Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

was confident that the reporters were respecting the “code of the road,” I felt more comfortable opening up around them. It also helped that the press and I were sharing the same experiences, from our immersion in foreign cultures to moments of levity at informal group dinners.

The press corps, which had never interacted with Chelsea before, now observed her poise and her grit. One day she would help weigh malnourished children so fragile that they winced at the gentlest touch; a few hours later she would dine with a prime minister.

She asked good questions and made insightful comments and, naturally, many of the journalists started pressuring me to allow them to quote her. I finally gave in after we visited the Taj Mahal and she said: “When I was little, this was sort of the embodiment of the fairy-tale palace for me. I would see pictures of it and would dream I was a princess or whatever. Now that I’m here it’s spectacular.”

It was a lovely and harmless comment, but I immediately wished we hadn’t opened that door. It was hard to close again. Once the print reporters had the quote, Lisa Caputo, my press secretary, was deluged by television journalists desperate to have Chelsea repeat it on tape. I had to remind everybody what the ground rules were, and I made a mental note to consider putting Chelsea in “purdah” when we returned to Washington!

My most vivid memories of India were not of the Taj Mahal, breathtaking as it was, but of two visits I made in the city of Ahmadabad in the state of Gujarat. The first was to Mahatma Gandhi’s simple ashram, where he sought a meditative retreat from the roiling struggle to create an independent India. The deprivation I had seen and the simplicity of his life reminded me of the excesses of mine. Gandhi’s beliefs in nonviolent resistance to oppression and the need to organize large opposition groups to a government’s policies influenced the American civil rights movement and was critical to Martin Luther King’s campaign to end racial segregation. In his own country, Gandhi’s life and principles of self-reliance and rejection of the caste system inspired a remarkable woman, Ela Bhatt.

Following Gandhi’s example, she founded the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in 1971. Liz Moynihan, Senator Moynihan’s extraordinary wife, had introduced me to Bhatt and encouraged me to make a trip to SEWA and see for myself what one determined woman could create.

Both a trade union and a women’s movement, SEWA claimed over one hundred forty thousand members, including some of the poorest, least educated and most shunned women in India. These women entered into arranged marriages and then lived in their husbands’ households under the watchful eyes of their mothers-in-law. Some had lived in purdah until their husbands died, were disabled or left, and they had to support their families; all struggled day-to-day to survive. SEWA offered small loans to enable them to earn their own income and also provided basic literacy and business education training.

Ela Bhatt showed me the large books kept in SEWA’s one-room office that recorded the loans and repayments. Through this system of “microfinance,” SEWA was providing employment for thousands of individual women and changing deeply held attitudes about women’s roles.

Word of my visit had spread through the villages of Gujarat, and nearly one thousand women flocked to the meeting, some of them walking nine or ten hours along hot, dusty paths through the country side. Tears filled my eyes when I saw them waiting for me under a large tent. Fanning themselves in their sapphire-, emerald-and ruby-colored saris, they looked like an undulating human rainbow. They were Muslim and Hindu, including untouchables, the lowest Hindu caste. There were kite makers, scrap pickers and vegetable vendors, and Chelsea sat down among them.

One by one, women stood up to tell me how SEWA had changed their lives, not only because of the small loans they received and the help SEWA gave them in their businesses, but also because of the solidarity they felt with other struggling women. One woman struck a common chord when she explained that she was no longer afraid of her motherin-law. In their culture, the motherin-law typically exerts rigid control over her son’s wife as soon as the couple marry and move in with his family. Having her own market stall and her own income gave this woman welcome independence. She added that she was no longer afraid of the police either because a group of SEWA-sponsored vendors now protected her from harassment by overbearing officers in the market. The dignified bearing, chiseled faces and kohl-rimmed eyes of the speakers belied their difficult lives.

Finally, I was asked to make closing remarks. As I finished, Ela Bhatt took the microphone and announced that the women wanted to express their gratitude for my visit from America. In a stunning flash of moving color they all sprang to their feet and began singing “We Shall Overcome” in Gujarati. I was overwhelmed and uplifted to be in the midst of women who were working to overcome their own hardships as well as centuries of oppression.

For me, they were a living affirmation of the importance of human rights.

I was still thinking of their faces and words the next day as we flew from sea level to Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, which sits in the middle of the Himalayan mountains, in a low valley at an altitude of just over 4,200 feet, the same as that of Salt Lake City. On a clear day, you can see a panorama of snow-capped peaks ringing the city.

The landscapes of Nepal are among the most beautiful in the world, but the inhabited regions of the country are overcrowded. Human waste is used for fertilizer and clean water is a rarity. The Americans I met all had stories of getting sick after spending time in Nepal, making it sound like an inevitable rite of passage. Peace Corps members showed up to see me wearing T-shirts that listed all