Julia Romano CdeP 2000: Painting Hope

A one-way ticket took me to India in October 2009. Having just completed my Masters degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, the plan was to wander around that great subcontinent as I awaited decisions from PhD programs. Then a dedicated student of yoga—I’m now a full time teacher—I stopped in Mysore, the epicenter of the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice, planning to stay only a few weeks. But, as I soon learned, the easiest way to make God laugh (particularly in India where the gods are regular practical jokers) is to make a plan. During my first week in Mysore, I began working with Odanadi, an organization that rescues girls from human trafficking, and my planned “few weeks” stay in that dusty southern Indian city turned into seven months.

I taught art and English to a group of about ten of Odanadi’s most troubled girls who couldn’t leave the center for mental or physical health reasons. I bought them watercolor paints and notebooks, and tried to show them how to use the materials, to show them how with a few more drops of water an infinite number of shades can be created.

Odanadi’s girls are victims of kidnapping, abduction, slavery, and rape, and the emotional and physical trauma that results, including HIV. Their pasts are a nightmare, but one that I could wake from, and one that I have no knowledge of in any visceral way, no matter how much I tried to imagine it. I also tried to see their pasts in their paintings. Some spoke vividly to the trauma they had known: a deep red heart, with a thick black border, and a thick black line down the middle—a break, or a suture. It was painted by a girl, now 17, who was kidnapped when she was quite young, and held in a brothel for four years until she was rescued by Odanadi. Her family won’t take her back.

Some of the paintings the girls created were full of hope, new days dawning. One girl came to Odanadi after her wealthy parents died of AIDS. Her father was a corrupt politician, her mother a prostitute. She was well-educated, and speaks English nearly fluently. For the first few weeks she only painted what she could copy. When I asked the girls to draw flowers from their imagination, she hesitated, not wanting to make a mistake. But after a few weeks of classes, she came to me, beaming, holding out her book. On the page was a sunrise. She woke early that morning and saw it, she said, the sun rising…the light changing. It was so beautiful, she was inspired to create.

I did not stop human trafficking in India. I did not even bring an end to one girl’s pain. I did what I could do: supply that blank canvas in a safe space where dreaming and creating can become possible once more.