In this anthology 16 Indian authors (or of Indian origin or similar) tell the many facets of the spread of AIDS in India, which initially denied, is now expanding with alarming rapidity.
The anthology has been produced in collaboration with Avahan , the draft of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which I hear everything and its opposite) that deals with AIDS prevention in India.
There are 16 essays that bring us to know the different communities, the Most "high risk" in different regions of India, from Bangalore to Kolkata, Andhra Pradesh in Manipur.
Kiran Desai takes us to the villages of prostitutes in Andhra Pradesh (one of the states with the highest spread of AIDS), Salman Rushdie among hijras (say "trans" - simplifying a lot) of Bombay, Sunil Gangopadhyay in the brothels of Calcutta, where he took refuge with friends from young to drink whiskey on the sly, William Dalrymple between the Devadasi temple, Siddhartha Deb among the lost generation of Manipur, the drug addict, Vikram Seth Instead he spoke of his poetry in a man dying of AIDS.
The journey continues among the victims of AIDS in the community of truck drivers, in schools for children orphaned by AIDS among the infected home, in hospitals, including the police and his violent treatment of "sex workers" .
In most cases presented in this report, AIDS is a stigma to hide to avoid being excluded from society, which obviously contributes to its spread.
also follows the work of various NGOs that deal instead of the sick and preventing illness, certainly commendable and actually useful, but not sufficient for addressing a problem so vast and sneaky.
The anthology has its strengths and weaknesses of the anthologies are described in many different situations, with different registers (even if everyone in the journalistic style), with more or less empathy for persons described in (but not always no sentimentality), which contributes to the idea of \u200b\u200ba very multifaceted. Not clear however, in case anyone had expected, a thorough analysis of the AIDS problem in India, in addition to that proposed in the foreword by Amartya Sen.
One of the most interesting is to learn terminology (and all its facets) describing the complex world of sexuality, in a proliferation of terms, distinctions and acronomini: sex workers (not "prostitutes"), sex workers (MSW, Male Sex Worker), Men Who Have Sex with Other Men (MSM), gay, hijras , Kothi, panda ...