Though he is one of the most celebrated and awarded music icons, Sir Elton John’s greatest gift has been his HIV/AIDS work that has offered hope to millions across the world. His book, Love is the Cure tells this journey, often in a more statistical way like a corporate script for his foundation, but many a times with real life anecdotes that cause a lump in your throat and a clutch at your heart.
The book shares Elton John’s close association with a host of celebrities Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, Freddie Mercury, Billie Jean King, Larry Kramer and HIV/AIDS advocates like Mathilde Krim, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and others and looks at how they have worked together in a concerted effort towards supporting work on HIV/AIDS research, intervention and care.
Elton John is honest about his addiction to cocaine, booze and food; and his wallowing with a coterie who pleased his ego. He admits that he knew the ravages of the AIDS epidemic around him, but he admits to be a passive bystander to the calamity. He would go to funeral after funeral of his friends who died of AIDS — feel even genuinely sad, bereaved and anguished — but would never do anything apart from immersing himself in another binge of drugs and food once again. It is only after he kicked his own addictions at a rehab centre, did he start thinking of how he could help HIV-positive people. From beginning as a volunteer, delivering food packets to homes of HIV-positive persons to performing at celebrity fundraisers; to finally starting the iconic Elton John AIDS Foundation — one of the world’s biggest grantmaker having raised and donated $275 million to date — Sir Elton John’s personal journey is astonishing.
The book talks about stigma and discrimination faced by certain group of people — like gays, drug users, rape victims. John enumerates with many personal poignant stories how for these people, being HIV-positive leads to double discrimination. He looks at HIV/AIDS work in many parts of the world, including USA, UK, Thailand, Haiti, South Africa, Ukraine and other countries; especially where his foundation works with local networks and partners. While the initial chapters portray a grim and hopeless picture, the closing chapter present the wonderful progress made in HIV/AIDS research and the positive possibilities they offer, including the discovery in 2011 that people living with HIV who receive treatment are upto 96 per cent less likely to pass on the virus to a sexual partner. This means that current treatments are so effective they reduce the presence of virus in an infected person’s body to almost nil. Thus the chance of infecting others diminishes greatly, meaning ‘treatment is also prevention’. John says, “By giving medication to every single person living with HIV/AIDS in the world today — or even most everyone — we can prevent tens of millions of future infections.”
In the closing chapter, with the enthusiasm of a young child, he writes buoyantly “Can you imagine that? An AIDS-free world. The very thought makes my heart leap. And it’s entirely within our grasp. This isn’t a fairy tale; it’s really, truly possible. We can cure this disease without a cure. We can AIDS with love.”
The book Love Is the Cure is special for this very reason. For Elton John’s childlike innocence and enthusiasm and his firm belief that change is possible by collective action. He has set an example and led the way. The only thing that perhaps takes you away from the book is the fact that it talks primarily about the work undertaken by Elton John AIDS Foundation in different parts of the world; everything is seen through the perspective of this work and every story is told in connection with the Foundation. Though it could possibly be seen as inspirational for many HIV/AIDS activists working on similar issues across the world, it often reads like a propagandist book. However Elton John does redeem it by juxtaposing it with his own personal story. This makes it interesting and gripping. I for one, having seen the HIV/AIDS work done among gay and transgender communities in India over the past two decades, was moved and inspired. However I really hoped the writing style had more of Elton John’s innate charisma, wit, flamboyance and campyness. But then maybe that’s another book — an autobiography, may be. I will wait for that one eagerly.