Lovedance

ignorant

2006-08-15T21:10:00.000-09:00

Just realised i know so bloody little about blogging. For example;
1- still don't manage to put the pic into the text (don't laugh at me)
2- don't know how to put my FAV blogs as links...blast!
3- don't know to put the link to another site into my text...(am i a moron??)

As you can see...i am seeking educated help. Specially for the Masters. Isn't there a 'Blogging for Dummy's' sort of website or book?

The only redeeming factor in all this is that i am a decent learner, and a good student. Try me.

why do we want a parliament?

2006-08-14T04:26:00.000-09:00

Its crazy the way the parliamnet is discussing Natwar and oil and his sinister offspring. What happened to all the discussion that is needed on health, education, hunger, rape, human rights violations in prisons, farmer suicides?

Or maybe the parliamnet can just discuss the senility of the ludicrous and leave the real buisness of running the country in the hands of people who really want to.

The CNN-IBN poll, for whatever it is worth, did highlight that nearly one third of the country still faces hunger. This after the hill were shreeded of vagetation to grow food during the 'green revolution'? This when we spend enormous sums of money storing surplus food grains? So why isn't Parliamnet discussing hunger in the land of plenty?

The mediocrity of the parliamnet does not represent the excellence that india stands for. What good is having a parliament?

For Anjali. For Ajay. Many love!

2006-08-06T04:57:00.000-09:00

I've been good.
Have made the best i could of very busy days organising my ever-growing staff into doing fruitful work. They have responded with crazy vigor.

I've managed to find a flat for my parents. Cheap, large, marbled and ready to move in. Bought it. Parents refuse to move in. Let's say they refuse to move out of where they are, of where they have lived their past 50 years and have planted coconut trees and are used to eating the mangoes that grow in their backyard and pluck a juicy lemon right before a lazy lunch. Change is traumatic.

Have been grappling with the loss of my music teacher.

Have also met some of the most committed and aginst-the-orthodoxy (of the regular NGO world) people - who have revived my faith in the devpt sector. Some people are really answering their calling.I've been travelling, training, writing position papers, getting large groups of people who hate each other to start to see the other end of the rainbow as their own...struggling but not failing. These are people who live in remote districts, having meetings with local village heads in lantern light and mosquito bites, many of them men whose families have started complaining of abject neglect, and many of them women who carry their tiny childern to meetings with the District Collector.

Just came back from the hills. The clouds brushed past the car many times on my way down to Delhi. I've been good, guys! Well, not thrilled but okay.

another bit of bad news

2006-07-24T07:35:00.000-09:00

A very dear friend's wife just discovered she has breast cancer. She 40. 2 kids. Breast removal operation has happened. many months of chemo to follow apparently. have been shocked to hear the news.

maybe i shld stop smoking. ha ha

have not visited her. the though of a hospital is scary. that smell is scary. have hid behind quiet sms messages.

wierd that within hours of hearing of this - i was watching Sex and the City - and one o the girls announces she has breast cancer. Bah!

lost music

2006-07-23T04:16:00.000-09:00

Just got news from mum, that my music teacher passed over. Kidney failure. Diabetes. Barely 60 yrs old.

She taught me music through almost 10 years. Distinctly remember my first ever lesson with her - in Raag Yaman. Taught in a room crowded with old trunks, piled one over another...a corner full of every picture of gods and goddesses that ever arrived at the house...a shiny, looked after set of 2 tanpuras in another corner,one small one and another full size. We sat on the floor on a finely woven cool chatai, the edges sowed in with strips of colourful cloth to make the work of art last longer. An old german harmonium betwen me and Mashimoni, my name for her. Mom sat on the only chair in the room, a bit in the dark corner. The room was lit with one kerosene lantern and one candle...a regular response to 'load-shedding'.

Mashimoni asked if i had brought my music notebook, which in subsequent years i used to often 'forget' on purpose to display my displeasure at being hauled in to 'waste' my time doing this 'boring music thing'. Yes, i had, that cool september evening. She then found a pen lying in that groove on the harmonium. In impeccable hindi she wrote the bandish and the 'swaralipi' (music notation). I have been looking at those notes from 20 years back today. Precious.

Mum and i used to take a rickshaw to come to Mashimoni's house. It was at her house that i first saw a real 'kuan'...a water well. It was Mashimoni who taught me how to do Alpana on the floor for that elaborate celebration of Saraswati (goddess of music/learning) Puja.

Today, i also fel indebted to a blog - i needed to share these thoughts and found this safe space to do so.

air hostess smile

2006-07-22T21:10:00.000-09:00

Someone recently said, that most people he meets at meetings and workshops these days giv no more than the 'air hostess smile'. The genuine is no longer fashionable. Found that revealing.

The genuine is also scary - almost always. The naked is to be clothed.

Working towards dignity and a full stomach

2006-04-15T07:27:00.000-09:00

Dance bars in mumbai have been granted a lease of life. Those girls can now earn.
Some people argue that dance bars are the reason that wives cry at home ‘waiting for their husbands’, that young boys get polluted, that the morals of our ‘tradition’ are getting eroded. I think that’s just such a load of crap!

As long as people, men and women, can earn without causing harm to another person, their trade, whatever it might be, should be deemed legal and acceptable.

Don’t know how many of you have been to Sonagahchi, the Sex Work district of Calcutta. There are about 500,000 sex workers there…give or take some. They are battling to get dignity for their ‘labor’. Till sex work is legalized, they say, they cannot be deemed ‘workers’ – they cannot even get basic services like opening a bank account, getting a ration card, getting a voter id, getting chier children admission to schools, etc…stuff that any regular moron on the street, who supposedly does not trade sex for money, can. They want to knwo whether they share this country with us, as equal citizens.

The current debate about making clients of sex workers deemed as ‘criminals’ adds chaos to the already hungry terrain that a sex worker walks. The Indian govt says its doing this coz that way it can stop trafficking of women and children! Blah! Is the moral sanity of people overtaken by large doses of a profane and exploitative mindset…that is the question of this fuming debate.

Meanwhile, poor women who have not recourse will continue to sell sex or whatever they have to keep alive. Question is, will we ever be able to allow them the basic dignity of a ‘worker’….

happened to be part of planning India's National AIDS Plan - here is a dig at it, for friends...

2006-03-16T01:39:00.000-09:00

Going the last mile:

The National AIDS Control programme (NACP). ‘Control’ is a word that represents the early stages of the national aids programme. Today’s AIDS programme could well be called the ‘National AIDS Response Programme’ – a phrase that, in many ways, would truly capture the spectrum of activities the govt is aiming to do over the coming years – spanning across aids prevention and care.

While NACO (National AIDS Control Organisation, for the uninitiated) has moved ahead of its acronym, the programme itself has seen 2 phases – NACP1 and NACP2, abbreviations that the jargon friendly AIDS community has come to recognize as the well critiqued yet very giant, important and well intentioned steps towards responding to the epidemic. NACP 3, is at its planning stage, to be embarked upon towards the end of this year.

Most of the AIDS fraternity has been part of the planning process for the first time. Their participation was a key element of the planning process both at the state and central levels, either through direct consultative meetings or through electronic and other feedback mechanisms. This process is led by a high level planning team of 6 (needs to be checked) professionals with specific areas of expertise and experience. In many ways, the NACP 3 plan document will represent the hopes and aspirations of real HIV practitioners and those living with/directly affected by the virus.

However, the twist in the tale will come in its implementation. Many are waiting to see if the NACP 3 document lays out the details of how the plan will walk the last mile to reach every citizen’s backyard in the most appropriate, efficient and sustained manner. The question many are asking is, therefore, this – is the NACP3 document one that merely enumerates the intentions of the govt, or one that is also a blueprint with the nuts and bolts for action.

The voluminous NACP3 document will soon be readily available. But before it becomes a well thumbed, sufficiently book marked ‘rough guide to HIV programme implementation’ for the coming 5 years – here is an attempt to give you a peek at some salient features, however subjective the list maybe (and the order is not particularly significant either):
• The document makes the welcome break from tradition by arguing a strong case for synergizing HIV prevention and care. However, the non-negotiables for implementing this synergy and maximizing it, could be fleshed out a lot more.
• The document displays the ‘coming out’ of the national AIDS programme. There is, some say, the requisite amount of emphasis for prevention and care programming for sexual minorities, MSMs in particular.
• Nacp 3 goes bold, taking the bull by the horn – condom programming is center stage. A detailed process of making the rubber available, accessible and stigma free, is one of the most heartening pieces of the document.
• The NACP3 plan document aspires to be gen-next-friendly. Yes, youth friendly is the term hitherto used! While the document hopes to do a Rang De Basanti on young people, especially young girls who are most vulnerable to the virus, the document fights shy of addressing the dogmas of the land, the gatekeepers of morality, the deaf ear on the changing times – some practitioners have argued.
• The document does make every attempt to mainstream gender across sections. However, the inevitable has happened – issues around gender have been diluted in the garb of making it cross cutting. This, some say, is worrying. If the un-empowered woman is the weakest link in the epidemic, surely a more robust action plan is needed to take this aspect of the epidemic beyond the jargon into the perilous realm of real action.
• NACP 3 is trying an Everest climb with HIV related stigma. And why not? HIV related stigma is still at unhealthy high levels in most parts of the world, as much as it is in India. Every HIV practitioner has battled with stigma in trying to change behavior and sustaining it, in trying to address issues of sexuality within and outside marriage, in getting communities to accept voluntary testing, in helping pregnant HIV positive mothers avert risks to their unborn child, and any number of other aspects of the epidemic. NACP 3 is finally trying to make a clear, unambiguous, strategic plan to reduce stigma and discrimination. The indicators of success and change are difficult to arrive at, for a quantity as ephemeral, intangible and sometimes private, as stigma. But we ought to salute NACP3 for giving itself a fighting chance. This document is almost doing a Bush on India – war against stigma! Almost!
• Communication strategies are a very core element of the NACP3 document. At various points of the planning stage, the communication strategy seemed to come dangerously closely to becoming an advertising strategy for toothpaste – but sanity prevailed. HIV communication – the mother of all communication challenges (pardon the unfortunate gender reference) – goes way beyond the linearity of selling the idea of mutual fund investment plans or washing powder. A celebrity in a petal strewn bath tub surrounded with several other cleavage flaunting celebrities maybe able to sell body soap but may not be able to make a young man take that crucial, unsure step towards the chemists to buy a pack of condoms, far less tear open the pack in the heat of passion and use it right. Having said that, one communication plan for a country as diverse as India can only be strived for to paralyzing effect. The NACP3 document realizes the need for local communication plans based on a bouquet of options and guiding principles that have been learnt over the past 2 decades.
• NACP3 will give shape to a much needed Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART) programme as well as the PMTCT programme. The document lays out the required steps in great detail, to be implemented at the national, state and district levels. However, access is a two way street. The experience till now shows that merely rolling out the ART programme may not be sufficient to attract people to go for testing and treatment. The impediments in this process is the same as those in the area of STD treatment, for example, which has been easily and cheaply available through out the country for a long time now. Some of this dilemma may be sorted out at the state and district level plans that are in the process of being finalized.
• Capacity building is a phrase that has become synonymous with the HIV response world wide. The HIV response is human capacity intensive. People make the difference between a good response and an average response. Human capacity complements products such as condoms and medicines, in order to change quality of life. HIV prevention and care processes are therefore about making changes in the way people live their lives in the presence of the HIV epidemic. The NACP3 document attempts to lay out a detailed plan of capacity building across levels. However, the weakest link in the implementation of the plan can be the quality of capacity building. The plan document can still incorporate minimum standards of quality control for this very critical component of the HIV response.
• One of the key aims of the 3rd phase of the national aids response will be increased coverage, through more ‘targeted interventions, and NGO led activities. Reaching out to key populations such as MSM, SW and IDUs is the focus, considering India is experiencing a concentrated epidemic and there seems to be a window of opportunity to arrest the spread of the virus in the general population. However, most implementers feel that one of the key impediments in doing this will be the structural and managerial processes adopted at the level of the State AIDS control Societies. The plan document does recommend changes in the way that the SACS function and deliver. However, it has been recommended that SACS sets up a feedback mechanism to be used by NGOs in order to facilitate their implementation plans.
• Mainstreaming the HIV response into all govt sectors, whether it is the railways or agriculture, has been a valid demand by both NACO, as well as those that fathom the urgency of the HIV situation in India. Mainstreaming is a very complex concept that requires a buy-in from different sectors, over a sustained period of time. The NACP3 document does attempt to highlight the areas in which mainstreaming is required and the potential gains from doing so. The document however, leaves the ‘last mile’ details to future planning.
• Mobility and related vulnerabilities to HIV has featured in the NACP3 document. Even though truck drivers have for long been the recipients of condoms, song cassettes with HIV prevention messages and STI treatment facilities around highway dhabas, the larger community that is on the move has usually been ignored. The NACP3 document also needs to include human rights and related issues with regard to human trafficking and HIV vulnerabilities in this document – an area of work that will eventually help us win or lose the HIV battle in India.

The list above is a personal pick, based on discussions with a variety of stakeholders in the HIV practice community. It can be added to. Having said that, the only peril that NACP3 may eventually face is the trap of ‘doing business as usual’. We have to remember that the virus is winning. Programme planners and implementers need to get closer to the finish line, within the enabling framework of human rights, making the HIV response adequately contemporary, innovative and results based. We owe this to our people. NACP3 plan document is a space to watch out for.

trafficking and HIV -- India

2006-03-01T20:21:00.000-09:00

That's what my new assignment is all about. With UNDP. Some 11 States across India are involved in the project, 5 districts, roughly, in each State. Huge project, trying to make a real difference on the ground. I have a small team of 5 people here in delhi, and some 7 people across the states, to manage. A small, cozy and chirpy office.

The task is really to get a synergy between law enforcing agencies, HIV NGOs and women's organisations to work together at the village level - creating sufficient local capacity and will to prevent trafficking. And where needed, these vilages will also develop the capacity to help mitigate the impact of trafficking, reducing the stigma of being trafficked, and sometimes having the double stigma of being trafficked as well as testing HIV positive.

Will keep you posted on more stuff, have to run....

lovedance revealed

2006-02-27T08:15:00.000-09:00

In case the name Lovedance, means little or sounds 'very nice'...here is some un-packing. It was originally the title of a film my partner and i made in 2000, based on the true stories of 4 people living with HIV, how their lives criss cross.

One of the stories is about this guy i met in bombay during the research of this film. I met him thru my NGO freinds. Completely superb guy, looked like a greek god, with a sense of humour to die for, total charmer, superb chef in a hotel. He discovered he was HIV positive when a marine liner tested him without consent (to work as a chef on the ship) and did not employ him after he tested positive. There after, this guy rose to the call of the epidemic and started contributing -raising awareness any way he could.

He told me his story, took me out dining to some of his fav places, and by the end of it, agreed to 'come out' in the film and talk 'live'. I was thrilled because most positive people would not want to do that, not 6 years back, at least.

I came back to delhi, developed the script weaving him into the stories of the other characters. I sent it to him for his approval, checking for facts etc. There was no response. I waited. About 15 days later, when i called, his dad told me that he had passed over just a few days back - a case of hospital negligence thrown into a desparate case of pnuemonia.

Anyway, this guy (can't use his real name), introduced me to the concept of 'lovedance' - a term he coined for the process of using the condom as an erotic device during love making - he did not want to infect his partner who was hiv negative. So wearing the condom was 'lovedance'. We decided that his story deserves to be told - so the film has him being 'resurrected' , speaking to camera, back from the dead! So there....i really liked the film, unlike a lot of films i have made...special.

Will post stills from the film once i have cracked how to.

House Hunting

2006-02-26T08:42:00.000-09:00

My dad and mum live 2 train days away from us, me and my sis, who are in delhi. They are growing old, so i;m trying to persuade them to buy a house and come live here. The prospect is mortifying for them, they almost hate delhi sans us - but they are trying to cope with my lurid suggestion. So i went house hunting today! Ha!

The prices got me suicidal! The recurring question in my puny brain was - why? Exorbitant is a misnomer - its exploitative for most people i know - who pay their taxes (oh, the budget announcements are due!) and don't (yet) indulge in malpractice.

On my way home, in my tin-box car - i took a closer look at the pavement dwellers along the street. Is that how much one REALLY needs to survive? A blue plastic sheet, a few sturdy sticks from trees, rope, and a few utensils....but then 'survive' is the operational word. At this point i switched on my car radio, listened to the romance of old hindi songs...and almost smiled. That's why hindi films are what they are - so you can induce amnesia - so people can live despite life, i guess.

This afternoon inspired a conversation, so here i am...

2006-02-25T18:30:00.000-09:00

Hey there, Just trying it out. Very tech unsavvy, so any ideas on how i can do what i am doing any better - are absolutely welcome. Hope to see you soon. Hope to be able to come and 'blog' regularly...till then....