Chanukah in Chennai

This holiday season brought to you by the letter ‘C’ and the number 2: Part I
4-13 December, 2007

On the first night of Chanukah, we placed two candles (one a little taller than the other) in the bed of wax accumulated on the upturned stainless steel lid we use as a Shabbat candle holder, and used one to light the other.

The train ran away from the stern station master, and soon we* were stretching in the early morning light filtered through the overpasses, blinking signs, and union election propaganda of Chennai Central Railway station. It was the special slow stretch of the traveler who is pretending to have gotten a satisfactory nights’ sleep in order to convince themselves that they’re ready for the next day’s unknown adventures. This illusion is aided by the common practice of waking up just a few minutes before getting down from the lumbering metal box in which they passed the last immeasurable stretch of hours. A driver, looking suspiciously like Kevin Kline, met us by a pile of unlabeled agricultural goods and drove us away, past the longest beach in Asia (I think), past the high-rises and sprawl of Chennai, past endless palm-roofed tea stands (one of which provided us with breakfast), past a strange DizzyWorld resort that looked suspiciously like it was trying to become DisneyLand, and down the statuette-dotted drive of the Tamil Nadu Tourism and Development Corporation (TNTDC) Resort.

*(These are different ‘we’s. The first is Myla, her father, and I. The second is two of my co-workers, K and M, and myself, joined at the station by a third co-worker, C. My life in India is a very communal experience.)

The ocean said hello, having already greeted a number of my NGO’s staff as they arrived from Kolkata (West Bengal), Bhubaneswar (Orissa), Karur (Tamil Nadu), and (of course) Chennai. But the ocean wasn’t happy with just a hello, and soon went in for a big sloppy kiss, soaking us with a vertical rain from the waves. The wind whipped our hair around our faces and curled our clothes around our bodies while the top layer of sand jumped up and danced an inch above the ground, covering and uncovering strange lumps, one of which turned out to be the remnants of a salty dog. At the end of the long curve of beach away from our resort stood the prize: a beautiful stone temple that survived the tsunami (and centuries of daily ocean kisses). We admired carvings and clambered over boulders. I tried to lift Krishna’s Butter Ball (that beloved mischievous boy) and memorized the coastline from the top of a monkey kingdom/tower/temple. As the sun ran away over the horizon, we gussied up and gathered. The first-ever gathering of all our NGO staff, from five different offices. There were speeches and applause, and symbolic oil lamps ringed with carefully arranged flower petals.

The second night of Chanukah, I placed eight neon storm candles in a row on a metal tray, and used a ninth to light two. I fell asleep with the waves whispering out the window, the candles burning low on an armoire, and a piece of the National AIDS Control Policy (NACP III for 2007-2012) on my lap.

And so began the Program Management Training, at which I learned a lot of useful technical information, took a lot of notes, and spent only one session writing a letter to a friend: ‘I’m sitting in a circular conference room, the waves of the Bay of Bengal hitting the beach to my right, a powerpoint on logical frame work analysis to my left… I missed tea, and I started to cry… I’m not sure if I needed the caffeine, the sugar, the warmth (over air-conditioned), or the excuse to pause… but I suddenly felt I’d been denied something essential. So as soon as I had the chance, I walked out to the ocean – the sky was dramatic, the waves affectionately chatty, the ancient temple at the far end of the beach properly poetic in the misty distance – but I couldn’t cry. A woman in a bright orange salwar kameez tapped my shoulder and offered me a pamphlet on ayurvedic massage – I set it in my lap, said I was sorry, but too busy with work, and went back to staring at the waves. When I gave up on the ocean and walked back to the conference room, she called out ‘which country?’ as I passed. My answer garnered a massive smile.’

The night of the missing tea incident each team stayed up writing concept notes for new grants, putting our session workshop on program planning and grant writing into instant action. It was the third night of Chanukah, and when I returned to my room, the sight of my room-mate’s peaceful sleeping face was more comforting than the idea of setting up rickety candles could ever be.

In between Learning Things from powerpoints, I learned other things, about gender politics in India, ambitions, plans, accents, pan. I made new friends, and positioned myself so that I could study the horizon at every possible moment. On our last night in Mahaballepuram, I opened the Cultural Show with the story of Chanukah, and lit four candles (plus one) in the window of our circular conference room. R played the veena, and the Kolkata office played a Bengali music video about accepting love and sexuality of all forms. Not all apples are red. Some might even be blue.

The next night, the Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar offices crammed into Kevin Kline’s car (five men in the backseat, two women riding shotgun) and sang songs in Hindi, Oria, Malayalam, Telugu, and English to quicken the drive back into the blinking lights of The City. I woke up in a wooden sleigh bed that came with a complementary breakfast of all-you-can-eat idly, dosa, upma, and wada (different ways to cook rice flour and ground lentils: patty, pancake, mush, or donut), and let someone else pay too much for auto that took us to our NGO’s Chennai office for… another training, on Comprehensive Care, Support, and Treatment. Incredulous that we were once again sitting and listening all day, but genuinely interested in the topics, ten of us spent three days sitting in the Country Director’s office and learning about anti-retroviral therapies, home-based care, and child-centered approaches.

Each night, we Ventured Out:

The first evening, I ran away, through muddy back allies of strange suburbs, to a massive ashram where my friend Blanca was chatting with a Spanish couple who fell in love through meditation. Blanca was spending the weekend with old friends in a small apartment outside the ashram, and we settled in to twisting realities projected from pretty faces with The Island. In the morning, I took a shared auto through the city, feeling like a regular World Traveler.

The second evening, six of us landed in the flashing neon lights and sparkling eighties party dresses and acres of saris and carpeting of chocolate ice-cream bar wrappers that fill T. Nagar. Two of my new friends helped me to pick out my first sari, and more co-workers trickled in to meet us on a rooftop restaurant.

The third evening, I went back to the ocean. The line between the water and the sky was lost in the dark past the grandmothers sleeping on the sidewalk and the couples cuddling in the sand and the fisherman lost in the shadows of their longboats, so that the sky that started behind me with wisps of clouds and a few blinking stars wrapped all the way back to my feet.

The fourth evening, which may or may not have been the last night of Chanukah, a train ran away from the station master. On board the Embassy Express – every other person was on their way from a hi-tech job in Hyderbad to the American Embassy in Chennai – I felt absolutely ready to come home.

High rises, Slums, and Statistics

OR: What to do when every day is World AIDS Day?
December 1, 2007

I woke up in an identity crisis. The Discovery Channel show on how animals express emotion playing on our friend’s TV that morning may have crept into my unconscious and put me in a particularly vulnerable state, but there was no way to avoid the fundamental issue: I was on the verge of tears because it was World AIDS Day and I had no particular plans.

My NGO focuses on technical assistance. We have some direct implementation programs, like a support center for ‘sexual minorities’ that runs out of our Kolkata office, but mostly we help smaller NGOs to help themselves to help the people. So our partners had programs, but we didn’t. And I, with my distinctly lacking Telugu skills, would not be much use to a busy event without a co-worker to translate for me. My co-workers were all out in the field evaluating the partners, because it’s the season for evaluation and next-year planning. And so there I was, sitting in a Westernized flat in a wealthy neighborhood where people know about condoms, but probably don’t worry so much about AIDS. Not educating, not advocating. Just lounging in bed on a lazy Saturday morning.

Last year on December 1, I was sitting behind a police line on the sidewalk in front of the white house dressed as a bottle of anti-retroviral pills. Soon afterwards, I was sitting in a locked van, wrists tied behind my back in plastic cuffs, watching the sun set over the traffic jams of Washington, DC as we drove towards the city park jailhouse. And eventually, I sat free on the front wall of the police compound, greeting each activist as they were released, and enjoying the glitter of the stars reflecting on the Potomac courtesy of bail provided by DC Fights Back! and the Student Global AIDS Campaign.

The year before that, I was madly selling home-made t-shirts in the campus center to raise money for an amazing NGO I was lucky enough to spend a day visiting in Kibera, one of the densest slums in the world, where nearly a million people live in one square mile of land on the edge of Nairobi, Kenya. Lauren was running AIDS-related documentaries one floor above me, and we were both deliriously under-slept. That night, with a slew of helpers, we plastered the walls of a dance hall with condoms, set up a six-foot-tall red plywood AIDS ribbon in the hallway, and put on an amazing party.

So what was I doing sitting so still, feeling so well rested, watching the red ribbon pinned on the anchorwoman’s shirt with feelings of vague approval and intense guilt? An ad came on for a movie premier that night; four famous Indian directors and a broad spectrum of Indian stars and starlets in a beautifully produced set of stories about living with HIV. I felt torn between wanting to see it because the thing looked well done, and not wanting to watch because that activity felt so distinctively insufficient. At this point I realized that I was acting like a petulant child.

So we went to the lake. I was sitting with my head against the window of our friend’s car, staring out at the gargantuan office buildings of Hi-Tech city (where all those calls to 1-800 customer support lines are directed) when Myla handed me her cell and said ‘Leah needs information on AIDS in India – they have to give a talk for World AIDS Day in an hour.’ My brain, or at least the part that stores all the numbers, looked up, stopped slouching and dusted its jacket.

“In 2007, the estimated number of people living with HIV in India was cut in half, to 2.5 million, revealing an adult prevalence rate of just above 0.3%. But even with this drastic downward revision in the estimation of the Indian epidemic, India is home to the world’s third-largest population of people living with HIV, following South Africa and Nigeria. India faces unique challenges, with a relatively low adult prevalence rate, but an astronomical number of people who will need care, support and treatment services in the coming decade and beyond. Based on antenatal data, six states have been defined as ‘high prevalence,’ with a HIV prevalence rate above 1%: Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, and Nagaland. The six high prevalence states together contribute 70-80% of total positive cases in the country, and as of the latest numbers, Andhra officially has the highest infection rate, at 1.2%.”

[maybe I just copied that from the Annual Report, but since I wrote it in the first place, I’m pretty sure its not plagiarism]

She asked me if I knew how many Indians had died. I had no idea – we focus on living positively, finding out who’s affected, and trying to figure out how best to support them, I answered. In any case, AIDS is not even in the top ten killers in India – so why is there a National AIDS Control Office, but nothing like the same level of funding for Malaria, TB, or everyone’s favorite, water-borne diarrheal diseases? One of my co-workers explained that the health budget is significantly determined by international funding, and thus… NACO! It sounded like a plausible explanation to me. Or at least the beginning of one.

While I was chattering away, we passed the lake. The lake, however, was looking a bit ill (since the monsoons stopped a few months ago), and not up for visitors. So we kept driving. We passed slums, and a few herds of buffalo doing a half-hearted job of blocking the roads. I wished Leah good luck, and passed the phone back to Myla. ‘Well, that was my contribution,’ I thought, and ordered a lemon tea and walnut date bread at the pseudo-Starbucks Coffee Day café chain.

‘If every day is AIDS day in my world, doesn’t that count? Do I need a World AIDS Day?’ I asked the tea. ‘How much more can my awareness be raised?’ The tea didn’t respond. The steam rising off the cup, however, muttered subversively, ‘there’s always something to learn, always something to celebrate, always something to shout in the streets about.’ But steam dissipates quickly, so I held the warm cup against my cheek and replied. ‘I’ll work hard on Monday, on helping some sliver of people with some sliver of the hardships they’re facing. And the day after, I’ll do a little more.’

And so once I gave up my illusions of grandeur, of tying specific implications to a specific day, the rest of it went simply, and pleasantly, by. I went to dance class, and stood in the back behind the rows of giggling girls, and gestured and smiled and sweat. I met Myla in the congested market that surrounds Secunderabad Railway station, and she recognized me in a crowd of hundreds from blocks away by the glint of my hair in the neon lights. We called our friend Blanca and cooked for her and sipped fresh coconut juice straight from the nut and watched Pirates of the Caribbean in a pile of mango candy wrappers. There was no planning, no protesting (at least not outside my head) – just a quiet day of rest to prepare for the next week of work out in the world.