We all end in the ocean

We all start in the streams

We’re all carried along

By the river of dreams

— The River of Dreams (Billy Joel)

If you’ve been to the Madison Square Gardens in New York, you know it’s a very, very large venue. But as my friend from Modern High School and I danced to Billy Joel singing Uptown Girl, we felt enclosed in the intimacy of a shared past that influenced our present dreams.

She had quit a job at Goldman Sachs to sit on various boards of educational institutions for girls and women. I had chosen to bridge the distance between up and down, by becoming an activist to reach the “last” girl.

The last girl was the weakest and most marginalised person I knew. She was poor, female, low caste, a person of colour and a teenager. Because of this combination of factors, she had no control over her destiny. She could be married early, sold for domestic servitude or prostitution or simply kept at home away from school to help with chores. I had found her in a brothel in Sonagachhi.

To get others to notice her, I constantly crossed geographical and psychological boundaries. I learned to overcome my fear of public speaking to speak on her behalf.

A month earlier I had flown to Toronto to address a 25,000-strong crowd in the big Air Canada stadium. Members of the Lions Club had gathered from Turkey, Ethiopia, India, US, Lebanon, Thailand, Canada, Nepal, Bangladesh, South Africa, Tanzania, Brazil, Mexico….

The stadium was full, the TV cameras were on, the air was electric. I was intimidated to see 25,000 people staring at me as I walked onto the stage and saw a larger than life image of myself on a huge screen. I shut my eyes for a second and spoke from the bottom of my heart.

The theme of the International Lions Club Convention was ‘Follow Your Dream’. I tried to connect the dreams of the last girl to the audience. Tired from the long flight and lonely in the middle of the huge audience, I had the deepest conviction that somebody would be inspired and do something. That knowledge was enough.

I remember the moment when I had understood that it was possible to have the same dream as the last girl. When a disease-ridden woman in a Kamathipura brothel, worried about her own commercial viability and the future of her daughter, sat me down on a bed smelling of dried semen and sweat, in a cramped room with iron bars on the window, and told me that she dreamt of a room of her own, that was just “so-big” where she could sleep when she wanted, and where no one else could walk in when they wanted, I empathised immediately. Thanks to Virginia Woolf.

After that it was easy enough to connect with her other dreams. She wanted her daughter in school, far away from her own destiny. She wanted a job in an office, where no one would shout at her, or beat her, where her work time was fixed and she had old-age pension. She wanted protection from johns and corrupt police officers and justice from the pimps who brokered her dreams every day.

As time passed and we fulfilled those dreams for more than 21,000 girls and women, I began to realise that dreams are the most practical form of planning. Billy Joel had once told his high school that he would not make up attendance by attending summer school to earn his diploma. “To hell with it. I’m not going to Columbia University, I’m going to Columbia Records, and you don’t need a high school diploma over there.” He followed his dreams to play the piano, write and sing songs and 25 years after leaving, the high school gave him a diploma anyway.

My own report cards in school always said “can do better”. Perhaps one day, when many of the last girls from Sonagachhi do better, my teachers will be proud and feel that I did better too and I might get an honorary degree from somewhere.

Ruchira Gupta is the founder of Apne Aap Women Worldwide. Follow her on Twitter at @Ruchiragupta