Have you watched the Modern Family Season 2 trailer on Star World?
Ever watched an episode of Family Guy? Here’s a trailer on FOX to give you an idea what you’re missing.
What about this Kit Kat sponsored Planet Bollywood programme on Rani Mukherji’s hot new avatar?
Now juxtapose these with the discussions on our conservative culture in the region.
What is really conservative about us? What does conservative even mean to us?
Most often, especially in the business of …

Recently there was a High Level Meeting at the UN on HIV & AIDS.
Our very own Milinda was present and if you are part of our facebook community you would have received regular updates from him on the talking business that impacts the doing business. You would have also noticed that statements and declarations and resolutions continue to emerge in its aftermath underpinning the power of the spoken… recorded word. Friday’s historic resolution on sexual orientation and gender …

You know that funny-peculiar feeling as opposed to funny-ha ha… well these last two weeks this funny peculiar feeling has surfaced and is poking around my insides… discomforting. Disrupting.
The sources for this feeling are multiple… or should that read Legion? Perhaps funny-peculiar feelings have always been called demons.
These demons nonetheless assemble neatly under the umbrella question – are we doing enough?
Are we doing enough to give people living with HIV in Sri Lanka the tools …

On Saturday night I was invited to judge a Drag Queen competition, which was ostensibly part of Colombo Model Week (no such thing apparently) according to the flex banner that served as a backdrop. The venue was what could only be called a seedy hotel in Mount Lavinia – and seed must have spilled liberally that night, hopefully there were latex receptacles available. Mount Lavinia is not Mirihana. Yet.
I was seated next to former beauty …

When I was based in India, HIV infected everything I did professionally and into what was left of my personal life. My little one room apartment was a far cry from the escape it should have been, it was all too often a meeting room where HIV still clung to us and seeped into every discussion; lucid, dark or deranged.
The related issues of drug and alcohol use, sex work, homosexuality, young people at risk, poverty, gender …

 
These last couple of days I have been thinking about god again.
Conversations on eternal damnation can do that…
This morning I read The rise of Europe’s religious right and how women’s rights and gay rights are under threat, and I thought how fucking brilliant they were to come up with hell.  How much more deliciously evil can it get? Use our fears against us, weave them in to this tapestry of suffering and torment for always. …

This was my Friday night. A stag night. Think antlers clacking and proud-chests-out strutting. Men descended on a sweaty obscure dive to watch and dance with two willing Iranian girls and of course, the gaggle of boys that had dressed up as girls… that danced like girls, and believed they were girls on the inside.
The Iranians soon had their mock belly-dancing kits off and the pack of wolves watching howled to the moon. White shivering …

To learn how HIV is contracted is not difficult. All you need to know is that there are 4 body fluids that can infect you. 4 body fluids that need to get into your blood stream through a cut, wound, puncture, abrasion, STD, broken skin rash. That’s it. That’s how easy it is.
The 4 body fluids are of course blood, breast milk, semen and vaginal fluids and their derivatives.
Recently two Grassrooted interns were at a HIV prevention …

What is it about us that allows us to think it is ok for a man to hit a woman?
Evolution and psychology have answers. As does social theory. Power, learnt behaviour,  patriarchy, religion, culture, conditioning, impotence…
Is there anything left to say? Is there any reason to continue with this discussion? We actually have answers. We have explanations as to why a man would close his fist and break her teeth and shred her lips.
But something …

If I get drunk, come home, and slap my wife for overcooking the rice… that’s pretty despicable. No?
If I am going to slap her, I should do it when she deserves a slap, not overcooked rice. That’s just ugly despicable. Not even pretty.
So what would she need to do to deserve a slap, a kick, a punch in the mouth? Surely we need to develop some clear guidelines on this. We need to form a …