Before the show

Before the show, originally uploaded by psychodelicat.

Ruma, Kalpana, Shefali, three amazing teenagers I had the opportunity to get to know this past week. All three of them live in Purulia, a poor, remote district in West Bengal. They are all Peer Educators working on HIV/AIDS prevention programs in their villages.
Ruma and Shefali were part of my 'youth reporters' team and helped produce a daily newspaper for the convention in Bangalore. The convention brought together 380 young people from 8 states in India, all trained as peer educators to bring the message of HIV prevention to their peers, mostly young people who have dropped out of school and whose vulnerability to HIV is considerable. Kalpana, in the middle, was part of the photo-documentation team; she was given a camera for the first time twelve days ago. She has produced some amazingly well composed pictures. I found myself observing her relationship with cameras; there was something casual in it, familiar, without artifice, without noise.
Here, posing just before they perform a traditional folk dance.