Getting our bearings

After being stranded in Kuwait for a 6-hour delay, we landed safely in Mumbai by mid-morning on Saturday. The monsoons unleashed a torrential rain to greet us at the airport, flooding EVERYTHING.

There has been no time to feel jet lagged. For the first time ever, I (and Srinivas) managed to stay awake till midnight Mumbai time to place me firmly in this timezone. We stayed with a photo editor at the Times of India, who introduced us to several people working on HIV issues in some capacity. One person he told us about–who we have yet to meet–is a Fulbright scholar studying the impact of being HIV+ on the relationship between mothers and their children. We hope to meet her soon for an interview.

On Sunday morning, we left for Hyderabad where we have arranged to spend time at an HIV/AIDS clinic. We will be traveling with an organization to rural villages as where they are conducting some outreach programs. Back soon with some photos and audio.

The journey begins…

When we land in Bombay on June 23, we plan to stay with a friend of Srinivas’s (another photographer) who lives in a colony for journalists in Chembur (a section of Bombay). This trip is already shaping up to be so different than any previous trip to India for me when i would usually stay with relatives and attend weddings. I am looking forward to hearing Indian journalists’ perspective on the coverage of AIDS there and around the world.

Stereotypes

At the South Asian Journalists Association convention this past week, I had an opportunity to hear Ross Kauffman (2005 Oscar winner for “Born into Brothels“) and Roberto Romano (”Stolen Childhoods“) speak about the filming and editing process of their documentaries. I also heard Shahidul Alam, a leading Bangladeshi photojournalist, talk about his experience taking photographs of Muslims, and other South Asian people.

What struck me about the work of Kauffman and Alam work overall, is that they showed children in their own environment–doing what they do–and they let that do the talking about their conditions rather than any heavy-handed images of people suffering. Alam was especially sensitive about showing “Brown” people living their lives rather than showing them the way the Western media normally wants to see them: almost always in dramatic images of suffering.

Srinivas and I also hold that it is best to show the richness of people’s daily lives, the kind we see in the smallest interaction. The trick will be to balance that with the global implications that are winding their way into the issue…weaving it in so people can contrast the daily lives with the social and economic politicis in the background.

We met our fundraising goal

Thanks to the generosity of complete strangers, friends of friends, friends and family, we have met our fund raising goals.

Apart from the financial support, one has offered to lend us his professional grade video recording equipment; others have put us in contact with their sources on the ground.

We will shortly post a thank you note for all those who have provided support.

The effectiveness of a grassroots campaign

In an age when information is equal to power, corporations are more than ever sensitive to their brand image. We hope to accomplish something similar with the WTO as Amit Srivastava has accomplished againt Coke. This article ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal this week:

Virtual Battle: How a Global Web of Activists Gives Coke Problems in India
Mr. Srivastava Uses Internet To Fuse Protest Groups; Court Order on Pesticides
Company Sees ‘Brandjacking’

You can find a PDF of the entire article here.

I don’t know enough about the Coke case to know if all the statistics used by both sides are supported by the facts, but the article does underscore the effectiveness of such an Internet-based campaign.

But as journalist and photo-journalist team, we think it critical that we present the stories of people whose lives have been altered by the new patent law. The project’s goal is to bring the concept of oral history into the digital multimedia age.

Narrowing the departure dates

Looks like Srinivas and Sandeep will leave for India around June 23 and return a month later. We are booked on Kuwait Air (the cheapest tickets we could find). We have to pay for the tickets by Monday, June 6.