Lakshmi’s optimism was her savior, as well as her downfall because she put her trust easily into the hands of others.
#trustissues4life
Lakshmi grew up in a small, safe community where she knew everybody, until she left for the city and found she could trust no one. Sold written by Patricia McCormick tells the story of a young girl sold into prostitution at the age of thirteen. Just like most children, she was able to pick up on behaviors and personality traits of others. Maturing around the same group of people, Lakshmi was never asked to stay away or be careful around anyone in her community. She was never able to practice the skills necessary to find if somebody was trustworthy or not. Lakshmi’s optimism was her savior, as well as her downfall because she put her trust easily into the hands of others.
Lakshmi’s stepfather brought her to the tea shop and was paid 10,000 rupees for her. Lakshmi met a woman named Bilma and was told that she would take her to work in the city. Lakshmi put her trust into Auntie Bilma and followed her to the Indian border without asking many questions because it is deemed disrespectful. Auntie Bilma knew that Lakshmi would be an easy target because she was young and naive. Ama, her mother, told Lakshmi before she left to respect and honor everybody that helped her or employed her along the way so Lakshmi would be seen as a hard worker. This was another trait of Lakshmi that made it easy for her to be taken to the brothel. Due to the way Lakshmi was raised to blindly obey her elders, she was easily taken and sold into prostitution.
Once she got to the Happiness House and met Mumtaz, she was wary. She knew that the women in the brothel were deceiving so she did not trust them in their interactions with her. Where she was mistaken was in her calculations of her debt to Mumtaz. When she arrived there, she was worth 10,000 rupees, but throughout her stay, Mumtaz changed her price to 20,000 rupees so it would be harder to repay her debt. Mumtaz tricked her into thinking that some of her earnings were going back to her family as well. After the initial 10,000 rupees, no more money was brought to her family. On top of that she had to pay her monthly expenses for food, rooming, clothes, birth control and countless other things that came out of her payment. Mumtaz took advantage of Lakshmi in worse ways than the men who visited her room did.
When Lakshmi finally meets somebody that she should trust, she has learned by this point to not trust anyone, “I am too afraid to believe him. And so I am going to believe that this strange pink man is a dream, a cruel trick of the mind”(250). Although the American is trying to save her, she will not believe him because she has been betrayed too many times by the people she trusted. When it becomes clear to her that she has been there the longest, due to illness and violence, she sees an opportunity to find the American man again through the tea boy. When the man shows up again, it is her optimism that compels her to say something to him and the policeman instead of hiding.
In the end, it was hope that saved Lakshmi. Although optimism was her downfall for most of the novel, it was that same characteristic that brought her to safety. Putting trust into the wrong person’s hands can be catastrophic. For example, on social media apps, there are plenty of people who fake their identity to get in touch with children. It is important to teach media consumers to not trust anyone online with personal information. In some cases, it can lead to human trafficking and ending up just like Lakshmi.