more simply, slavery.
Desperate to have their children escape the crushing poverty they’ve known, parents secure money for school from informal lenders. If they fall behind on payments, the young women are required to work off the debt as unpaid domestic servants, which can take years. India outlawed debt bondage in the 1970s, but that appears to have done little to stem the problem. The Global Slavery Index estimates more than 13 million Indians are enslaved, many to pay off debts.
Through her project, The Learning Tea, Christie wants to liberate some of the young women she’s learned about, find them a home and pay their school tuition so they can complete their education. Some of the debts are just a few hundred dollars. But for the destitute families in question — one living in a thatched hut with a single bed — it might as well be $1 million.
She is heading to Rajalakshmi Engineering College in an upscale suburb to investigate whether the dormitories there might be a good fit for a new Learning Tea center. The campus is part of a well-regarded network of private specialty colleges that could suit the varied needs of her would-be scholars. Maybe.
Along for the ride this May morning are two of her Indian “fixers” — helpers and advocates she’s collected in her frequent travels who help her navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracies of India. Many are members of the Rotary Club, which has served as the backbone of Christie’s international network.
One owns a travel agency but has canceled a meeting with a prominent client today to help Christie.
“She has a way of being very persuasive,” he says with a chuckle. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
The other is a well-heeled business owner and the first woman president of the local Rotary Club. Wearing an elegant, expensive-looking sari, she displays a regal bearing. Yet, with a slight glimmer in her eye, she casually mentions she was once addicted to racing Italian cars. “Alfa Romeos mostly,” she sniffs, suggesting a character in Wes Anderson movie.
Christie and her small entourage tour the spacious campus and sit down with the administrators. Chai tea and sweets appear. How many students? Would there be a separate dormitory for the Learning Tea girls, allowing them to live together and bond in a way that has become integral to the program? Jay Sullivan, an Atlanta attorney and friend of Christie’s along for the trip, interjects some of his own questions about the history of the school.
Christie frowns ever so slightly.
Later, back at the hostel where they’re staying for the night, she’s blunt.
“I need to be the one who talks,” Christie tells Jay. “You’re a man, and as soon you begin speaking, they assume you have the authority and turn their attention to you.”
The amiable Sullivan is taken aback.
“I had no idea,” he says.
But Christie knows that gender stereotypes infect most interactions in India. She recalls the time, during the program’s infancy, when she found an ideal rental for the girls in Darjeeling, but the landlord wouldn’t rent to a woman. She had to have her father back in Georgia sign the lease.
Respect for women in India has to be earned.
“There can’t be any question that I’m in charge,” she said.
2
Women in India
A week after Christie returned home from her spring trip to India, word came that two teenage cousins from the so-called “untouchable” caste (now called Dalit) had been raped and hung from a mango tree in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Like most people living in their village, the girls had no indoor toilet, so they had gone to an orchard to relieve themselves. The brutality of the attacks galvanized international outrage and drew comparisons to the 2012 gang rape of a young woman on a bus in the nation’s capital of New Delhi. The woman, a student, eventually died from her injuries.
The episodes have brought international attention to a disturbing culture of sexual violence that undermines India’s efforts to modernize.
To be a woman in India today — especially a poor woman — is to face grim prospects.
For every 1,000 boys born in India, 940 girls are born – statistics experts say point to female infanticide. It is not uncommon for girl children to be abandoned at orphanages or on the streets. Arranged marriages are still commonplace. According to UNICEF, one in two women are married before 18, the legal age of consent.
In May, while Christie was still in India, voters there overwhelmingly elected a new prime minister, Narendra Modi, who ran on a promise of economic growth and safety for women. Modi’s campaign leveraged social media and attracted hordes of new voters in the world’s largest democracy.
Whether circumstances for women change under his administration, only time will tell. Even if it does, it has a long way to go.
That’s why Christie wants to give more young women an education, the tool she believes will ultimately help them fight back and improve life for all women.
“It’s about empowerment,” Christie said. “I want to help build a network of women warriors around India.”
3
Need is everywhere
Despite all the groundwork Christie laid in advance of her visit to Chennai, it is something of a bust. No decisions are made for a new center. A trip to meet potential scholars falls through at the last minute and can’t be rescheduled before she leaves. The national election unexpectedly shuts down a nursing campus she wanted to tour. India works on its own quirky schedule, and Christie has learned you cannot arrive with a firm timetable and expect to tick through a to-do list.
“I’ll be back,” she says with a sigh. “India gives you what it gives you.”
Much of what Christie does boils down to old-fashioned detective work. Next on her agenda is a fact-finding mission to Jaggampeta, a small rural town 400 miles north of Chennai. She’s meeting with Surendra Kumar, a pastor who thinks he has good candidates for her prospective Learning Tea center in Chennai.
“I don’t know if this will work out or not,” Christie says. “But I think it’s worth investigating.”
Getting to Jaggampeta is no small feat. It takes a 15-hour overnight train ride up the east coast of India deep into the countryside. The heat is oppressive, the cars are crowded and the toilet is a hole in the floor that empties straight onto the tracks. The train arrives in Rajahmundry more than two hours late, and Christie and her traveling companions pile into a rented minivan for the one-hour drive to the village.
Kumar’s home is the nicest in sight, with flush toilets, Wi-Fi and a modern kitchen. Christie is eager to meet the girls, but the pastor has other plans. First he insists Christie visit a project he runs, which helps abandoned women learn sewing skills to earn a living. Several dozen seamstresses, in spotless saris, have been waiting hours to meet the late-arriving Americans. They show off their sewing machines and crowd around Christie. Neighborhood children stare in the windows of the small hut eager to get a look at the American visitors, a rarity in this remote place.
Next is an aid program for young children who Kumar says are HIV positive. The Americans dish out hot lentils for lunch and help distribute bags of dried rice for the children to take home.
Christie begins to suspect Kumar is more interested in soliciting support for his own programs than in finding her scholars. Everywhere you look in India there is need. Christie is sympathetic but stays focused on why she is here.
When do I meet the girls? she asks.
Eventually, 10 young women arrive, shy and giggly. They are wearing their best saris, a color wheel of plums, emeralds and saffrons.
Christie begins the interview process she’s honed over the years.
“Do you have electricity in your house?”
“What about a flush toilet?”
“How many people live there?”
“Who’s ever been to the dentist?”
Their answers indicate some of the girls are relatively privileged, at least by India standards.
Several live with two working parents. By and large, these aren’t the lower-caste girls Christie targets.
Still, a few are orphans who have stayed in school and may be eligible if they are willing to relocate to Chennai.
“We want to get to know you,” Christie tells the women. “We’re not going to stick a check in the mail and walk away.”
Exhausted and craving a shower as she prepares to leave, Christie is philosophical. Just because Kumar may have an agenda of his own doesn’t mean she can’t work with him to help some of the girls who showed up today. The bait-and-switch is fairly commonplace, and she’s learned to roll with it and trust her instincts, perfected over the years coming here.
“Not everything is neat and tidy,” she says.
4
The white rabbit
Christie’s luck begins to turn when she arrives in Kolkata. This densely packed city — some 63,000 people per square mile — is virtually synonymous with poverty. Toddlers roam naked on city streets. Tattered rickshaws are pulled by fragile men running in makeshift sandals. For millions of Indians, the streets of Kolkata are not just a thoroughfare, they are home.
But there is also a gorgeous allure to the crumbling British colonial architecture. The shutters and wrought iron balconies resemble an apocalyptic New Orleans. And like New Orleans, Kolkata is known for its arts and culture.
Christie sips a cold Kingfisher beer on the patio of the Fairlawn Hotel and interviews a young woman named Paromita, the daughter of a nanny.
Accompanied by her mother’s employer, Paromita looks like she would rather be anywhere else. She stares at her hands in her lap and forces a smile.
“Do you think you would like to do this?” Christie asks. Paromita looks uncertain. She speaks almost no English. But she has managed to stay in school, and that is something.
Her mother’s employer answers for her.
“If she doesn’t get an education, she will be married off and pregnant in a year,” she says. “That’s how it goes for girls over here.”
Struggling to make conversation with the girl, Christie asks if she has any pets.
Paromita’s face brightens and she tells Christie about her pet white rabbit. It keeps her company while her mother cares for another family’s child.
Christie laughs. The deal is sealed. For Christie, white rabbits are a sign of sorts.
Last year when she was in Kolkata, Christie was visiting the temple dedicated to the patron Hindu goddess Kali when an elderly woman randomly thrust a white rabbit into her arms, its sharp claws scratching at her chest. The surreal incident resonated with her because ever since coming to India, she’s likened herself to a character in “Alice in Wonderland,” right down to the often elliptical language.
“In India, people talk in riddles. The answer is at the beginning of the session and the question is at the end.
“This place feels like the mad tea party,” she says with obvious affection. “And I am always chasing the white rabbit.”
Christie is unfazed by Paromita’s debilitating shyness. Her first two scholars in Darjeeling — Lakmit and Mingma — were the same way. Now they are confident college students.
Christie asks Paromita what her dream vocation would be.
“She can’t even imagine that,” her mother’s employer says.
“Imagine,” Christie says. “You need to imagine.”
5
At the tea shop
Back in Atlanta, a little more than one week after her return from India, Christie peers out the front door of Dr. Bombay’s onto McClendon Avenue.
“It’s so quiet,” she says wistfully. India’s cacophony of noise and mobs of people are hard to conjure on this gentrified stretch of Candler Park.
After living on rice, dal and paneer for almost a month, Christie, a vegetarian, has been gorging on green salads and Arden’s Garden juices. She is happy to be home to see her dogs, Baxter and Banks, and fiancee, Thanh Truong, a television journalist based in New Orleans. Summer is underway and that means kids from the neighborhood are stopping by Dr. Bombay’s for ice cream.
But her mind is still a world away.
Since Christie left Chennai, her travel agent friend has made progress finding a center there; the project is suddenly coming together. The apartment she decorated in Kolkata is ready to welcome Binu and Sujata, two of her Darjeeling scholars, who will be arriving soon to pursue graduate degrees.
But even as she lays the groundwork for expansion, Christie is apprehensive. The very strength of her program is its intimacy. If she has centers scattered around India, will she still have time to personally decorate each one? Or to text the girls to see what they had for breakfast? She has been thinking a lot about how she’s going to maintain the integrity of the program as it expands. To that point, she’s decided that no more than 12 girls should live in each center.
And she’s developed a new funding idea: philanthropy tourism. In the last five years she has become something of an expert on traveling in India. The idea is to take would-be supporters on a guided tour of a more authentic India than tourists typically see. Participants would pay their own way and then contribute to the Learning Tea. It wouldn’t be a trip of five-star hotels, but it would provide a glimpse into the India she has come to know and love.
Meanwhile, she still has a tea shop to run in Atlanta. Christie says she hates to beg for money, which is why she structured the project to be funded through the sale of tea and monthly Indian dinners. But as the project expands she realizes she may have to reconsider that plan.
In another one of those prescient coincidences that seem to occur in her life with surprising regularity, Christie recalls visiting her grandparents’ house in South Georgia and seeing a quote that stuck with her.
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
She stumbled upon it again on one of her India trips and learned, to her surprise, it was written by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.
Those three sentences have helped guide Christie’s life on its unexpected paths through India. So last May, when she was in Kolkata, she went on a quest to find the Hindi translation of Tagore’s quote. She stole away for a few minutes between meetings to visit Oxford Bookstore, hoping the clerks there might be able to help her.
Unfortunately, she left empty-handed.
Oh well, she mused. Still chasing the white rabbit.
About the reporter
Shannon McCaffrey has been a reporter for nearly two decades in New York, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta. She has spent much of that time covering legal issues and politics. For the past two years, she has worked as an investigative reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She loves writing hard-hitting watchdog pieces but likes to occasionally dabble in reporting that captures the human spirit at its best. She has two young daughters.
About the Author
