Kuch to Sharam Karo India...

Yesterday we visited a trust named “Aadhar” that works for counselling and upliftment of HIV+ people in and around Ahmedabad, run solely by HIV+ people. Directive of the visit was to identify where the problem lies, in terms of acceptance of HIV+ people in the mainstream. To be very honest, I went there with a notion that the uneducated and lower strata of our society would be the one that outright rejects the PLHA (“People Living with HIV/AIDS”). However, the stark contrast in reality has not only mortified me but has also made me think that, is it the lack of awareness or is it the lack of empathy which is the main problem we are facing here. This blog is a part of that loud-thinking.

We are all aware that immorality and unethical behavior has penetrated deep across all professions, but I could never have thought that people would stoop so low so as to make money and gain publicity out of somebody’s ill fate.

Of everybody else, one would expect at least the doctors to be aware of what HIV is and hope that they would not be a party to this stigma against PLHA. Well, experiences tell a different story. Mrs X’s 16 year old son needed a blood transfusion, but the local doctors in nursing homes in their locality refused to stick a needle into the boy stating that they were not trained enough to inject a needle in a young kid. A doctor who can’t inject a needle, well, that was a first timer for me, and to add to it a lame excuse that the 16 year old boy to be a kid. The ones in civil hospital did something more stupendous. The boy had had excessive bleeding from his leg and had very high fever. These symptoms prompted the doctors on duty in the civil hospital to conclude that this was a case of orthopedics department and not theirs. Bleeding + fever = ortho; ya we sure buy that. The orthopedic rejected the patient saying it needs to be treated by HIV/AIDS department (reason being his mother was HIV+). And after a lot of efforts at around 3 am at night Ms X managed to find a doctor who would treat her ailing son, the lab assistant who was supposed to do an MRI scan refused to do so, for he didn't want to use the equipment for someone whose mother is HIV+. Even I wouldn't have believed the story had it not come firsthand to me, so I won’t blame you if this doesn't sound real to you.

The counterparts in private hospitals are using this as an opportunity to make some extra bucks. It’s a straight formula there. If you are HIV+, you would have to pay twice the money that would be normally charged. The reason being that they need to procure separate “set of equipment” to treat PLHA.

Another so called responsible section of our society, the media, comes up with an even more brute face. Mrs Y tells us that on world AIDS day when she approached a reporter from a renowned daily, requesting him to publish Aadhar’s story and motivating people to join/approach Aadhar, the reporter did not find the story compelling enough to be published. Next day there was a half page article in the newspaper with Mrs Y’s photograph, mentioning minute details like her husband’s name and profession, her kids names even their school names, making life hell for all of them. When the reporter was confronted that how could he publish the story without permission, all he had to say was “Sorry” and I am pretty sure there would have been a wry smile behind that sorry too.

Govt. provides a Rs. 2000 pa grant for education to a kid whose parents are HIV+. The fund goes directly to the school and hence the principal can identify the kid whose parent/s are HIV+. However I don’t know how to react to a situation where the person who is supposed to be the educator, the one who should ideally spread awareness for acceptance of PLHA, suspends a student from his school because of the obvious reasons. And then people like me would debate that education is the only cure for such menaces. Doesn't seem so anymore.

Policy paralysis is apparent in almost everything that happens in this country. When it comes to HIV/AIDS, it seemed that the govt. had done its bit very well, until very recently when NACO temporarily stopped all it’s funding for organizations like Aadhar, stating a discussion on change in policies, post which everything was supposed to be brought back to normal. The discussion is going on for the past one year and bodies like Aadhar are running from pillar to post to stay afloat. The red tape cuts in here too.

If you think you now understand in which direction the roots of this problem is headed, you need to read the following first. There is another facet to this problem. I was discussing with Mr. Z (another staff member at Aadhar, himself HIV+) about a few entrepreneurial ventures that can be taken up by them to provide employment to PLHA given the suspended funding from NACO. The response was shocking. The government, as I was told, has many schemes and facilities for HIV+ people. A nutrition ‘bhatta’ of Rs 500 pm, free medicines, education ‘bhatta’ etc. etc. and as a result when Aadhar approaches HIV+ people to turn up for some event or to participate in some venture, they bluntly refuse stating that what the govt. provides them  free of cost is sufficient and they don’t see the need to work any further. “Sumeet bhai ab hum kya Karen, aap btao”, that’s what a teary eyed Mr. Z said to sum up this chat of ours and honestly, I was too stumped to say anything in reply.

May be the schemes are there in place, but the ones that would implement them and the ones who would benefit from them, both have not got the right message. I very well know that writing this blog is not a solution to anything, but I don’t know what better to do, do I need to educate doctors, principals, the media, and the government? I am a firm believer in action but in this case I really don’t know where to start with, may be a more detailed understanding is what is required at first.

Exploring Ahmedabad: Part I

Well just to clarify, the title reads part I because I sincerely, desperately, candidly, genuinely hope that there would be many more extensions of this in the near future…. Ah ok, being realistic, in the near future J

Round about 2 pm post a pretty screwed up exam, where even I didn't like the stories I cooked up for my teacher to evaluate, I had no idea that rest of my day was going to be so amazingly refreshing. Akriti and I had planned talked about going anywhere post exams just for the sake of getting out of this place which had kept us bounded in its restricted vicinity for the past 4 months. However the only problem was, we didn't know where to go. And like devoted pupils we reached out to Google Baba for answers. As they say, destiny has its own ways, while we were randomly searching for places to visit around Ahmedabad, the guy sitting next to us noticed our dilemma and offered to help, he being the coordinator for Heritage club of our college, and we blindly allowed him to chalk out a plan for us. When all this turned out to be so smooth, there wasn't anything stopping us as we set out on our 60 km trip in an auto-rickshaw J

Sarkhej Roza: The first place on the cards was Sarkhej Roza also known as "Ahmedabad's Acropolis", due to 20th century architect Le Corbusier's famous comparison of this mosque's design to the Acropolis of Athens. Not many tourists, a few locals and non-commercial state of this splendid piece of architecture said a lot. Seems like nobody is now interested in preserving the sufi sentiments associated with the place. The pond on the backside of the monument has lost all its charm and the dried leaves on the huge gallery indicated that no prayer had been offered there since long (or may-be that’s just my interpretation). The carving on the shedding walls and the sculptures on the “maqbara” depicted the love of Emperor Ahmad Shah for art. 

Ya, that’s about it, and please note it’s a good place to click some classic pictures ;). And of-course, I missed out on the best part. Many parts of the place banned women from entering and so many a times Akriti was stranded outside while I admired all that was mentioned above J

Adalaj StepWell: Initially the plan was to get to Sarkhej and then find out where to get a bus for Adalaj which was 25 kms from Sarkhej, but lethargy got the better of us and we decided to ask our auto wala to take care of our travel.

StepWell, as the name suggests it’s essentially a water body where you ascend into to access it. First impression of the place was… “WTF”. I apparently thought that the garden next to the monument is the star attraction. However, it was good to be proved wrong. Admiring the beauty of the figurines and the architecture of the place, we ascended into the dark side of the well, a few steps from where water stood. Something magical happened there and suddenly both I and Akriti decided to just sit by the water and absorb the silence. There was something magnetic about the aura of that place. Although I recovered from this whimsical situation pretty soon, Akriti felt some connect with the place, something to do with smell of wet soil and her experiences from her village days, so we spent quite a lot of time there, before other tourists poured in from somewhere and disturbed our reverie.

Akshardham: Next destination was Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat (there is a joke hidden there, but I guess only a few people are privy to it, so for them,J).We had both been to Akshardham in Delhi and hence had a fair idea of what to expect. However, as we entered the temple, we discovered that before you get to the main building there’s an amusement park that you have to cross. Well, that turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. The hidden child inside us jumped at the opportunity and the next moment we were on the rides having a gala time. We even had to convince a few other visitors to take the ride with us as there was a minimum requirement of 10 people for few of the rides to runJ. In a while though we did realize that may be it was just too childish of us to persuade people to take rides and we decided to save some face and called it off. 

Since the fountain show was to start in an hours’ time, we decided to kill time by just sitting on the stair in front of the temple. That is when the second magical thing of the day happened. As dusk was setting in, slowly, one after the other the lights on the Akshardham Temple and in the garden around us were lighted. It was as if, out of the darkness a strikingly marvelous monument appeared in front of us. Can’t speak for Akriti but I was awed by the moment.

Next up was the hyped fountain show and as it turned out, it wasn’t hyped for no reasons. An awesome depiction of Nachiketa’s story via projection on stream of water, well, I must say technology has redefined spiritual experience. When I first saw such a show in Universal Studios in Singapore, I wondered if we could ever have such a quality thing in India as well, and today I felt pretty ashamed at my ignorance of the fact that this show which was as good as the one in Universal Studios was started before that one. Yes, India had led the way here.

Other than the awesome places we visited, the travel (specially the auto-rickshaw factor) was equally good. It felt good to not being bound to a timetable. To sum up the fantastic day was a delicious biryani at Sandwich Works, with an icing on the cake being the fact that I made in time for the final overs of India-Australia match too.

Before I close, this, I must thank Akriti for the push, or else I would have missed out on a very beautiful day of my lifeJ. Hope you guys too had a good time living these places via this description.

Cheers

Step 3: Succeed; Step 2: Keep Going; Step 1: LET GO

As the story goes; there was a man who had climbed down a rope and was hanging on at the very end, he prayed to God “Please save me from falling.” Nothing happened, the man was too afraid to look down for he knew the fall would be great and his life would be lost, and he no longer had the stamina to climb back up the rope so he held on tight and prayed, and prayed. Well eventually the man had been there hanging onto the rope for so long that he died of starvation and thirst, and when his both body could hold on no longer it fell the whole two feet to the ground that had been below him all along.

You have probably heard that story or some version of it before in your lifetime, maybe in a devotional, maybe told as a joke, maybe as part of a sermon, but how often are we the man on the rope?

It’s difficult, often impossible, to just let go. It covers a dual definition of-course. Some people might want to tug on to their comfort zones, some might want to tug on to their failures. The phenomenon of not letting go often turns out to be the roadblock in our lives. A month back, I got to meet a few people on campus, who in their own very different way decided to take this tough call of Letting Go.

If I were to tell you to go on a non-stop journey on a boat, battling the fierce oceans and the raging sky, all alone, to orbit the earth, would you be able to let go of the symbolic pull of the port? The answer is most probably no and so is expected. But someone did. Capt. Abhilash Tomy spent months fighting storms after storms across all the oceans on the face of earth, alone of a water logged, wrenched, miniscule vessel of his, only to become the first Indian to circumnavigate the earth solo, without docking even once. After surviving in those fierce times, he mentions the most difficult part of his journey was Day 1, when he had to bid adieu to his fleet at the port at Mumbai. Letting Go. As per him was worse than braving the raging waves of the pacific, facing the thunder all alone in a dark stormy night.  Although he also says that the second most difficult part was when he had completed the journey and knew he had to dock now, “let go” of the adventure. :P

Arunima Sinha, a national level volley ball player, thrown of an express train over some brawl over money, defines life as those moments spent on the rail tracks, brutally severed and helpless, unable to move, unable to locate half her limb, bleeding, but refusing to die. She recalls her anguish lying on the hospital bed and thinking of the career that she had lost, of the life of an amputee that she would be now living. Even today she has tears in her eyes when she says that more than the physical pain, it was the trauma of not living the normal life that was soaking out all her energy to live. Well, none of us can compare our hardships to hers, but even she managed to let go. Let go of her dream to win medals for India, only to later become the first female amputee in the world to climb Mt. Everest. Not only that, she did her final stretch to the peak without oxygen cylinder because she had run out of supply. 

Examples are endless, Hugh Jackman got fired from his job as cashier at 7-eleven, because he supposedly talked too much with the customers. Today we all better know him as The Wolverine. Steve Jobs had to let go of the company that he himself had set up. He quotes, "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

  

Among all the other things that’s common in all these names that I have mentioned, one thing that drew my attention today was the fact that they all have at some point of time in their lives or even at multiple times, have “Let Go” of their current states, of their comfort zones, of their agonies, of their failures, of their pasts, to move ahead towards a glorious, satisfying and successful future. So are you ready to follow suit, or let me rephrase it, are you ready for STEP 1 of your lives?

Campaign For Real Beauty!!

Here's a take on a different purpose of writing :)

Beauty for long had been defined by a narrow, stifling stereotype. Dove’s global campaign for “Real Beauty” brings in a fresh facet.

The campaign launched in 2004 by Unilever, focuses on beauty in different shapes, sizes, ages and communities. It encourages women be comfortable with and confident of their appearance, as they are. Dove, just offers a product that would in no way alter one’s natural self but would be a highlighter, just like a piece of jewelry.

It all began with a market survey, which indicated that only 4% of women consider themselves beautiful, post which marketing agency, Ogilvy & Mather (Brazil), came up with this campaign. The campaign began with billboard advertisements in Britain and thereafter spreading across the globe in the form of videos, sleepover events, workshops, publication of a book, and production of a play. However the most courageous step was taken recently, in the form of a scientific experiment. “The Real Beauty Sketches Campaign”, in mid-April, 2013. An FBI trained forensic artist, Gil Zamora, created two sketches each of seven different women, all from different ages and backgrounds. One of the sketch was based on how the woman herself described her appearance and the second was based on other’s description of the lady. In every case, the second sketch left every respective woman flabbergasted. It was proved that others perceive you as more beautiful than what you would rate yourself, the tagline of the campaign being, "You are more beautiful than you think." 

What’s really refreshing is that Unilever, which itself uses ads that show women as flirty hawks to sell its’ products like Axe, has brought up this new dimension of advertising altogether. This campaign has hit at the remaining 96% of the female population who were skeptical of their beauty. It associates with the masses not as solution to their problems but as an entirely new viewpoint.

The results so far have been great with Dove already being placed as premier brand in the market, for which customers are willing to shell extra bucks. The campaign, having been launched worldwide, has also given the brand a global recognition. What remains to be seen is that how long does this formula of being “just you” works, and what shall be the next step that Unilever takes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE

Do you actually need the answer ?

“What next?” that’s what Aakash asked himself when one fine day he was a bit high on three pints of beer.

Aakash is a software engineer, who has graduated from a reputed college two years back and is working for an MNC in Bangalore. All through his life, he has been a part of, rather a top contender of, the race that never seems to end. It’s a race of survival, it’s a race towards acceptance, it’s a race to meet expectations and it has, no finish line. Aakash has done well in life so far, he was a top rated student, he is one of the outstanding performers in job, and everyone seem to be satisfied with him. Everyone, except Aakash. There is a question which he has answered many a times, and yet he faces the trouble of answering the same question again and again. The question is – What next?  He had, many a times heard his inner voice cry out to him, saying it doesn’t want to bear the pressure of “What next” anymore. Today sitting in the balcony of his two room apartment, on the 9^th floor, with a Carlsberg in his hand, at around 1 AM, Aakash has asked himself the same question again. However, today the difference is, that he isn’t actually looking for an answer. Today he is looking at the question itself. Today, he wants to know if it is the right thing for him to ask the same question over and over again.

Another sip of beer and Aakash felt asleep in the cool breeze under the moonlight in the balcony itself. That night he had a dream. He dreamt of a stage where there were no audience. He saw himself, walking to the podium through a dark passage. The passage, as it approached the stage, lit up with bright lights and soon he stood there in a huge empty auditorium under flood lights. A shrill of joy passed through his body. He could feel his smile growing bigger and bigger. He sensed for the first time, how satisfaction actually felt. He felt for the first time, how it felt to tell yourselves that you have nothing more to prove. That night, the guy who was on that stage did not have questions on his mind, he did not have answers to look for, and all he could feel was the joy of being there.

Next morning when Aakash woke up, he still didn’t have the answer to his question of what next, but the difference was, that he wasn’t actually looking for that answer anymore. He went to work that day with a grin on his face. He went through his daily chore without thinking about what next.

That dream he had, didn’t unveil any mysteries, it just filled a gap in his mind and today he could enjoy all that was there in his life. The dream he saw existed in his subconscious mind, but it was just too clouded by doubts and questions for him to see. The dream, is all he needed to know that his future is not a pre-written book, it’s a canvas. The dream, is all he needed to understand that aspirations define the man who carries them, they do not bog him down. The question of what next still persisted, but, it wasn’t a hammer on the head anymore, it was just a question unanswered.

Scripting the END

Some things are never needed to be said but still its good to say them anyways... So here's some of that stuff.

Being “us” has been so obvious for the past four and a half years, that some part of the heart doesn’t want to move on… even if it is moving on to IIM A. I entered NITH without knowing what to expect, yes there was the projection of college as presented by movies. What I have got is way better than a scripted story, way above any Jai Veeru legend. Perfection is something that each one of us is far-far distant from, but the desire to stay bonded in our imperfect forms doesn’t come from any need or from any motive, it comes from the unsaid connection, from the feeling of belongingness that we share. And now, for all practical reasons, when I think that life won’t be same ever again, I already sense that void inside me…

As a matter of fact there is some part of you all that shall always prevail inside me forever. I should actually thank each one of you individually here for everything that I have soaked from you. To quote, having a clear vision about what’s happening in my life and how I would want things to happen is something that I am still in the process of absorbing from Deepak. To be able to live the present to the fullest is something that Saransh has mastered and that is something that if I can do, I know I will be someone more fun to be around. Nishant, is more like myself minus the temper… well although that is something I should really-really change, but as a matter of fact I haven’t even started trying…. May be when I find myself stranded alone in the future, I might tone things down…. Well some things are supposed to be learned the hard way, so be it. I think I am a hard worker, but let’s face it, I have received enough motivation time to time in the form of concrete results to keep me motivated… but to be able to keep pushing even when tides refuse to turn your way, Shobit, when my time comes, all I’ll do is think of you J. Shubhayu, everybody needs a joey in life, someone who can be genuinely cute and refreshing even at the worst times. I’ll always miss just tugging on to your voluptuous self for no reason. Then there have been a few new addition, transforming Panchayat to Dil Dosti etc. Nitesh, although not a new addition to my life, but still at least to the gang … well one thing I know for sure is that if ever I would need something from you… I won’t have to ask for it. I hope and wish I can be the same for all of you, always. Aneesha, should be credited with bringing the fizz in our group. We all care a lot for each other but at times can be a bit miser in showing that… well that’s not for her. May be you are the much required topping on our otherwise well baked group. And a few words for my Semi too … not knowing what to do, but still being prepared to do anything for the friend … Nitin, may be some day I will be able reciprocate that.

Lots of take aways, and a promise to embed these traits of yours in myself… Hopefully a few years down the line when we meet, you will find all of the above in me.

Thought of the end dooming upon me has left trails of tears in my eyes in the past few days. The moment gives me an opportunity to reflect upon “being us”. The best part being that we never needed to be anything but us amongst ourselves. The ease with which we all have always shrugged off any grudges, itself highlights the weight and value of the emotions that bind us. There is a thin line between being friends and being family, and I would say we have moved across that line. So definitely distance won’t be able to spoil what we share amongst us.

For now this blog is just to say the unsaid....

I don’t know how I’ll be able to manage life without you guys. I don’t know if I’ll be able to forge a similar relationship with anyone ever again. I simply don't know what to expect from my personal life upfront, coz everything and anything i get will always be relatively less than what i have today. I just dream of a Bollywood like end for our story and hope all our roads converge again at some point. May all of you reach the pinnacle of happiness in your lives.

Lots of love ... sb