AIDS, adoption and ipods

A few things that have been disturbing me over the last week or so… random, casual lines heard or read, images that make me shudder every time I think of them, attitudes that make me despair… they pop up at inconvenient times, little imps that dance in my mind, those morsels I have not been able to swallow or throw out…

Just finished reading Dr. Abraham Vergehese’s book My Own Country (picked this up based on a faint memory of something I had read on Uma’s blog ages ago) and the after-taste refuses to go away. The book is a doctor’s account of facing and fighting with AIDS deep inside the bible belt of the USA. I found it a humane and honest narrative of the early years of AIDS from a doctor who is involved, compassionate and finally finds that he is living with the disease too, not in exactly the way his patients are but the disease takes over all his waking and sleeping moments…

Here is a line that got me thinking… Gay may have been what he did but it wasn’t who he was… ( a patient’s sister)… What a person does only a part of what he really is – how many of us are able to separate the two this way?

I keep reading reports about misconceptions about the virus and the disease, stigma and basic ignorance… More than twenty years after the disease first reared its head, the stigma remains… Like one of Verghese’s patients who saw himself (and his wife) as innocent victims who had been infected through a blood transfusion. And by extension, other victims not so innocent…? got what they deserved…

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From a link ammani forwarded me a long time ago…
That to me is like is stealing someone’s baby and claiming adoption. Nothing wrong with it at all, but do not say it is your baby — that’s insulting the kid and hiding your inability to produce one yourself .

And then says the author, (The above para has been altered to avoid more comments from my ‘holier-than-Thou’ readers)

And that is the altered version. Read the original version…

‘That to me is like is adopting a kid. Nothing wrong with it at all, but do not say it is your baby — that’s insulting the kid and hiding your inability to produce one yourself.’

Oh, the inability to produce a child… here we go again… do adopt a child, nothing wrong with it (thanks) but don’t call it your own… yeah, right.

And this is not in any treatise on adoption or child bearing. These are lines thrown casually and callously into a review of the movie Zinda by journalist Sudhish Kamath who writes for the Hindu. Like there is not enough prejudice in the country already against adoption…

I know this was a long time ago but this post on caesarean deliveries on Sujatha’s blog and some of the comments on the post put me in mind of this again… (no specific reference to any one of the comments here)

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And finally, the nightmare of development agencies, well-meaning and clueless donors… There, I have cleaned out my cupboard and conscience at the same time…

[through gizmodo]

I am thinking about the glut of old clothes donated during the tsunami relief efforts and about the 100 dollar laptop (much as Abi and I agree to disagree on our respective faith in leapfrogging development)…