Letters to Gary Engelberg, RIP

I have never seen Gary Engelberg or spoken with him He lived and worked far away in Dakar Senegal a corner of Francophone Africa Yet over five days in 1998 we had an intense profound email exchange in which 13800 words passed between Dakar and Delhi Clearing clutter last week I stumbled upon this astonishing trove of letters that lasted from September 28 to October 2 that yearNot for the first time in my life I had taken on a task for which I lacked training and experience I had been contracted by the United Nations Development Programme to develop an advocacy strategy for UNAIDS I had a streetwise understanding of HIV and AIDS and instinct more than expertise I had no idea what advocacy meant and had never written a strategyHIVAIDS had been sowing panic mayhem and chaos for nearly 17 years There was no cure no vaccine and no better advice than to wear condoms avoid sex with people whose HIV status you did not know not share needles and ensure that you didnrsquot receive infected blood in transfusions Those mindnumbing messages surrounded us like metronomes blunted through repetition bereft of meaningSomeone directed me to Gary Engelberg and I wrote him a short letter inviting him to share his Africa experiences Thus began a prolific heartfelt correspondence where nothing was sacrosanct and there were no rules I had more than many questionsA big one concerned the alarming projections being made about how AIDS would devastate India With a barebones surveillance system and no nationally coordinated system of datasharing between states I wondered what numbers drove the dire projections I learned that the World Bankrsquos calculations were based on countries they considered similar to India These ldquonearest neighboursrdquo were invariably Africa or ThailandBut Africa is a continent of 54 countries while Thailand is no bigger than a large Indian state Neither represents India Gary wrote of the need to understand the ldquoIndian epidemicrdquo and the link between Indiarsquos diverse cultural beliefs and the spread of HIV We spoke of viewing India as ldquoHIV jurisdictionsrdquo rather than political unitsOver two decades later those doomladen prognostications have not come true Surprisingly HIVrsquos prevalence in the worldrsquos most populous country remains at just 02 per centmdashand not because of a superlative communication campaignI was deeply troubled then and now by how selfish HIVAIDS messages were Protect yourself they seemed to sayldquoThere is something lonely about HIV messagesrdquo I wrote to Gary ldquoItrsquos each one for themselves Why donrsquot we promote condom protection because of the people who love and depend on you and whose lives would be deeply diminished by your absencerdquoldquoI feel I am dealing with a kindred spiritrdquo Gary wrote back ldquoAIDS does to the community what the virus does to the bodyrdquoWe spoke of the ldquoperceived distance between a person and the disease and how one could reduce it through the voices of ldquoconvertedrdquo individuals who understood the urgencyI cannot explain or understand why my communication with Gary ended so abruptly or why I never reconnected even after moving to AfricaldquoI am experiencing withdrawal symptomsrdquo he wrote to me on the fifth day ldquoCurious and uncontrollable longing for my daily letter from GopirdquoBut life pulled us down different riversI imagined Gary to be a cross between Gregory Peck and Einstein firm of jaw kind of face eyes that could put a room at ease and a way of listening beyond the words being spoken Triggered by my discovery of our letters I wondered where he was now two and a half decades laterHis email address pointed to Africa Consultants International whose website listed Gary as President and former ACI Director There was no photographMore Googling took me to Midwood High School in Brooklyn New York where Gary had graduated with the Class of 1961 He could not attend their 50year reunion in 2011 but there were two photos of him on the reunion web page The younger Gary definitely had that square jaw and to my delight the older one had all the sparkling kindness of EinsteinGary had fallen in love with Senegal which he reached as a Peace Corps English teacher and never left He believed the Senegalese had a cultural gift for conflict resolution among other strengths His book Learning to See captures some of his stories about this gentle wise countryI wrote to ACI to trace Garyrsquos whereabouts and received a reply within hours On August 12 2019 after battling serious illnesses for years Gary had left Senegal and become one with the starsI am filled with wonder and regret at this man who flitted in and out of my life like a passing angel and helped me refine my thinking in ways that informed the next two decades of my workOne of the eulogies captured his spirit perfectly ldquoGary was sweet gentle and passionate a giant like a baobab tree Baobabs donrsquot die when they fall They continue to nourish the earth and the people and enrich the cosmosrdquoYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper