The Global India Fund

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Sarah Freeman
April 2, 2007
202-994-8874
mcmsxf@gwumc.edu








GW Medical Center Professor Joins Hollywood Actress to Raise Awareness of HIV

Washington, DC— In an effort to raise awareness of HIV among those at risk in India, Amita Vyas, PhD, assistant professor in the department of Prevention and Community Health at the GW School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) joined Hollywood actress Ashley Judd and YouthAIDS/Population Services International (PSI) on a mission to Mumbai, India. With a population of more than one billion, it is estimated that at least 5.7 million people in India are infected with HIV, the world’s largest number of HIV infected persons.

The National Geographic Chanel filmed this Indian mission, which will air as an hour long special on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2007, in more than 170 countries and to more than 200 million households around the world. The documentary starring Ashley Judd and Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen focuses on the complex relationships between women’s rights and empowerment on HIV. Women and children are increasingly becoming vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and it estimated that 38 percent of infected persons in India are women. The male to female ratio of HIV infected people has shifted in recent years. In 2001 there were 55 HIV infected females to every 100 HIV infected males. Just four years later in 2005, it was reported there were 60 HIV infected females to every 100 HIV infected males. This indicates the increasing feminization of HIV/AIDS in India. “The empowerment of girls and women is an essential tool to preventing the HIV/AIDS emergency from exploding any further,” Ashley Judd told reporters in India.




The delegation spent one week in Mumbai, India’s financial capital and home to Bollywood, a Hindi language film industry in India. Dr. Vyas visited and spoke with commercial sex workers, in Kamthipura. She also spent time in Dharvi, the largest slum in Asia and she observed PSI/India’s HIV prevention programs such as street theater, help lines, and social marketing of condoms. Dr. Vyas spent time at voluntary counseling and testing centers for sex workers and their male clients. In Mumbai, approximately 5,000 sex workers reside, and an estimated 45 percent are HIV positive.

The mission was complimented with a series of high-level meetings and receptions with Mumbai’s corporate leaders and the entertainment industry, to develop creative partnerships in the prevention of HIV. “Public-private partnerships are the key to combating public health issues such as HIV in India. The Indian-American community has the power and potential to join forces in a meaningful way to build the capacity of NGOs in India who are saving lives,” said Dr. Vyas. “We need to be ‘smart’ donors and provide support for evidence-based programs in the public health sector of India. We have the ability, resources and most importantly the compassion and courage to make a difference.”

The George Washington University Medical Center is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary academic health center that has consistently provided high-quality medical care in the Washington, DC metropolitan area for 176 years. The Medical Center comprises the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the 11th oldest medical school in the country; the School of Public Health and Health Services, the only such school in the nation’s capital; GW Hospital, jointly owned and operated by a partnership between The George Washington University and Universal Health Services, Inc.; and the GW Medical Faculty Associates, an independent faculty practice plan. For more information on GWUMC, visit www.gwumc.edu.




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for the sake of the name

Friday night (3/16) I saw the Namesake at BAM. I'm not generally one for writing a movie review but this one struck a chord. So I can at least give it that much credit...it made me feel compelled to respond to it, even if just in my small unread blog-like way. Any chord. Most of the people I went with (who were mainly indo-American) didn't like the film...calling it a sell-out, cliché, and creatively defunct. I don't totally disagree but I do think that there is another side to consider.

The movie is based on a cliche theme. Bi-cultural, identity questioning, ABCDs. It was a popular theme (and a somewhat failed genre emerging in the late 1990's) that has passed its time. The ABCD experience has evolved...there are now 3rd and 4th generations popping up and those that have recently arrived from the motherland are coming to a "new" America....a place where, for the most part, people know what curry is, have seen an Indian woman in a sari and recognize the difference between American Indians and Indian Americans...(I'd like to emphasize FOR THE MOST PART..although maybe being born and raised on the East coast and living NYC has me jaded). But just because the theme is a more dated one, doesn't mean that movies, books, music, etc exploring this theme can't be fresh. In fact, I think that exploring these themes still do shed light on a topic that many people still don't understand. So, this is where my positive nod to the movie comes....the namesake is what it is. it explores a dated theme in a dated manner (although I wish it was explored in a fresh manner). It is the best ABCD movie that has been produced (on a large scale) to date (in comparison to American Desi, ABCD, etc etc). It isn't breathtaking, but maybe it's not meant to be. It lacks in strongly developing any characters and relationships, but maybe the America (read: white) audience that it was made for can't handle going too deep when dealing with a "foreign culture." 95% of the audience at BAM was non-Indian. When I went to see Mira Nair and Jhumpa Lahiri speak at the Barnes and Nobles in Union Square the week the movie opened, the audience was amazingly ethnically mixed...but then again, it was still predominantly white. And I don't say this to be negative, racist, etc...in fact, I think the opposite. I think that Nair and Lahiri have done a great job with illustrating a very standard immigrant experience to a larger mass-market audience....in a very standard way...again, it is what it is.

As far as the actual acting goes, I think that Tabu (Ashima) and Irrfan Khan (Ashoke) were true to their art, sincere and convincing. I appreciated (and actually wanted more of) the focus on Ashima (as opposed to the book which focuses on Gogol). It would have been more satisfying to see a deeper view of Ashima and Ashoke's relationship, which is so rich and meaningful. But they were both, hands-down, what makes this movie special and worth it.

Visually, the movie was well done..that is, of course, Nair's strong suit. She has that "slice-of-life" style that is visually engaging...her use of colors, framing and shot angles were captivating (sometimes, a few too many close ups of Kal Penn though)....and musically, Nitin Sawhney was amazing (as usual). I found the editing to be jumpy and it lacked a fluid thread. I realize that it's extremely challenging to boil down a 30 year old saga to 2 hours, which makes editing that much more important. I just think that there large chunks of missing time pieces or scenes that were cut too short...while at the same time, there were many scenes that were too long, dragged out and/or unnecessary.

So is it worth the $10 to go see this movie in the theater?..ABSOLUTELY...suppoort the brown people and their art, I say. For me, it the film wasn't the life-changing/inspiration story it had the potential to be...but it was entertaining and holds its ground as a higher-quality indo-America film...along the lines of an American romantic-comedy....

and there you have it. long, sorry, i know...

Test

This is a moblog test

the blackberry pearl

the title probably assumes that this post is a phone review, which it kind of is. but it is also a review of what went wrong on Friday night. i started the night cheering to health and happiness with most of my closest friends at a delicious Brazilian restaurant in tribeca, Churrascaria TriBeCa.

the food was amazing. my good friend's parents took a bunch of us there for a nice dinner out. all in all, things were going amazingly well. the night ended pretty late with me being thrown out of a yellow cab with nothing but my house keys, several blocks from my apartment in an area that i shouldn't be strolling down late night. everything was gone, my digital camera, brand new samsung blackjack phone, wallet and EVEN my eye glasses. so i blindly started booking it down the street to a friend's house. all in all, perhaps my scariest night in nyc. while it's sad and financially crappy that I lost all of those things, they were just that, things....all in all, i came out of it lucky. what disturbs me more is the blurriness of how that happened. i don't just lose things. anyhow, the details are besides the point..well, because i don't know the details...i was blind.

so i couldn't bare to buy another blackjack. instead i bought the new blackberry pearl. i didn't HAVE to go so over-the-top with the phone purchase but i hear that shopping can be therapeutic and when you're a gadget freak like me, shiny cell phones DO make one feel better.

The Pearl has several amazing features including the pearl trackball, easy email set-up, customizable screens, etc...pretty much everything you need in a phone/mp3 player/PDA. i find the actual navigation much more friendly and sensible in comparison to the blackjack. the keyboard, while a little strange and compact is just fine and in fact, i prefer the style of the Pearl's keyboard to the blackjack.

it's unfortunate that i had to be robbed in order to realize which is the better cell phone...ha...i joke, because what else can i do about the situation now?

clothes

If you think you have it bad.

a quick post..just saw this video (click line above). it's breathtaking...and not in a good way. after watching it, i had a pit in my stomach. the little girl just wanted her clothes and they were burned. i'm no expert and probably can't speak very eloquently about the issues surrounding the palestine/israel problem. but i do know that to see the suffering that these kids have to go through is just plain sad. i don't know the source of the video so I can't speak to its credibility. but i don't think you can question the faces of these kids.

it's just haunting.

web 2.0

cliche, i know. web 2.0 communication technologies utilized in a social networking context through the contributions of user generated content via wikis, video, audio and photo blogs.

HA!

anyhow, i've come across a few interesting web 2.0 sites that i'm posting here...more for my own reference (since i'm pretty sure that no one else is reading this):

www.last.fm (i.e. wiki audio)

www.yelp.com (i.e. local guide to nyc)

www.vimeo.com (i.e. video)

more later (i just happen to be looking at these today)

colonialism is common

[this is a very delayed post...but]

rented a house in the catskills over the fall with a bunch of good friends. Note to self: bad time to rent a house in the catskills. the leaves had already fallen, it was cold and not in a pretty "wintry" way, and the lake behind the house was "drained." Anyhow, sitting around the campfire at night, this is what came of our conversation:



Fireside Chats on Vimeo

here is the transcript if you can't understand the voices:

voice #1: [the Scottish] survived 800 years of horrific rape and domination

voice #2: waddaya gonna do. it's gotta happen to everyone.