The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Book full of stories about HIV positive

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Thursday, Aug 14, 2008
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Book full of stories about HIV positive

Ramya Kannan

Sixteen India’s best known writers have contributed to the collection

— Photo: R. Ragu

HUMAN PICTURE: Padma Chandrasekaran, senior programme officer, Avahan (right), with C.S. Lakshmi, author, at the release of the book ‘ AIDS Sutra’: Untold Stories from India’, in Chennai on Wednesday.

CHENNAI: There are facts in this book, ‘AIDS Sutra,’ but the stories are more important; a little more important than the authors themselves.

For the authors are big: Salman Rushdie, Shobhaa De, Kiran Desai, Amartya Sen, William Dalrymple, Vikram Seth, C.S. Lakshmi… It is just that the HIV epidemic got bigger over the years.

An initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the top global funders of HIV/AIDS intervention programmes, ‘AIDS Sutra’ is a book full of stories of people infected and affected by the virus.

The Gates couple outline in their preface to the book: “There are 3 million Indians living with HIV today. If we’re going to stop AIDS, we have to embrace every one of them — regardless of social class, line of work, or circumstance.” The process of doing so starts with telling their stories, they say. That is the genesis of the book: ‘AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India.

Sixteen well-known writers from India agreed to be part of the project, agreeing to write stories to a deadline, investigating the intimate details of strangers. Mr. Rushdie chronicled the time he spent with the transgender population in Mumbai, Kiran Desai wrote about the “most desirable” sex workers of Andhra Pradesh and Shobhaa De talked about how AIDS came home. Their writings follow a foreword by Amartya Sen, which the Nobel Laureate ends saying, “First we have to stop blaming the victims and stop looking for reasons for leaving them to look after themselves. We are in it together.”

AIDS Sutra, published by Random House, was released in Chennai on Wednesday, after its high profile opening in the recently concluded International AIDS Conference in Mexico. One of the writers C.S. Lakshmi did the honours along with Padma Chandrasekaran, senior programme officer, Avahan, the India intiative of the Gates Foundation.

Ms. Chandrasekaran said the project was conceptualised about one and a half years ago to present the human picture of the epidemic. Sixteen of India’s best known writers took the road to uncover the tales of many faceless people affected by the epidemic.

“When the invitation came, I thought I would like to participate. I wanted to talk about those living with the fear of contracting HIV,” Ms. Lakshmi, who goes by the pen name Ambai, said.

A resident of Mumbai, she travelled to Chennai to meet sex workers who were brought together by an NGO. Some of them were HIV positive, others negative, but all of them were aware of what it is to be positive and support those who were positive, she added.

Their stories are chronicled in her piece “At Stake, The Body” in the book. “The stories pour out one after the other, sounding so similar and yet so apart, for each woman is telling a story of her own…”

The book is priced at Rs. 395. For each book that is sold, Rs. 80 will go to support children affected by HIV/AIDS in high prevalence cities: Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

The funding, which will be managed by Avahan, will help the children go to school and receive care and support.

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