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TechnoratiKamathipura, Bombay, India., Dec. 20 - Just as the night envelops dusk into its fold, sleazy dance numbers begin to add to the atmosphere, a nauseating tinge. It is difficult to walk on the narrow lanes along the cramped shanties without feeling miserable. The rusted grills on the windows exposing the shabby walls illuminating under a murky bulb stand like sentries, a mute witness to the screams of the innocence that gets lost forever in the dark streets of Kamatipura, the infamous red light area of Mumbai, leaving only a corpse that at every night would dress in to gaudy attires, before getting on with the business of satisfying urges of a perverse mind.
Bombay, India
Nothing much remains of the woman in the flesh trade, nothing that she could call her own, not even her name. Called by derogatory terms, and commercial sex workers, as the secular NGOs put it, these women could not have believed their ears when someone called them sisters.
Ten years ago, Anson Thomas, a Customs officer from Mumbai found himself at one such by lane of Mumbai‘s sex district. Anson’s journey into the shunned streets began on October 2, 1991 when the pastor of his Church confronted him while sneaking liquor into the church picnic. Anson, then a social drinker, realized that his responsibility not only lies to his family or to his church, but to God as well. That night, he knelt down in his room and confessed all his sins to the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Lord I completely surrender to you, lead me where you want to and use me, I am all yours,”— he told the Lord that night, and there was no looking back. The gracious God led him to hospitals where he prayed and shared Gospel with alcoholics, then on to the HIV positive ones. Anson also went into the midst of school and college students preaching to them spiritual values based on the Bible. Rather than telling them to use condoms, he warned them against the ruin of the soul, when their feet led them to the Red light area. Condoms, he told them, does not help in saving the soul.
Be it trains, or the road from Colaba to VT, Anson would fill his bag with the Gospel tracts, distributing them to the ‘sisters’, the term he chose to express God‘s love to the victims of sex trade. And on that night in Kamathipura, Anson stood, burdened with a passion to set the captives free. He was raring to go but doubts were hovering above him, and at that point, of time he prayed to God for strength. It was the spiritual strength he experienced that night which led him to begin a life-changing ministry for many enslaved souls.
And he knew that the ministry was going to be challenging. Be it discouraging the customers or counseling the pimps and the brothel owners, who would at times threaten him with consequences, something that failed to deter the man of God, for he had counted his cost, and carried with himself, the strongest weapon of all that slay all the darkness. The Holy Bible, like a trustworthy friend, accompanied him to his various missions that the Lord Jesus has entrusted upon him. “God is on my side, and I am not ashamed to preach the Gospel’’ he declares with the zeal of apostle Paul.
‘One has to be a powerful witness in order to convict people of your faith’ – with this belief he became friends with children of ‘sisters’, sharing Gospel while playing football with them, even picking the ball from the gutter, astonishing locals by his different lifestyle and behavior. Continue »
