AIDS Attraction

Today is World AIDS Day and it’s time for more feel-good gimmicks. Symbolism does have a place in raising consciousness. However, we do not question the manner in which such symbols are used and their consequences.

The Sydney Opera House in red behind a sculpture commemorating World AIDS Day

This year distinctive landmarks across the world decided to flash red to usher in a goal – to ensure that by 2015 no child will be born with HIV. While the photo-ops are from interesting to monstrous, from Paris’ City Hall and Fountains, the London Eye, Cape Town’s Table Mountain, Niagara Falls to the Sydney Opera House, one wonders at the sagacity of such neon-therapy. Are people going to the opera dressed in condoms or will they dip the prophylactics in the Niagara waters to show the potency of such safety measures? Is the disease, then, only about sexuality or is sexuality emphasised because it is, well, sexy?

This will turn out to be just a light show with sound effects coming in the form of homilies from the likes of U2’s Bono, who held a concert, and said it is a “winnable war”. This is not a war. It is about people who often suffer due to ignorance and negligence. Many of them are not visiting landmark sites or even aware of their existence. How will this ‘red’ alert help?

The deputy executive director of UNAIDS, with the rather unfortunate-in-this-context name, Paul De Lay, said:

"There seem to be secondary and tertiary waves of the epidemic, particularly the sexually transmitted side. You have young people who don't know enough about AIDS, there is less of a fear factor about it.''

Creating fear is counter-productive. I maintain that just as showing skull masks to prevent nicotine abuse works as an attractive proposition, making AIDS into a temptation that ought to be resisted will have an opposite effect. Besides, these monuments bathed in red will not make people afraid or bring about awareness. It is just a sheer waste of light and electricity. Perhaps, there will be another symbol of World Environment Day or Energy Conservation Day.

I am resting my case with Deal With Your Own Demons Day.

Over 60 and Unsafe

What makes some men into monsters? I got goose bumps when I read about old women worried about being raped learning martial arts to defend themselves.

Close to Nairobi in the shanty town of Korogocho, women who are in their 70s and 80s practise karate, hit a punching bag and watch as a teacher demonstrates the vulnerable points in a young man’s body. Their frail frames have to know about this so that they don’t end up just trying to beat hard.

It is apparently a known fact that bandits operate in this area. “Every time the boys make a robbery, they will ask the grandmas to sleep with them,” says Mary Wangui, 73. “Young men believe that young girls are all infected with AIDS, so they’d rather go to the old ones.”

Two years ago, three drunken young men broke into Frida’s home in the middle of the night and raped her. "They knew I lived alone... they broke (down) the door and came in and covered my eyes with a blanket, then they raped me... and left me there just lying on the floor. I can't believe people young enough to be my grandchildren could do that to me. When I heard they are teaching women how to beat rapists here, I decided to come and learn. Now I know if somebody wants to rape me, I just poke their eyes and make a noise."

Philip Otieno, executive director of I'm Worth Defending (IWD) said that besides fear of AIDS, "Others do it for ritual reasons... (some) criminals believe that having sex with an old person before or after a robbery will bring good luck either for a successful mission next time or protection from the police."

Surely the cops would catch these guys? Are there no groups to teach them something? It is terrible that even when one woman told her assaulter that she had AIDS that did not stop him. What about security agencies in the area? The media outside will report it, and in some cases it will be seen as one of those backward things out of Africa, but will it change the rot within? Don’t these women have children and grandchildren?

What do those guys get? This is a poor shanty. What can they rob? And why sexually abuse a woman? The reports talk about their fear of disease. Why is there no mention about these women getting infected by those sick men?

Cruelty is part of the human psyche and is manifested in different forms, but when such survival groups have to be set up, it reveals the sheer careless attitude of society, the government and human rights organisations too. The latter are often too busy with fancy causes to bother about these things.

Poverty is no excuse. Poverty expects you to survive and feed yourself and get shelter. Those are the basics.

It is tragic that the stigma attached to rape is such that these women don’t always speak out. Imagine the sense of shame that is already ingrained and then to have to face the smirks as the listener wonders: Oh, grandma, you think you are still worth it?

No one will ask those guys why they cannot get a life and lead it with some level of decency.

HIV installed

Before - unknown volunteers

After - socialite Parmeshwar Godrej with her American designer of the AIDS awareness installation

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Article to follow later.

The way we are - 6

Wife beats man for not buying a bigger home

The demands for more are not unusual. Many women in our society are told to expect better lives, better opportunities to do things after they are married, things they are denied in their parental homes. She is transferred from one ‘boss’ (the father) to another (the husband).

Therefore, when I read about this guy called Aman complaining it seemed plausible. Him being beaten up also wasn’t really way-out impossible. But him shooting the whole scene while he was being thrashed with a broom does seem a bit stagey.

Video grabs of the clip the victim shot while he was allegedly being beaten up by his wife for failing to purchase a flat. The last grab shows an injury he suffered due to the beatings

Since both have filed non-cognisable offences are various times at the police station, to say that this was to produce as evidence is unusual. Did he know when she would start beating him? Did she not grab the camera when she saw it? If it was carefully hidden, then how did he manage to get fairly clear grabs of her in the act?

There are several cases with the police station, and he is a bus driver, so I am surprised it became a media story. Obviously, everyone wants a bit of the limelight and life has become a reality show. The newspaper also had a picture of the couple on their wedding day.

This man is very savvy. After saying that his wife has left several times, he approached a NGO, the ‘Madat Seva Sanstha’.

“Despite our fights, I prefer to live with my wife, as we have a five-year-old daughter. When women face such problems, they usually approach NGOs. Hence, I thought of approaching them to save my marriage.”

Very few women do, and they don’t take pictures when they are being beaten up.

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HIV-positive woman branded

An HIV-positive woman was branded stuck with a label that read ‘HIV Serum positive’ on her forehead and paraded through the wards in a Rajkot, Gujarat, hospital to “warn other patients about her status’’. Only corpses are labelled after post-mortem.

That this was done by medical professionals is itself cause for concern. She was pregnant and had gone for a check-up; they suggested an abortion. After she underwent the surgery, this was done. A voluntary organisation that visited her house found out that her husband too was HIV-positive. She has been so troubled that she wants to end her life because of the humiliation.

The nurses and doctors responsible for this ought to be arrested. We live in a society where such a stigma will follow her forever. All efforts to educate people don’t serve any purpose if we are to continue in this manner of public display of degradation. If people who are supposed to know better don’t understand, how can the layperson? If they were concerned about her spreading the disease, they could have told her to stay away from other patients; it is not as though people were thronging to meet her because she underwent an abortion.

Plain disgusting.

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Worth his weight?

Being Under-Secretary-General in the United Nations is one thing – it helps you get a ticket to many goodies, including the Indian Parliament and a ministerial berth. I thought Shashi Tharoor would at least bring in some newness and steer clear of religion as a publicity stunt. No such luck.

Here he is performing before god and the worshippers (and the electorate?):



Union minister Shashi Tharoor performs ‘thulabharam’, a ritual in which devotees offer goods equal to their weight to the deity, at the Guruvayoor temple on Sunday


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Results of blog poll:

Which case must be acted upon first

1984 anti-Sikh riots - 8 (44%); 1993 Bombay riots - 4 (22%); 2002 Gujarat riots - 6 (33%); Afzal Guru -7 (38%); Ajmal Kasab - 4 (22%)

I am happy that the few who do visit this blog at least have their priorities right.

Aiding and abetting

Oh, well, one knows of people who are willing to take risks, but I absolutely detest it when some fellow makes a virtue out of it. Sidhartha Gauri may have gone through life without any claim to celebrity. A report describes him as “a young, healthy, relatively good-looking man…a 30-year-old filmmaker and author from Yamunanagar”.

He has found his aim in life: to marry a HIV positive girl. The reason? “My offer lends me a higher purpose in life, giving a part of it to somebody who needs it the most, even if it is a few months or years, is like prayer for me.”

The web portal where he posted his profile has only HIV positive people looking for matches. Naturally, there is suspicion.

Should there be?

I would like to know why his higher purpose and need for “sacrifice” does not extend to women from poor families, women with disabilities, women who are widowed, women who are thrown out of their homes, women who are forced to become part of the flesh trade.

They too need a companion.

I have written about how AIDS has become a marketing strategy. Everyone wants to join the bandwagon when no one talks about so many other illnesses that still take lives in our country.

Besides, what he is doing may set a precedent which could have undesirable ramifications. Since not much is known about him, I would not like to comment on his personal ambitions. However, it is possible that some men will want to get onto this for monetary reasons. Gauri himself got in touch with a 20-year-old Indian settled in the US. So, wouldn’t a green card, or even a jaunt, be some kind of incentive for some?

There are several HIV positive men who might seek similar women, and while I am not proposing any sort of ghettoising the situation in this case warrants prudence and not a patronising samaritanism.