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AIDS epidemic is waning, when nothing could be further from the truth. Every day brings 15,000 new infections and one in four of those is Indian. Yet no disaster is declared. These people endure a silent disaster every day.

I met this family when I traveled to the state of Andhra Pradesh in March 2007. Abraham Mutluri, Programme Coordinator with the non-profit organization Vasavya Mahila Mandali (VMM), explained how Vambay Colony sprung up two and a half years ago, almost overnight, as thousands of people from the surrounding rural villages migrated to Vijayawada for work and began setting up camps along the canals. Soon the government built 8,000 of the small concrete boxes like the one Durgamma and her two grandsons live in, right up next to each other in row after endless row.

Dusty, narrow lanes wound between concrete bunkers perhaps ten feet wide that lined the dirt roads without a break. Some of these homes had ladders propped in front of them, evidence that residents were attempting to expand their minuscule living quarters by taking advantage of the flat rooftop space. Overhead electrical wires criss-crossed and hung down haphazardly, trailing the ground in some places. Lines of clothing hung out to dry stretched between buildings, the faded fabrics flapping in the breeze above the weeds. In spots here and there flowers had been planted, small circles of hope where yellow marigolds and orange gladiolas fought for space in the rocky earth.

The car was parked and we got out, Abraham leading me to Durgamma's home. The people were far less interested in this foreign visitor than anywhere else I had been in India, giving me no more than a cursory glance. They seemed too preoccupied with chores and tasks at hand, or simply too tired to care. The place was eerily quiet, no music or chattering, no cars beeping by.

There seemed no such thing as sanitation or hygiene in Vambay. Children squatted by the side of the road to defecate. Other children played with simple things on the front stoops or in the small lanes a dirty ball, two or three jacks. The homes were dark and poorly ventilated, no more than concrete lockers, each an arm's length from the next. In front of each doorway ran an open sewer which one must step over to enter the house. The flies were incredible, swarms of them everywhere, an incessant presence. Bowls of food and open bags of grain sat around, with no refrigeration and very little storage space. I thought of the flies and how they must

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