NACO Report 2017 estimates over 2.14 million people with HIV live in India. As elections sweep, the country and political engines get at each others' throats - here is an easy vote bank easily ignored. Maharashtra, Telangana, UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, TN and WB together constitute 75 percent population of people with HIV in India. Not coincidentally, these states also happen to be the largest Lok Sabha constituencies. Sigh! If only political parties raised their standards to be more inclusive of minorities side-tracked on the basis of sexuality, health, caste, identity, sectarianism, etc.
I have had the good fortune of talking to, counselling and being there for several people living with HIV+ since I came out in the open through my articles in YKA and Safe Masti. Every month, I get to talk to at least a handful of people who have recently found out about their own HIV statuses. They are scared, have no one to go to, and have no idea where to go - I relive my own journey of accepting my HIV status helping them accept theirs.
From people who don't use WhatsApp or email, to people who I have had to converse with using Google Translate because I do not speak / read Kannada, Telugu, Tamil or Bengali, to people who are married and are scared for the lives of their family and children, to highly educated designers, accountants, bankers, hoteliers, shop-owners, college students - I have been able to hear their fears and understand the inherent hatred that comes with the first realization that HIV has permanently changed your life. The richness of diversity I have been able to speak to have been painfully humbling. People from every and any walk of life you could think of, no matter how educated or uneducated, rich or poor, hailing from whichever region of India - have felt connected to each other through me - not because of their political inclinations - but because of their suffering, pain and facing of stigma. Each one unique, each one the same.
I do not speak only for myself. I also speak for the people I meet at the waiting areas of Safdarjung Hospital ART Center, the newly relocated and centrally located AIDS Health Foundation, the Monga Clinic in Galleria Gurugram, Medanta's Department of Virology's Specialist Dr Kataria, Virology Department of Microbiology in AIIMS - sullen faces with facial wasting smile at me knowingly, excessively lean arms on a large, thick frame waves a quiet hello of recognition, downcast-darkcircled eyes side-glance towards me as we both count the months that have passed since we visited the clinic at the same time, a rikshaw-puller sits beside me on a wooden chair waiting with empty bottles of Viraday in a pouch asking me if I, too, got HIV from a sex worker at GB road, two friends stand across the hall with sling bags hung loose on their bony shoulders whispering of MD, Heroin, Chitta, and some other drugs I could not overhear of, a 5'8'' heavy-built eunuch decked in a sari and traditional South-Indian jewellery is conversing loudly with a counsellor about the incorrect count of ART rationed to her, a nervous 21-year-old sits across me on the couch talking to someone in pseudo-American DPS-English, a married-couple stand at the reception desk with their young son failing to remember their file-numbers. Each of these chance "unencounters" becomes an impression in our collective sub-conscience - I know I am not alone battling life. We are connected by the tragedy of HIV in all it's many self-deprecating, debilitating, side-effect heavy life. We all have something common, a drug combination that is supplied mostly by Mylan and CIPLA. Even though each of our lives is vastly different, this common Virus with many different strands of rapid mutations reminds us of something else we have in common - OUR HUMANITY.
Here is a small lesson for the Gandhis, Mayawatis, Jayalalithas, the Patels, and the Rajputs who uphold a divided regional-identity above collective Global-Indian selfhood. Leadership should talk about how individual-insufficiencies can combine into a collective abundance. Remembering that, while we don't have enough individually, we have more than needed collectively. When we focus on completing, instead of competing with each other - we are moving forward collectively - as a people.
This is why I believe HIV is a greater equalizer than current-day sectarian-democracy. While political parties divide us to carve a vote bank out of us, HIV connects the people I meet at medical centres in this common shared experience of dealing with HIV - the discrimination, the fear of being discovered, and the concern for medication, and lifelong health.
HIV enables my fellow HIV positive citizens and me to set our differences, of caste, religion, regionality, our political views, socio-economic status, apart. HIV enables us to see ourselves as brothers and sisters. HIV fosters dialogue between people who are very different in their views, beliefs and experience of the world - to share, to talk and to listen to each other's stories.
My belief in the principals of democracy is made stronger since I became positive. Though my belief in Indian Politics is still undecided - partly because of polarized conflicts between groups of people. I am a group of people, too, the People Living with HIV (PLHIV) - and citizens of the world's largest Democracy.
Remember to vote, and hope, for better leaders to emerge.
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