city of nawabs

I write this from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh
The city of nawabs who probably invented
and indulged in eating kababs.

It's a place which fills me with an awesome sense of history
and the mingling of cultures blend together to give you a feeling of
beauty, motion, and at times other-worldliness.

Of course, it's going to be five days of work
mainly cooped up in a large room
absorbing inputs on how to effectively put together a programme
that will help empower the most marginalised of our population:
non-heterosexual effeminate males ...
how do we put together an enabling environment
that provides information and services to
help them combat the HIV infection in a society
that uses all its powers to render them invisible.

But Lucknow has its rewards... more on that later.