The Chaos Within - Let our voices be heard

"Let's light up Pune." We struggled with arriving at this... this slogan? Tag-line? Call to arms.

Global AIDS Action Week begins on the 20th of May, and the Wake Up Pune coalition has answered the call with this event at the Mahatma Gandhi Road Sunday Walking Plaza.

I wonder what he would have thought... what would he have done?

Joined the fight.

It has begun to unsettle me though whenever we use words like 'battle' and 'fight'...

DISHA's logo has Major Tom standing there with a staff, and a very angular looking HIV ribbon mounted on it, it almost looks like a blade, an axe blade, and I wonder if Stevie thought of that, or was it her subconscious at work, or was it really the symbol of the fish she was going for? Major Tom also stands on the spidery writing soapbox - Join the Fight.

Fight what?

HIV and AIDS.

Let's stop HIV and AIDS. Together.

'Stop AIDS Keep the Promise.' That was and is another tag-line. No one was or is quite sure what the promise was... or is. I remember asking the question at a regional conference they held in Pune on kids and HIV, and no one knew.

So do we need to spell it out when we use phrases like 'call to arms' 'join the fight' and the 'battle against HIV and AIDS will be won or lost in India'?

Is the rhetoric going to harm us?

I do know that some PLHIV have looked at Major Tom with concern. Their minds so rightly burdened with the rejection they have faced, saw the connotation of a fight directed at them. Join the fight to make sure PLHIV are rounded up and put away in places like Sahara, or little communities and colonies, like many NGOs and agencies have already done.

PLHIV have special needs. Let's put them all together and make sure they don't get out and upset anyone. Especially the children. What can we do? - Resignation - We have to protect them, and one way of protecting them is putting them in an institution where their interests will be served? Where they will learn to understand how special they are.

Are these kids, even women, and on occasion men, being equipped to re-enter society, or are they learning to accept that they will always live only on its margins?

What is the reality?

No answers, just questions. Sorry. I will try and answer the next question though... it is what drives us at DISHA.

What do we mean by 'join the fight'?

We mean join the fight against the silence and ignorance, against the stigma and discrimination, against a society that refuses to discuss issues of sex and sexuality because they threaten to corrupt minds, a society that will allow arrest warrants to be issued against Hollywood stars that kiss Bollywood stars - it does sound farcical - a society that doesn't really want to know too much about HIV or anything else that disrupts our sense of being, purpose, and the simple things like houses, vehicles, and the latest gadgets.

Am I being too middle-class?

The issues are so complex that to limit them to the middle-classes will be folly. They affect us all, and this is why NGOs and agencies have to now move purposefully outside of their comfort zones - the slums. Those who live in resource limited settings need support, there is little doubt, but when it comes to fundamental issues, and HIV has become that, then we have to realise that HIV will not contain itself like poor sanitation or tinned roofs, it has already passed well within the boundaries of socio-economically deprived communities.

Also, if we return to the issue of Gere and Shetty, and also sex education in Maharashtra, we will find that a lot of what we refer to as society was in fact appalled at the frantic media grabbing antics and at the neo-national conservatists who burned books having been whipped into a rage, only because they didn't really understand why education on sex and sexuality is necessary.

Forget HIV. Think Child Abuse. Remember that over 50% of our kids are abused in India. Is that not a reason to take to the streets?

This brings me back to the point of this blog. Our focus and passion for HIV is only a part of our focus and passion for this city. We have chosen to join the fight against HIV, and am deeply conscious that to win this fight, or battle, or war, we need to win other battles, other fights, and these include sex education in schools and addressing issues of sex abuse and rape - remember the protests against the Indian army in Manipur? They raped a young woman claiming she was an insurgent. They knifed her privates and ended by shooting a bullet through her vagina. Remember? What did we do about that? Did we get out the arrest warrants? Gere kissed Shetty. Media storm. Soldiers (Assam Rifles) brutally rape and murder a poor Manupuri girl. Nothing.

Did we even fucking know?

I didn't... till yesterday when we sat in a very hot and sweaty room at Soul Avenue watching the Women's Film Festival.

The challenges before us are interlinked. (Corporate Social Responsibility at the very least is an acknowledgement of that. Give back to the communities you exploit.) We can never win the battle against HIV in India if we don't fight other battles, and join other fights.

Does poverty underpin the challenges we face? It can. It has. It does. It will... and this stream of conscience rant could continue indefinitely, except for one fact: Words and rhetoric will get us only so far.

We need to be on the streets. We need to let society know that we too are society. We must not allow ourselves to represented by corruption and insidiousness behind closed doors that think they can choose and decide for us.

Let's light up Pune, let's light up whatever corner we live in, and break the silence. Come join us on the 20th of May, Sunday.

Let our voices be heard.