(Written for SAWNET, http://sawnet.org/books/reviews.php?Aids+Sutra)



Today there are approximately 3 million Indians living with HIV and AIDS, a number that masks the human faces behind a disease that has been reviled and misunderstood as the worst plague in human history. A disease often considered to afflict only those regarded as the dredges of society, AIDS has the potential both to expose the dark underbelly of society, and also to inspire triumphs of human compassion and perseverance.
AIDS Sutra, funded by the Gates Foundation, is a compilation of 16 vibrant essays about Indians living with HIV by some of South Asia’s most gifted authors, including Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Kiran Desai. Several of the essays are narrated directly from the authors’ home communities; others are the fruition of their travels to the vastly different regions of India.

Siddharth Deb’s poignant account, “The Lost Generation of Manipur,” brings him to a remote corner of India bereft of employment opportunities and constantly on edge due to communal violence. Uncontrolled injecting drug use in the region puts young people of working age especially at risk for HIV infection.

Salman Rushdie’s piece on the politics and culture of the hijra (intersexed and/or transgender) community is a concise account of a population that defies society´s common [mis]perceptions around gender and HIV risk. Rushdie interviews a transgender AIDS activist named Laxmi, who lives in a constant duality of gender- going as a man by day and living with her parents, and transforming into a woman at night and on the weekends. Her advocacy on behalf of this distinct community in India has helped to distinguish hijras as a third gender- with different needs and challenges than men who have sex with men.

Other stories included in the book examine the lives of truck drivers, sex workers, and devadasis, women traditionally given to god, and nowadays women who choose or are forced into sex work as a means of income generation. In Sunil Gangopadhyay’s essay, “Return to Sonagacchi,” the author returns home to Kolkata to compose a compelling account of the lives of sex workers in Sonagachhi, narrating both the deprivation they face and also their power as an organized movement fighting for their rights as sex workers to safety, health services, education for their children, freedom from police persecution, and dignity.

Bill and Melinda Gates give the anthology’s introduction, and its insightful forward is written by the Nobel Prize-winning economist and author of Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen. Sen revolutionized the traditional economic paradigm by asserting that development is not simply about increasing per capita income, but rather “a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.” His examination of the economic effects of AIDS in India is nuanced in its consideration of both the beneficial impact of Indian pharmaceuticals in producing affordable antiretroviral drugs for much of the world, and the irony that income disparity in India prevents the majority of Indians living with HIV from accessing treatment, quality medical facilities, shelter, employment opportunities, and community support.

Sen argues that stigma is the primary fuel of the epidemic in India, where widespread ignorance pervades about how HIV is—and is not—transmitted. Among young Indians just reaching working age, knowledge how HIV is spread is dismally low at 25% of the population according to UNAIDS (20% comprehensive knowledge among women and 36% among men). Because many Indians still believe that HIV can be transmitted through touch, sharing food, or through aerosol transmission, Indians living with HIV face discrimination in schools and workplaces, ostracization, rejection from their families, and in many cases, violence and even death.

India’s uncomfortable and often times paradoxical relationship with sex and sexuality is often at the root of ignorance and discrimination against HIV, with 87% of new infections in India occurring through unprotected sexual intercourse each year according to India’s National AIDS Control Organization. Despite an ancient culture rich in celebration of natural human sexuality, imperial-era taboos surrounding sex continue to create a stifling conservatism that limits access to scientific information about sexually transmitted infections, reproductive health, and the rights of women and sexual minorities.

In Amit Chaudhuri’s essay, “Healing,” he remarks that “The troubling ambiguity of sex through history— the fact that it bestows life and pleasure, and also, in a way that can’t be entirely explained by morality, confuses and shames— have converged in a new way upon this disease.” His interviews with Alka Desphpande, an AIDS researcher and physician in India’s first AIDS ward, reveal the challenges faced even by the medical community in becoming educated about HIV. Large numbers of Indian health care workers still believe that HIV is transmitted by touch, and widespread denial of treatment and discrimination against people living with HIV is common.

The first essay “Mister X Versus Hospital Y” by Nikita Lalwani tells the story of a Dr. Tokugha who is infected with HIV and becomes an important activist when his results are disclosed to his family (and bride-to-be’s family) before he himself is made aware of his status, just days before the wedding. His lawsuit against the hospital’s breach of his privacy sparked controversial debate and the release of his name in newspapers all across India. The court ruled against him, “decreeing that the hospital’s release of the information to the minister without his consent had ‘saved the life’ of Toku’s proposed fiancée. The essay forces us to consider the complexities behind forced disclosure of one’s HIV status. Not only was Dr. “Toku”’s right to self-disclose taken away from him, the judge tacked on a devastating addition to the ruling, that suspended the right of HIV positive people to marry. The laudable human rights organization, The Lawyers’ Collective, fought for years to restore this basic human right to people living with HIV, succeeding in 2002. Since then, Dr. Toku has become a prominent physician in the field, and goes above and beyond by arranging matches between people living with HIV.

Discrimination and national legislation intersect most brutally in India with the penal code provision 377 that makes homosexuality a criminal offense. Drafted in 1860 during British Rule, the anachronistic law fines and imprisons Indians caught in the act of sodomy and even oral sex for between ten years and a lifetime in jail. The law has served to drive homosexuality “underground” where men having unprotected sex with men cannot be reached for HIV awareness raising, sexual health services, STI screening, or recourse for police persecution and demanding of bribes.

One story included in the collection was strikingly disappointing— to the point of giving offense. Shobhaa De’s “When AIDS Came Home” reveals the author’s ignorant, discriminatory and classist lack of understanding of HIV and AIDS. Her account of how her driver becomes infected with HIV and gradually dies from AIDS is peppered with comments about her “repulsion” that he had spent so much time with her children, speculations about his involvement with sex workers and his sexuality, and self-congratulatory accolades when she provided occasional money for a doctor or medicine.

De’s piece examines her misconceptions about AIDS and vaguely suggests that she has seen the error in her was (perhaps simply because it would not be politically correct to admit otherwise), but still fails to include what lessons she has learned. Indeed, to conclude her story Shobhaa marvels that “Although they are such an intimate part of our lives, how little we really know about the people who work for us… it took Shankar’s death to see him as a human.” She concludes by lying to her children and telling them that the driver was infected through a blood transfusion because the reality that many men purchase sex is too shocking to bear.

By far the most thought-provoking inclusion in the anthology, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s “Hello, Darling,” diverges from the book’s overall focus on more “marginalized” populations of sex workers, drug users and truckers, to recount the life experiences with HIV of an upper-class homosexual film director whose pseudonym is given as “Murad.” Openly flamboyant, driven to success, and yet still slow to “come out” about his homosexuality, and later, HIV status, Murad escapes the confines of Bombay and moves to New York City. He is unable to move in the local film circuit and returns to Bombay years later, where he eventually succumbs to AIDS.

Shanghvi’s piece is particularly well-researched and deeply-felt; his account considers early chronicles of the impact of AIDS on art and artists in Edmund White’s “Esthetics and Loss,” and the strange phenomenon of how AIDS “got noticed,” as explained in Urvashi Vaid’s “Virtual Equality,” in which she observes “how the passing of an entire generation from AIDS helped give rise to the modern idea of homosexuality: thousands of men had to die, in fact, to have to be seen as alive in the first place.” Shanghvi’s inclusion was particularly important and contrasted sharply with De’s story. “Hello, Darling” should serve as a wake-up call to elites believing in their infallibility, since the risk behaviors that propel the spread of HIV in India are by no means limited to lower socioeconomic echelons of society.

Overall, the anthology is an important, moving, and transformative read. Each story is relatively brief and gives a taste of the authors’ diverse and prolific literary talents. Some tales, such as De’s, are clearly geared toward upper class Indians who are beginning to understand the complexities of the AIDS epidemic in India. Still others delve into economic, political and human rights aspects of the disease. Till now, literature and artistic works on AIDS in India have been limited and relatively unknown. AIDS Sutra gives voice to communities and individuals that have been destroyed, silenced, affected and transformed by AIDS in a jarring and yet deeply meaningful manner.

Many of what I have been reading online and digesting these days is summed up well by Colin Powell on Meet The Press.

Let me say that as a teacher who is making great gains in 21st century learning and creating critical thinkers who can look at both angles of information, annotate, and think, I am impressed with Barack Obama's campaign. Let's face it, his advisers are transparent yet a definite force in his campaign. He has surrounded himself with the best thinkers. He would do the same as president if given the chance. Those of us who know what a personal learning network is can understand that. The Republican party on the other hand has not learned this lesson and resorts to strategies that are grasping to the air.

I found Colin Powell's speech to be well thought out and heartfelt.

Has it been two months since I blogged here? I know I have blogged here and here and here since then. I know, 4 blogs, am I nuts? Yes, actually, but I am trying to maintain on several fronts to open doors in future areas. Nuts, I know.

However, I am attempting to leverage the great web 2.0 technologies I talk about day in and out to help me. I am also focusing on things I know work (that are not revolutionary) to help as well. So here goes:

• Finish going through the rest of my house and declutter (I actually did a lot this summer). Have 3 bins: Trash, Donate, and Maybe (sell or donate is probably where they will go)
• Create a no distraction zone - it was the couch but the TV did not help, it can be the breakfast counter (my last use was the time I fell off the bar stool - don't ask - and was in a cast for 6 weeks), it can be my craft room provided I follow the next step...
• Use Remember the milk to automate my schedule for keeping the house clean (and my craft room). I currently have tasks set for each day - it is easier to keep the house clean this way instead of spending a whole weekend morning. I am also learning to put in even small tasks to manage business, home, and work items that need to be done. The little woohoo messages they give you as you cross items off your list is great too!
• Make a short list of 4 or 5 things I love and include one a day
• Single task - I really thought I was good at multitasking but that is not the case. Spend enough time to get to a certain point and then put aside for review if not possible to finish. (If my work makes me think of an idea for another project, note it but do not go and work on that one too.)
• Start my day with peace. I try, and I actually get there a little bit. After my husband leaves and the dogs have been fed and potty-ed, I may read, sit in silence with coffee, mull the news, read blog posts, exercise, etc.
• Eat nothing from a box - okay we aren't counting cereal, but eating whole foods makes you think twice about what you eat and is not so ready that you grab without thinking. Don't ask my kids or husband what they think about this.
  
• Go paperless. I am close to this. Need to automate a few more things but sometimes it is necessary for me to print off in order to read and mull over properly.
• Have 3 tasks for the day. Tough for me. I generally think I can get 20 things done in a day. Realistic until family, students, and others start interacting. I think i can handle this and perhaps create a maybe list in case extra time comes my way.
• Get rid of two things for every new thing that I bring in to my house (exception: food. We have to. We live out of town, can get really poor weather in winter, and I have a large pantry for storage). This will help with the first strategy.

These are not new or revolutionary but a focus on these may make a difference in my ability to manage tasks and time. Do you do any of these strategies and how do you feel about them?

As a Pazzles design team member, I get to play with interesting materials as well as designing new cutting files. Our June task was to use vinyl on anything in our home. Waiting to the last minute (that is not a trait of mine - I just could not get an idea I loved), I stumbled upon a DOA Xbox guitar and the idea hit me. I used a quote that my SIL Jennifer Sizemore used on a past layout: "Life without music would be a mistake."

Well, it was chosen for Design of the Month at Pazzles. I am so excited. Now to decorate the other guitars in the household.

Tags: Pazzles, Rock Band

hi

As a Ghanaian witnessing the ongoing UNCTAD XII with Ghana as a host, I cannot let this historic and historical event pass without serious comments.

I expect that UNCTAD XII will evolve

1. A clear approach to addressing the global imbalance of trade between the industralised nations and the developing ones.
2. A detailed framework to combat climate change and to guarantee food security
3.A paradigm shifting approach to doing business in Africa, one that ensures the full participation of Africans in the exploitation and enjoyment of their resources.

UNCTAD XII must show the new way that promotes countries as partners in development, not as competitors.

The Scrapaholix technique kit is Grungeboard. I made this cute layout of my son't new furniture. It was tough to see the hand stamped dinosaurs being painted over by the sand colored painted - or should I say buried over!? It was great to see him pick furniture and see his style emerge.
The grungeboard was fun to work with. It is much different than chipboard, much like leather. After using an ink pad on it and spraying it with glimmer mist, it only curled up a little and flattened out as it dries. The color was actually more vibrant on the grungeboard as well. The grungeboard was used to make two of the squares on the left page (top right and bottom left square) as well as the tag, "R" and "O" in the title. It is tough to see the glimmer mist and this looks much better in person.

Tags: grungeboard, scrapaholic-usa, scrapaholix

I wish to invite members of your noble organization as well as its liaison officers in the Tertiary Institutions to participate in an international Youth Summit on the Millennium Development Goals organized by Africa Global Sister Cities Foundation.

The summit which is on the theme “The Roles of Sister Cities Youth in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals for Change” is schedule to take place at the Accra International Conference Centre from 18th – 24th May, 2008.

Through this Summit, we hope to increase the awareness of the MDGs among young people, showcase some ongoing youth projects on the MDGs in Africa and elsewhere, and explore novel ways of actively involving young people at the community level in the attainment of the MDGs for a global change.

We also wish to use this occasion to introduce young people to participate in the upcoming Sister Cities Youth Conference, Kansas City, USA, in July 2008.

At the end of the Summit, participants will create an international Sister Cities Network for an Action Plan on the MDGs.

Invited distinguished personalities and keynote speakers include:
H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor, (President of the Republic of Ghana); H.E. Kofi Annan, (7th Secretary-General of UN); H.E. Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, (President, ECOWAS Commission); H.E. Mae Ferguson, (President, Sister Cities International);
H.E. Mary Jean Eisenhower, (CEO, People To People Inc.); His Majesty Otumfuo Osei Tutu,(King of Asante, Ghana); Celia Churchill Sandys, (Founder of Churchill Leadership, UK); Emmanuel Dei-Tumi, (CEO of Foundation for Future Leaders International); Rev. Daniel Ogbamey Tetteh, (Director of Research, Databank Ghana) and Ms Matilda Asante, (Joy FM, Ghana).

Youth focus on the MDGs will be, in some cases, facilitated by representatives from the UNDP. Other experts have also been invited to guide the youth in panel discussions and plenary sessions.

Please find attached a brief on the Youth Summit for your attention and circulation to student members of these groups. Please do visit our website www.africaglobal-sistercities.org for information regarding registration and participation.

We look forward to welcoming you to this eventful summit in May.

Sincerely,

………………………….
Charles-Chess
Youth Coordinator, AGSCF
chesseles@hotmail.com

The garthering of the galaxy of global leaders is happening live in Ghana from the 18th to 25th April.
UN delegates, Mayors from US and Africa. ECOWAS, AU, and many more represented.

An initiative of Sister Cities International and People-to-People International.

Take a look at www.africaglobal-sistercities.org for info.

Viva!!
Selorm Kofi Dake,
+233-22-404012

Wow. I was out of town for a couple days and come back to find Obama taking the lead, with Hillary's campaign manager and deputy manager resigned! McCain has promised no new taxes for his entire campaign, this just as the recession is looming, and the taxes in April will bring in less revenue than in years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis was not just a poor people's phenomenon- this type of behavior, of borrowing far more than one could ever expect to pay off, pervades the highest levels of government!


I have mixed feelings about MoveOn.org, but I really admire their new campaign "Iraq/Recession". They have a nice new email action that allows you to easily and automatically write an op-ed to your local newspaper (they send it, you write it) making the tie between the American recession and the Iraq spending. (A tie that is obvious, but few people actually realize!)


Some interesting facts:

"As of today, we've spent over $495 billion in Iraq.1 With the economy in the tank, think about what that money could do here at home: Cover millions of kids who don't have insurance, or help folks who're losing their jobs and homes.

Instead, it's supporting a failed occupation in Iraq.

More and more Americans are making the connection between the billions we've spent over there and the crumbling economy here at home. In fact, a new AP poll shows that most Americans think ending the war is the best way to help the economy.2 But pundits still talk about the war and the economy as two unrelated things.

* The recession is going to force states to cut back their budgets. Most likely, the cuts are going to affect the services that working families need and depend on.3
* Meanwhile, the war is costing Americans more than $338 million a day. 4 That money could be spent to help out the folks who're hurting most now. For less than what we're spending on the war, we could pay for affordable housing for hundreds of thousands of families, health care for children, or scholarships to help folks pay for education. 5
* Gas prices are close to double what they were before the war began. The cost of oil is still hovering around $100 barrel. 6
* We're borrowing $343 million every day to finance the war in Iraq. 7 Our skyrocketing debt will be a bigger and bigger drag on the economy—slowing recovery and burdening future generations.


Write an Op-Ed

If thousands of us write, we can get the media to stop ignoring the connection between the war and the recession. The opinion pages are the most widely read pages in the newspaper, so we can also make sure voters—who are growing increasingly concerned about the economy—know that any candidate who wants to stay in Iraq has no plan for the economy."

So, I should have done this last night after Jen showed me how to make a custom header. But, it is okay as a first attemp on my own. Not sure what I am missing but was unable to drag the digital paper down to a smaller size, so instead I cut and pasted a section of it. I know it is not balanced and great, but a first attempt. Mostly I don't know exactly what I want here yet. So, here it will stay until I do decide (and I learn again how to manipulate the paper - maybe the way I opened it?)

So, after almost a week of company, the dogs are all sleeping and I might not be far behind them. We had a great visit from Dave, Jen, and Jacob (and Beau), heard some great news (!!!), and ate some good food.

The kids are not looking forward to school tomorrow though they won't admit they are bored. I am not going to school as I have a Drs. appointment. After dislocating my little finger, I tore ligaments. Unfortunately it is my right hand which had me rewrite my "to do" list for the holidays - I have no use of fingers in that hand. Oh well, maybe there will be good news tomorrow but I think there is another two weeks in a cast.

So, Happy Holidays to all! Anyone make a resolution? Mine is just to continue to improve. Since there are so many areas that can occur in, I can just choose, right?

i will tell u about my goal in my life

1st of all i want to support peace in all over the world especially middle east

2nd to be a famous doctor which using my knowledge for all patient

3rd a good Muslim

Africa needs more support in other to acheave the MDG's to me a lot need to be done on the part of children development.This years STAND UP EVENT was a joyest one i have ever taking part, in the North/Tamale at Dakpemah primary school children age at 10-14years come out in their numbers to stand up against the poverty in the Northern Region of Ghana/Tamale and it was imprissing if much care is given the children would do more on the part of the acheavement of the MDG's.
Tamale been one of the poorist cities in Ghana and for that matter my group is taking the MDG's campang serious and needs more support to run activities so if any body is intrested in taking part can contact me @ kaabarah@gmail.com/+233-20-8283186.We are planning more projects towards 2008 and we need schools in the developed countries to partner with my here.

join me in this commitment

and i hope from every one walk on the same way

click here

http://commit.takingitglobal.org/79