This is a chronicle of the life of an HIV infected woman. If you think AIDS only afflicts the penniless, drug addicts and promiscuous, forget it. You could be its next victim
Yashodha is on the road to hell. She has tested HIV positive, has a broken marriage and has lost her month-old baby. All within a dramatic five-year period.
Yashodha comes from a family of three sisters, she being the second. "My mother is not very well off," she explains. "My elder sister got married and left home and my younger sister was studying. So I had to work." She began working with a Mangalorean family who later sent her to Mumbai to work with their relatives. "I soon left them," she says, and continues bright-eyed, "instead, I joined a hospital where I received a much higher salary."
She made many new friends in the hospital and one of them happened to be Anna. Yashodha remembers, "He was someone I trusted a lot. I had no family and his family
had no girl child." Anna's family took on the responsibility of getting Yashodha married and did so promptly to a young lad.
The seventeenth year of Yashodha's life was fruitful. A great job at the hospital, good friends, smashing shoes and clothes and a good husband. Things seemed to be looking up. "I didn't know much about my husband before I married him," she says, "but I trusted Anna. Soon after the wedding, however, my husband began showing his true colours. He used to drink heavily and was a ruthless womaniser. If I ever questioned him about these things, he would batter me soundly. It was unbearable." With a note of sarcasm and bitterness flooding her eyes, she asks, "How would you feel if you were to see your husband transgress before your very eyes?"
Three years later, Yashodha conceived. Like many women, she thought the baby would save the future. In jubilation, she returned to Bangalore to visit her mother and kid sister who came back with her to Mumbai, hoping to lend a hand around the house since Yashodha was carrying. The shocking state of Yashodha's marriage made her take Yashodha back to her home in Bangalore. Yashodha recalls, "she told me that maybe I could survive with a man like my husband but the baby should be brought into the world minus the pain."
By now, money reserves had run dry and Yashodha was five months pregnant.
Her mother was in Bhadravathi and she couldn't go there. The dutiful sister moved
her to a women's hostel. A routine medical check-up brought Yashodha's world to a
grinding halt. Yashodha, thanks to her husband and his womanising, had tested
HIV positive. Undoubtedly, she had contracted the virus from her husband. The
results sent the hostel into a panic. "Those were the worst days of my life," she says
sadly. "The moment they found out, my food was served in a banana leaf and kept
outside on the floor."
For the first time during the course of this interview, she begins to cry. Then,
wiping her tears, she says resolutely, "That was a long time back." The hysterical hostel
authorities dumped her in an ashram. "At that time, I didn't know what was happening. I knew that I was sick with something deadly. I wanted to kill myself. The baby? It
would go too. I had no right to make it suffer." Then the ashramites heard about 'Freedom Foundation', a voluntary organisation that cares for substance abuse patients and people infected with the HIV virus. "Coming here has been a boon," she says. "I was eight months pregnant by then and I needed help."
At the foundation she delivered a baby girl, Namrata, who worked her way into the hearts of the other ashramites instantly. Ironically, Namrata was her symbol of hope!
Yashodha's joy on becoming a mother was, however, shortlived as she soon learnt that her baby too had the virus. Namrata began falling ill and had to be admitted to the
hospital on and off. It was prolonged terror for Yashodha. Finally, one evening, a month after she was born, the delicate, diminutive Namrata breathed her last. The jolt stupefied Yashodha. She had seen it coming but that didn't help. Does she feel resentment towards her husband? "No," she smiles, "There is no use. Life is so uncertain, you can't count on it. There is just no time to wallow in self-pity."
At the centre, the patients are given plenty of support and reassurance. Ashok Rau an executive trustee of Freedom Foundation, says, "The dictum here is: We know you are going to die. But that doesn't mean you are going to die today. We are here to help patients die with dignity."
To provide a better understanding and acceptance of the disease, the centre helps build a coping system, which includes peer group support and a belief in god. Is spiritual faith an active ingredient in the coping system? Karl Sequeira, another executive trustee of the foundation, seems to think so. He says, "It helps by way of comfort. This soothes the person and lowers stress levels. This is important because stress accelerates the route from HIV to full blown AIDS."
Yashodha is now counselled at the medical, social, intellectual, physical and emotional levels. Has she had any contact with her husband ever since? "I received many letters from him asking me to come back," she says. "When baby died, I called him and informed him about the reason for her death. I was very calm and told him to take care." She then looks up with rancour and continues, "Do you know what he said? He alleged that I had passed the virus on to him! At that point, I went crazy and began yelling at him. Talking to him really upsets me and that's not good for me, so the authorities here don't allow me to call him any more."
She tells us that her husband has remarried. "I don't care anymore," she says in resignation. "All I want is for him to stop spreading it this way. When I think of my baby it really hurts. It's the only thing that can get me down." The inmates at the centre have now been joined by more HIV positive people, some of whom have children who are infected. Yashodha hugs a four-year-old HIV infected child and says, "Look at these kids, what do they know? Even schools will not admit them. It's very sad." Unfortunately, most people don't seem to differentiate between HIV and AIDS.
The basic problem facing us is that we are pathetically ignorant about AIDS and reluctant to tell the truth about it. The day is not far when children in schools are going to be hand in hand with other infected kids whose parents are either too ashamed to reveal the truth or too ignorant. Yashodha highlights a relevant point and just wishes that people would open their minds. "I wish people would talk about it, get better informed than I was. It's catching up faster than we know. I don't want anyone to be as gullible as I was, ever,'' she pleads. There is no use of hiding anything. It won't go away if you ignore it.
Today, though Yashodha keeps getting colds and fevers more frequently than before and her immune system is weakening, her enthusiasm for life is infectious. A volunteer at the foundation, Yashodha helps with counselling and provides strength to other HIV parents who have infected kids. At a recent fund raising show in the city, she stood before a sizable audience and told her story with an underlying warning. She hopes it will change attitudes, if not lives. For a woman who was afraid to even talk to men, she has come a long way. ''It would be nice'' she says ''if they could learn from my experience instead of experiencing all I am going through themselves.
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