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THE CARE-WOMEN'S FEATURE SERVICE FELLOWSHIPS, 2008(Personal Account)
 | 'The lyrics acquire a personal meaning for the young boy singing so earnestly'
By Manipadma Jena
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We reach Berhampur in the evening on our way to Gopalpur where we will be staying. We visit the Community Care Centre for HIV/ AIDS patients at Bahadurpeta now run by Tata Steel Rural Development Society after NACO stopped funding the project. The project, now called Sathi, is housed in a two-storey building with 12 beds. The project started in 2006, but it took almost a year to get a house owner to agree to let it out for use by AIDS patients. All the beds are occupied and the patients - most are with their spouses - tell us about how their family members treat them. There's a nine-year-old girl whose mother asks seriously, "My daughter will get well, won't she?" The girl has fever all the time. We assure her, "Of course, she will. Keep giving her the medicine the doctor has asked you to." What else can one say? Both mother and daughter are HIV-positive. The father was in the Merchant Navy and had died of AIDS complications two years back.
The next day we start at eight. It's cool enough by the seaside, but gets much warmer as we move inland. We pick up our local contact person Sarbeswar of Nirmata, a local NGO, and Malini from the TATA Rehabilitation Colony. We meet Sita Pradhan, 40, an ex-sarpanch, active in motivating women.
Next it is Sitalapalli village, which looks certainly quite prosperous. One can count three open community halls in a row; one attached to a temple. All buildings are coloured bright and have common walls. But they are also coloured differently to maintain identity. Someone's house could be just 10-ft wide and have the narrowest staircase to an upper floor. We sit at the house of Sandhya Rani Mohanty, the president of Maa Santoshi SHG. She was in the cowshed and says she has two pairs of milch buffaloes bought with a loan of Rs 16,000 that she got through an SHG.
In conversation, we ask if women are able to suggest to a visiting (migrant) husband that he use a condom. They can, she assures us, but have to use a pretext - either that they do not want children or that they have not been taking oral contraceptives. But, with 85 per cent of the men (and young male adults) hooked on liquor (available in convenient pouches of Rs 5 in village betel shops), it is sometimes difficult to get male cooperation. At the end of our trip we meet an aging sex worker (with no designated brothel area it is difficult to create awareness), who works at a construction site. She explains why women like her are more concerned about avoiding pregnancies than they are about getting infected with HIV. Condoms are not a big hit with them.
We move on to meet Koma Mohanty. When we reach Koma's house, we spot a small group of children playing hopscotch. They inform us that Koma is at the village pond for her bath and would be back soon. A girl in her early teens, with her two plaits neatly folded and tied with red ribbons, steps up and the others introduce her as Koma's daughter. Niranjan, Koma's youngest child looks 10, but he is in the seventh standard, so that makes him around 12 years old, explains headmaster Krushna Chandra Das, who is accompanying us. Niranjan's father went for work to Surat some 10-12 years before he died of HIV/AIDS in 2006. Niranjan is healthy, apparently not infected at birth. As a little boy he has seen his father progressively sinking and finally dying. The stigma of belonging to an 'HIV/AIDS family' - when his mother too was diagnosed with the disease - could not but have played havoc with his mental state. More so because he was too young to understand what this ostracism and boycott was really all about. Soon after this, his elder brother hanged himself from a tree because villagers made him believe that he too was infected. His mother, like his father, is deteriorating before his very eyes and will die. This much he understands.
How does he, a mere child, see his future? His maternal grandfather is a support but much of this support is dependent on the wishes of his three maternal uncles and aunts who live with him. When Koma dies, will the family's obligation towards the children undergo a change? How much of this does Niranjan understand? He has a somewhat muted, but distinctly petrified, look in his eyes. But he is a child; he plays and forgets; and studies hard. He secured 65 per cent aggregate in his final examinations this March. For rural schools, where 40 per cent is a broad norm, this is an achievement.
Niranjan has a mellifluous voice too; he leads the school morning prayer group. His headmaster encourages him to sing something for us. Niranjan sings a devotional song, 'O dearest Friend, I will never leave you; but you are on the other side, how will I reach you?', he sings. The lyrics acquire a personal meaning for the young boy singing so earnestly, as he tries to deal with life - and death.
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