When voices are stifled, songs will speak...

Far away, in the distant land of paradiso, the streets are speckled with the all too familiar shade of bottle and olive green- the colour is actually known by an exclusive name as well, based on the very thing it camouflages. As the green sweeps the valley freely, the honour and shame of its women are increasingly being violated. Who is to blame? No one knows.

Oh, but the whispers in the air and the small print in the newspapers do throw up a name…...

......while an old melody crackles its way into the streets- innocent in its accusation, clear in its suggestion, the sweetness of its voice and tune intensifying its horror by virtue of having a confident plainness and frank purity afforded only to those who have lost everything they had to lose, and nothing to gain from lies.
……

“Hamri na maano, sipahiya se poochho
Jisne bajariya mein chheena dupatta mera”

(If you don’t trust my word,
Ask the soldier
Who grabbed and snatched my scarf

In the middle of the crowded street)

To Sir With Love

One of my few artistic attempts. This one I am actually quite proud of!

inspiring, loving, confusing, funny, friendly, witty, musical, mystical, whimsical, infuriating, understanding, and absolutely charming!

And then there were none...

Ever wondered about those wonderfully hopeful words that seem to find a place in nearly 50% of all Bollywood films? I am speaking, of course, of the several references to the "Saat janam" or seven lives that all men and women are entitled to. "Humara saath is janam ka hi nahi, saat janam ka hai" (Our relationship isn't just for the duration of this lifetime, but for all seven" or "Main is janam mein tumhara nahi ho saka to kya? Agle janam mein tumhara ho kar rahoonga" (What if I can't be yours in this life? Come what may, I will be yours in the next one)

The strange and hilarious thing is that all of these are pregnant with the assumption of there always being an "agla janam" or next life. What if there isn't? What if you're actually sitting there going on and on about how you have six, five, four, three, two or even one life safely stored away somewhere, oblivious to the fact that - uh oh!- this IS the seventh one?? Last. The end. El fin. Tamaam.

How come we never get to hear any other numbers? No one seems to say, "teen janam to ho gaye, ab sirf chaar janam ka saath baaki hai" (three lives have been spent and only four remain)

For once, I would like to watch the heroine kick the hero in "the place that god created only to be treated nicely" when he makes any references to a subsequent life and say "Bewakoof! Shut up with your agla janam pagla janam! Your quota is finished!!"

I mean, really! The cat can't always have nine lives can it?!!

And then one day, it will be outraged to find that it has been respectfully transported to heaven. When it purrs in protest - "Wait! There must be some mistake! I am not supposed to be here! I am supposed to have nine lives aren't I?!" - a voice will answer : "Sorry love, weren't you keeping count? That was actually the last one."

Happiness may be transient, but this is what it is wrapped up in...

All misery forgotten, and a realisation that all that matters...

Is the comfortable warmth, and blissful freedom that is found,

In a pair of arms that lovingly hold together,

A spirit that is wounded, and a life in tatters.

Not single, but not really double either...

From The Great Indian Novel

"Are you married?" Arjun asked gauchely
"No" Krishna replied, flashing those white teeth of his, "but my wife is."

Wah wah! (a very poor translation would be "Wow")

Fine usage of words to convey a meaning that colours many relationships.

Krishna has a wife, but isn't married to her. Or lets say he is married to her, but isn't married to her. The first usage indicates the ritual of marriage, while I use the italicised word "married" to mean a close and intimate relationship in which two people have pledged themselves to each other in the manner of a husband and wife, with a certain commitment, affection, romance, love etc. thrown in in varying amounts. He, being who he is, can't be tied to one person exclusively.

But being who he is, that is, a part of this world, he went through the rituals of marriage- after all, no one knew he was the almighty, and it would be considered a serious anomaly for an adult man to be unmarried now wouldn't it?

There are several like him, not avatars of dios, but plain and simple boys and girls next door, who go through the prescribed stages of life in a robotic mechanical fashion. Doing this and that because they have to be done, not because they want to do them. Unfortunately for them, they don't have the excuse of being the omnipresent one, who is free to be many things at many places at many times and everything at every place at every time. They are their wives' husbands, and their husbands' wives.

Instead of grin or a laugh, the same statement, if made by them would probably be accompanied by a sigh.

Oh, and then there are always relationships in which one feels bound to the other by a love that is not limited by or dependent on the relationship, while for the other, it is the relationship that binds him (or her) to the other and love is either absent or elsewhere.

Flags down at sundown- Wagah Border

In defence of Mersault

The first thing I remember about reading The Stranger was that I had enormously high levels of identification with Mersault.
The second thing I remember is my friends quoting Mersault and saying, "This is so much like you!"

Mersault sounds a lot like myself. I find that I am compelled to defend him.

Through the character, Camus (sigh!) communicates that being indifferent to the universe because the universe is indifferent to human condition isn't the essence of existence. Fair enough. I buy that.

One can accept the indifference of the universe to one's condition. But how can one sit back and accept the indifference of people? How long can you keep giving yourself to people, and not have them receive you?

If this happens too many times, the ground where you lay yourself bare disappears before your eyes, and there is a deep ravine into which you fall.

Maybe Mersault lost himself the same way. Maybe he was once, if there had been a prequel to The Stranger, a warm, loving, lively person instead of the cold, aloof and distant man we come across in The Stranger. Maybe he tried to reach out to others, tried to give himself to others, but he just wasn't rewarded with so much as a small gesture of acknowledgment that made him feel like what he had given had been seen, heard, touched, felt, understood, cared for. Maybe he was just too fucking tired by the end of it and decided it was better not to give, than to give and lose what you gave. Better to close yourself up, than to fall right through the opening you create. Better not to expect, than to be disappointed. Better to not be fully alive, than to die every time you tried to take a breath of life.


Maybe it wasn't the universe that Mersault turned his back on.

Maybe he turned away from people, because people had never really seen him anyway.

Comic Strip

Sibling thinks there should be a comic strip on me.

I think thats the best compliment I have received in a long time.

And more questions...(and corrections)

Before the more, there was this.

Right. Back to the more. Yesterday, Holy Cow was sitting at a temple with TQ, who told me an interesting story about the Jagannath Temple at Puri. No one is allowed to remain inside the temple, that is, inside the main temple room where the idol is, overnight. They say that those who stay near the Lord overnight either go blind, or die.

Holy Cow was immediately interested. "I want to try"-"Have there been any incidents?"-"Whats the rationale behind it?"

TQ- Well, they say that in the night, God comes forward in his genuine, raw, un-idolised, true form, and its brightness is such that one goes blind because of the intensity of the light that shines off him, or dies because of exposure to the same. And yes, there have been incidents of this kind.

Holy Cow was very excited about this. She then remembered that in the Gita, Lord Krishna comes before Arjun in his natural, ujjwal (glowing), pure form- and a large section of that chapter of the text describes the brightness, the glory, the enormity of his real form- and nothing seems to happen to him!

TQ then pointed out that in the Gita, God does it out of his own volition. That is, he wants to present himself to Arjun. But in the case of the temple blindness and death, we are just hanging around when we're not supposed to, and God doesn't really want to show himself to us. We just happen to be around when it happens automatically.

This raises the following questions- If the incident of the temple is true, then the Gita is basically, untrue. If the Gita is true, then this temple incident can't be true. If both are true, then does it mean that God actually has hidden selves and he shows them to us as and when he pleases? I mean, there can't be just one pure form, and one regular one. Because we have counted three already -

1. The usual one. Idolised and worshipped.

2. Pure form no. 1, which is the one that Krishna presents himself as before Arjun. This is the one that he wants to reveal.

3. Pure form no. 2, which is the last thing that one sees before turning blind or dying inside the temple. This is the one he doesn't really want to reveal.

Does the second point suggest that Krishna was actually being untruthful when he revealed his supposedly true form to Arjuna (because of there being a third secret form that no one is allowed to see) ?

Does the last point just tell us that he is like many of us? That he too, can only be himself in solitude?

PS- Well, the Gita was revisited and checked and turns out that the Lord does present Arjuna with divine sight before revealing his true form.
However, he says to Arjuna "with these present eyes you will not be able to see me" (Chapter 11, Verse 8)
This changes things a little.

If he meant that Arjuna will not be able to see the changed form with his present eyes, then the case of the temple blindness is still not possible because without divine sight we wouldn't be able to see lord Jagannath in his true form in the first place, so the question of dying or going blind doesn't arise.

If however, he meant that Arjuna's present eyes will not be able to handle the luminosity that his true form will reflect and needs divine eyes as a shield, then the Gita and the Jagannath temple incident are in tandem, and I stand corrected.

To complicate matters further, I have been told by TQ that the blindness/death doesn't even happen all the time. It happens only once a year, when the idol is bathed. I do not know what to make of this detail.

The Gita- where others find answers, some dig up questions.

Someone known to the Holy Cow raised an interesting question a while ago.

He asked, "If the soul never dies, is it also never born? Is the number of souls constant, or ever increasing? Decrease is not a possibility since once born, it is immortal"

"Good question", said the Holy Cow, and went on, "I don't think either birth or death can be used literally while talking about the soul. It never dies, but changes form, and each new form is like a new birth.
Except that it isn't really, and you keep carrying forth your baggage from one to the next (Ref: Notion of Karma)

Also, decrease should also be a possibility, or else where does moksha fit in? I mean, the lucky ones get freedom from this chakravyuh (unending cycle from which there is no way out) right?

If immortality (which involves cycles of birth and death) is a good thing, then is moksha, freedom from this unending cycle, undesirable?"

If moksha is desirable, then it would be better for the soul to just die and not be transformed over and over again, would it not?

The "responsible" Indian media

The Indian media has become a pro at asking the most redundant and stupid questions. Two instances come to mind-

First, when Pratibha Patil was nominated as the UPA presidential candidate out of the blue, the question being asked by the news channels was "Is India ready for a female president?". I would like to know what the question means. What sort of answer does it warrant? Are we supposed to roll up our sleeves and say, "yeah...bring it on baby, we're ready for you" or stutter and fumble and mumble "uh...umm...I dunno...uh ..uh...I'm not sure..", ask for a few days/months/years to prepare ourselves, after which we will take a deep breath and say "Okay, now we're ready!" What does it mean when they ask us whether we're prepared. How does one prepare oneself for a woman president?

The whole emphasis on her being a woman itself annoys me greatly. I mean, her name has been nominated and no one has any idea about her credentials or what she was doing for a living till now. But no, all that is not important. All the news was about her being a woman. I have to be honest. I keep away from politics largely. Consequently, I don't know many politicians. So I didn't know who she was. I had to Google for more information on the woman who would possibly become the president of the country of which I am a citizen. The least that the news channels could have done was to have "quick facts about PP's life" running on the bottom of the screen when they were debating the goodness of fit between a woman, a president and the nation's state of preparedness for the two of them put together.

The other really idiotic discussion that a leading news channel- I think it was NDTV- was having was sparked by the kidnapping and murder of a young boy by some people he came in contact with through a social networking site on the Internet. The big question was "do social networking sites need greater safeguards"? Fantastic. This is another example of how human beings create something and then give it more power than their own rational thought- for other examples refer to social customs and practices. I am talking of machines, inanimate objects created by man, to be used the way man chooses to, their existence and functionality completely dependant on man.

Questions like "is the Internet dangerous" or "is TV a bad influence" are shockingly moronic! There is no doubt that what happened to the young man was very very unfortunate. But its not the social networking sites that need safeguards. It is the brain of the user that needs safeguards. What can the website possibly do to prevent you from befriending strange people? Wait...why the hell should the website take responsibility for it anyway?

Oh, I just got reminded of a third instance. The whole shaktimaan controversy. If a child watches a superhero jump off a building wearing deep purple and gold coloured clothing that had a rather velvety appearance, imitates him, jumps off a building and loses his life, it really isn't the television shows fault! But there they were, scores of people protesting and asking for it to be taken off the air immediately. Why? Probably because they're afraid of being judged callous if they spoke the truth- that the only people who could be held responsible were the child's parents, or the child him or herself.

A philosophical text, a psychoanalyst, and a birthday party.

The Mahabharata, is a fantastic story- with characters that aren't black or white but in varying shades of grey. Covering a rather vast spectrum of issues, it has information you can actually use in day to day life.

My first exposure, and one that left a pretty strong impression on me, of the Mahabharata was the television series that Doordarshan used to show every Sunday morning. I used to watch it regularly. I was about 8-10 years of age.

The Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata and before I read the entire text recently, I had memorised the following lines as a little girl. (Thanks to the TV show. This was the opening track)

Yada yada hi dharmasya, glanirva bhavati bharata
Abhyuthanam adharmasya, tadaatmaanam srijami aham,
Paritranaya sadhunam, vinashayaschadushkritam,
Dharma sansthapan aarthay, sambhavaami yuge yuge.

I will not attempt a literal translation. The meaning is basically that since time immemorial, whenever man has gone astray from the path of dharma, the prescribed way of life, whenever evil has overpowered good, the Lord himself has assumed human form and descended to earth, to destroy evil, reinstate dharma and righteousness.

Given the abovementioned, the question that came to my mind was this – if the birth of Lord upon the earth took place in a time of chaos and destruction, of corruption and violence, of the stripping of innocence and the slipping of moral values, then what exactly are we celebrating with Janamashtami, Ram Navami ?(Other religions too, but I am holding Vishnu responsible because it was one of his avatars - reincarnations- who allegedly said the abovementioned)

Do we celebrate because, finally, we have a saviour among us? Someone who will deliver us from the hell we have created for ourselves? Does the celebration mark the end of a long period of darkness? Is the exultation with joy masking a sigh of relief?

What I am basically trying to get at is the difference between the period before the birth of a child, and the birth of the Lord. Both are celebrated, no doubt. Both for largely selfish reasons (Of course, I accept all the flak I may face for saying that the decision to have a child is a purely selfish one. But, well that's that).

What’s the difference then?

The difference that strikes me, is that while the period before the birth of a child need not be a chaotic and dismal one, that before the birth of the Lord, in a human from (which is the only acceptable form for most people, which itself warrants a whole other discussion) necessarily does. That is, he wouldn't even be here if it weren't for our misdeeds etc. The fact that he is around should be accepted as proof that things are not quite as peachy and perfect as they ought to be.

This brings me to the next element. Donald Winnicott. (Before I go further, I must state that my knowledge of Winnicott’s theories and formulations is rather rudimentary. However, I couldn't’t wait for my knowledge to expand before I put these thoughts down. These thoughts will probably expand as and when my knowledge does).

So, Winnicott. For those unfamiliar with him, Donald Winnicott is a Psychodynamic (A tradition that branched off from classical Psychoanalysis) thinker and clinician. He has worked extensively with children, and his writings have allowed us to have a closer understanding of the inner world of a child.

One of his ideas that have stayed with me is that of the child or infant creating its mother- At the risk of oversimplification, it means that for healthy development and identity formation the mother has to be available at just the right time when the child thinks of her or wants her; allowing the child to feel that he/she has conjured her up magically; that she is by him/her and for him/her.

I think mankind carries within itself the Winnicottian child. Just as the child brings the parent, or more specifically the mother into existence, just as the child creates the mother, mankind also creates its God. The child creating the parent is a healthy process, as is mankind creating God I guess. But the sad part is that God is created out of a need more than a wish.

The child’s aggression, creativity and play, are manifested in the manner in which the child tests his environment, his parents, to check if they can withstand his outbursts. If they can, then all is well and the child moves on, grows. Analogously, the chaos and tumult which characterizes the period before the birth of God, could be equated with the child-adolescent like testing of the parent (God is, after all, our supreme mother and father). The child throws its toys about, makes a mess and the mother smiles patiently and lovingly, teaches the child how to restore order. The child is content that his mother can handle him, that he is in good hands, and life is good again. It is essentially the same thing with God.

We need to know that he is around, we need to assure ourselves that he can withstand us. So, to refine the earlier distinction between the birth of the child and the birth of God. In the former case, we give birth to our offspring. In the latter, we give birth to our parent.

All this is not to suggest that one must not celebrate the birth of God the way one does. Who could argue that the repeated re assurances, the repeated rescues the Lord (allegedly) makes for our sake, when we need it the most, is anything but a reason to rejoice?

But the question is, how many such rescues will have to be made, how many re assurances given before we are assured? Perhaps we need to give him a break. Perhaps we need to stop testing him. After all, a mother also loses her cool with her child sometimes. How much do we really want to try his patience?

Its time to stop assuming someone will come and be our saviour. Only then can we stop making a bloody mess of our lives and of this planet. As it is, it would be better if we took care of ourselves. We wouldn't need the poor fellow to leave his own worries behind and come to our rescue.

Well said...

...For the sake of others like me, who suffer from some sort of expressive inadequacy disorder.

Our struggle with our own selves can find a place in the following lines. And we can be content that the void left behind by the things we do not say can at least be filled by these words.

Kya kahoon kuchh kaha nahi jaaye,

Bin kahe bhi raha nahi jaaye,

Raat bhar karvat mein badloon,

Dard dil ka saha nahi jaaye.

Sabse pyari subah teri, sabse rangeen teri shyam...tujhpe dil qurban!

India Gate

In the horizon- Rashtrapati Bhavan

Poignant Pointlessness

Holy Cow: amI here?

LP : ! of course u r!

Holy Cow: sorry to bother you with these questions again and again but chat is acting up.

LP: hahha! I am wondering what's with am I here? seems like an existential question!

Holy Cow: :)

Holy Cow: existentialists will say "we are here for sure. and this is the only place we'll ever be"

LP: ha ha ! true..

Holy Cow: my question was more Indian spirituality/ 'Maya' related no?

LP: yup yup!

"You can tell from the lines on her face..."

I am very non-committal when it comes to my belief in palmistry, astrology etc etc. I don't believe or disbelieve. Recently, PCB was visiting a pais extranjero, and she chanced upon a man who said he could read her face (Out of all clairvoyant arts, face reading puzzles me the most. It gives the phrase " chehre par likha hai" - written clearly on someone's face - a new dimension)

Waiting for the train,and concluding that she didn't have anything to lose she agreed.

After telling her about this and that, he tells her -
"You will cheat on your husband"

And, she has been told the same thing by three other people in the past.

This is where the problem arises. Whether I believe or not, I do have an internal locus of control, and regardless of any supernatural powers controlling my fate and the course that my life takes, there are some things that I know I will just not do. Such as cheating on my partner.

The question that comes to my mind is for the people who believe in astrology, face reading and palm reading etc. - Is nothing under your control? I mean, to what extent are your actions and life predetermined?

Dear Youth, please learn from these smart words by your icon

"Kids should not be planned. They should just happen"

- Abhishek Bachchan is reported to have said, on being asked if he and Aishwarya are planning to have a child any time soon.

If a million people were to think like this, I shudder to think about what will happen to the population of this country.

And if most of them aren't movie stars who can afford to provide for their children, I am also afraid for the children who will "just happen" to them.

Birth Certificates

Someone I know recently wanted to get their birth certificate made. I find the whole idea of these certificates rather weird- birth certificate, death certificate, marriage certificate. I don't really understand why they're there in the first place.

So I was just glancing at the affidavit for the birth certificate, and the last point point on the affidavit declares that "I undertake that I will not make any further changes in my name" or something to that effect.

But people change their names all the time! You must have seen announcements in the newspaper- "I, so and so, have legally changed my name to so and so, and blah blah etc etc.". What happens to the undertaking they took when they got their birth certificates then? Does the person get punished for doing something that he or she said, legally and in writing, they wouldn't do? Or does the person just sign another paper that nullifies the first one? But if the second paper nullifies the first one so easily, what was the point of making the earlier declaration? Why make a greater mockery of the birth certificate- the fact that it exists as proof of anything is a joke in itself, considering you can even get a fake passport these days- by asking someone to make a declaration that you're not going to compel them to uphold?

Tomorrow, if I go to whatever authority one goes to to change one's name, they should rightly wave my birth certificate in front of me and say "Sorry. We're going to hold you to your word"

There's enough room on the street. Its the belief that is narrow.

During the month of Shrawan, the Kawarias, in their orange and yellow clothing and brightly coloured golden, silver, pink, red, green carriers filled with Ganga-jal (water from the holy Indian river) speckle the streets of New Delhi. Their walk from the Ganga, wherever they may have encountered her, usually at Haridwar, to their village is a long one, and they usually make the pilgrimage barefoot.

Yesterday, during the morning hours, waiting for the light to turn green, I was generally looking around and taking in the happenings on the busy traffic light. And I caught sight of a few Kawarias - their slim yet strong bodies supporting large water carriers, and supported by determined feet that carried them on their long journey one step at a time- walking alongside expensive cars that were transporting men and women talking on their cellphones, to the places they make their money in. The scene was an example of the peaceful co existence of the spiritual and the material, tradition and modernity.

I smiled to myself, happy to think of my country as one where we had room for God, Ganga and .... um... Goenka.

My views changed in the evening. Its hard to smile about something when that very thing is partly responsible for creating the worst traffic jam I had been in in the entire week. The Kawarias were walking the streets, so cars were stopped so as to not cause any inconvenience to them. Why didn't the traffic police intervene? Take a guess-Try to come between a man and his God and you commit blasphemy that deserves to be punished with bus burning, and stone throwing. Who wants to get involved in such jhamelas unnecessarily? If a leper with one leg eats into a few seconds of a green light, God help him from the barrage of horns and abuses he is likely to be pelted with. But religious men? No No. Shake of the head, fingers touching the ears - How can we ask them to wait on the sidewalk till traffic stops??

Well why the hell not?! If you and I can wait for the light to turn red, why can't they? I'll tell you why. Because the sad fact is, we have this need to give special treatment to something to show our respect for it. We think we might offend the Lord if we walk beside him. So we tread with caution bordering on paranoia. Don't do this or else...Don't do that or else...

It would be so much simpler to just avoid the superficiality and obligatory displays of respect that probably don't make a difference to the supreme being anyway.

Its nice to think of an India where God and man exist side by side in a khud jiyo auron ko bhi jeene do (live and let live) fashion; where there is enough space on the road for both of them to walk side by side. It is not so nice to think of an India where one has to be pushed aside to let the other pass.

One can truly appreciate the faith and resolve of another, no doubt. But only if it doesn't cause bumps and breaks in the smooth flow of one's own (way of) life.

The Dark Cloud of "Consent"

I recently attended a conference in which the surprisingly low figures quoted in the recent government study on the number of people affected by HIV in India were discussed. Last year, a study by the UNAIDS quoted the figure at 5.6 million. As per the Government survey released on July 6th 2007, the number is between 2.5 and 3.1 million. Congratulations. The figures have reduced by 50% in the span of one year.

But social activists and organizations committed to the cause are not convinced. They have several counts on which to be displeased –Allegedly, there is no transparency with respect to the details of how the study was conducted. Secondly, the sample was not a representative one- the participation of all subjects was purely voluntary.

It is this second point, which is of interest to me. Testing for HIV is entirely voluntary. That means, if I don't wish to find out if I am HIV positive, no one can make me.

I am of the opinion that it wont be a bad idea to remove this heavily loaded term- "consent"- from HIV testing. All those who have jumped out of their seats arguing freedom of choice, human rights and so on may kindly sit down and hear me out first.

Take a moment to think of why testing for AIDS is consent based. It is because of the fear of stigmatization. The sad fact is that people living with AIDS are ostracized by society, so this fear is justified. But by making testing consent based, we are in fact making the following admission – "If you do turn out to be HIV positive, we cannot assure that you will not be treated like scum. Nor can we offer sufficient support- medical or emotional (the latter being more necessary)". People present at the conference said it was "impossible" to ensure safe testing and stigma-free living in case we decided to test everyone. One woman justified consent based testing precisely on this argument – "if we carry out the test, and find out that the person has AIDS, we don't have anything to protect them from the stigma and discrimination they are likely to face." Fantastic. You deserve a pat on the back for your honesty.

All this drama about consent is a cover up. It emerges from a desire to absolve oneself of the responsibility of the mammoth task of trying to change the mindset of the majority.

There needs to be a shift in perspective. You cannot combat a widespread illness unless you know the magnitude of the problem. The focus should be on finding out more and more people who need help, and offering it to them when it can still be of help. The focus should be on removing their fear, and on ending the discrimination and stigmatization that people with AIDS face every single day (rather than reinforcing it by allowing the affected persons to hide because of a fear that, ideally, if the society were made up of decent people, would not be present at all).

The stigmatization will not end if you say, "I will not test you if you don't want to be tested. Because I understand your fear of social and personal rejection".

We can do more if we say, "Come and get tested. For your own safety and that of others. And if you test positive, I promise to stand by you and help you get through this in the best way possible."

Also, how on earth do you expect the numbers to be exact or even close to accurate if participation is consent based? What struck me was the irrationality with which consent based participation was being rejected by those people who were in support of consent based testing- "Only those people who are sure that they will not test positive will voluntarily participate". I don't know how they intended to get around this one.

Thirdly, the status given to AIDS in our country is related to sexuality. People forget that AIDS can be transmitted by non-sexual means. That's why the very suggestion of mandatory testing raises eyebrows. I have met people who say they would take offence if someone asked them to get tested. As if a judgment was being made on their charitra (character) or something! A prominent social activist asked me how I would feel if somebody asked me to get tested. I told her I wouldn't mind at all. Then she asked me if I thought little children should be tested (she asked "Little children?" in a tone of incredulous disbelief). I obviously said, "Why not?"

Why do you think AIDS is not openly talked about? In recent times, thanks to the media, awareness efforts are on the rise. But it still creates more of a stir than..say.. cancer. It is because of the million other moral and social questions that it throws up. And it is because of this distorted view that the scream of AIDS that would otherwise have woken us up is silenced.

AIDS is not a morality issue. It is a medical problem. Let's look at it that way. It would help us combat the illness as well as social issues surrounding it.

Michel Foucault warned us long ago, and told us to look for value judgments in the most innocent of places. We should start by lifting the cloud of "consent" and examining the values that lie hidden beneath it.