Charge Through The Cappuccino

Presenting Calcutta’s Cafe Positive, where young HIV positive persons deliver a strongish brew.

- Dola Mitra in Calcutta

In a rain-splattered afternoon in Calcutta, three women, childhood friends now in their late forties, decide to meet for coffee. “But instead of the cafes where we usually catch up, we decided to drop in at this new joint everyone is talking about,” says Chandrima Chanda, a teacher, who travelled nearly 40 km from the north of the city to get to leafy and busy Jodhpur Park in south Calcutta, where on July 15 a new coffee shop unveiled its very special charms to the public.

Called Cafe Positive, the joint operates out of a garage, concaving its way into a 10-ft by 12-ft space in the wall. But the word ‘positive’ here takes on much more meaning than casual optimism. The new cafe is owned and managed by a group of young adults who are HIV positive. Diagnosed when they were children, they grew up in a shelter for the HIV-infected. Some were abandoned by families; others were orphaned and rendered homeless.

The brain behind the initiative is Kallol Ghosh, founder of OFFER (Organisation of Friends for Energies and Resources), a non-profit NGO which runs the shelter for the HIV positive children, called Ananda Ghar. It was started in 2000, 14 years after Ghosh founded OFFER. “We had opened homes for orphans and homeless children, as well as one for those suffering from mental disabilities,” Ghosh says. “During our work we stumbled upon many HIV positive children. Mostly, they were born with it, having contracted it from either or both parents. Often they were the children of sex workers or beggars and were also orphaned and homeless. They would land up in a children’s home or be left to fend for themselves on the streets. We realised HIV positive children needed special attention, including medical care, like access to the drug Anti-retroviral, without which their chances of survival would be slim.”