Bring Back The Smile To Ismail

Ismail is a 6 years old boy. He recently has lost his mother. His father and he lives with his two uncles and their families and grand parents. Ismail normally does not stay at home when his father is away. Because his Aunts do not allow him to play with his cousins or let him enter their room. They say Ismail has some disease which his cousins will also get. The lonely boy travels near the pond, catches the grasshoppers in the field, watches the birds in the gardens.

During some lonely afternoons he even talks to his mother. His mother appears in front of him in her black burque and watches him play alone. Ismail often asks her many things, but she never replies.

Ismail’s father Rafiq worked as motor mechanic near the highway. Whatever money he saved were spent on the medication and hospital charges of Fatima, his wife, who was suffering since long due to an infection in her ovary.

Doctors suggested an operation, finally, during the preparation of the operation it came out in blood tests that she is HIV positive, and same was the case with Rafiq and Ismail.

The hospital demanded more than double of the actual expense of the operation because according to them the machines which will be used for Fatima’s operation will have to be destroyed since she was HIV positive. Rafiq was unable to afford this added expense.

Fatima died in hospital unattended.

Ismail has been thrown out of school, Rafiq also has lost his job.

HIV and AIDS and the Rajnat people

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nxm_yDqL7U&feature=related

She loughs…..she lives…..she loves……

Puja decided to accompany her husband when her husband Ramakant an agricultural laborer from Uttar Pradesh found it difficult to survive in their village and on advice of a friend decided to migrate to Navsari to work as an auto rickshaw driver.

Puja has started to work in diamond industry about 10 years have passed. They have bought their own home at the outskirt of the town and brought Ramakant’s parents from the village to live with them.

Things have been going on well until last year when Puja was badly ill. She got Malaria and Tuberculosis together doctors also found some kidney disorders. After many check ups doctors suggest to have a HIV test done. They find her as HIV positive. They suggest Ramakant and his child to have the same test done. They come out to be negative.

Life has become miserable for Puja since then. Now she has started to wake up every morning with a hope that today the death will come to her but it does not. Her in laws and husband accuse her of being unfaithful to them and keeping physical relations with other men. They torture her physically and mentally.

Our society is not mature enough to accept women getting this kind of a virus not from her husband but from some where else. When ever we meet some positive woman first thing we ask her is what about your husband? If the reply comes he is negative immediately some wrinkles appear on our forehead. They look like of concern but actually they are of surprise.

Puja’s husband does not provide for her medicine and food. Puja works as housemaid she has been running here and there for quit a few month for getting free medicine. But since she is on second line of medicine from the beginning nobody provides for her medicine. As a reason some months she can afford ART some months she can not.

This lady of around 35 laughs all the time. I tried to make her cry, I asked tempting questions I touched emotional parts, I touched soft corners, but every where she was strong, stronger than anybody can imagine, firmer than anybody can expect out of an illiterate women like her.

She has decided to live; she has stopped expecting that her husband will understand, she does not any support from her in laws. She does not want to go back to her parents with it. She wants to live on her own.

She loughs…..she lives…..she loves……

Vaishnav Jana

Life is precious, yes it indeed is. In spite of knowing that sooner or latter we all are going to die, we take our life in a way that we never are going to loose it. We just know it but we don’t live with it.

A moment if we sit and think that we are going to die some day, the thing called me which laughs, cries, loves, lives, eats sleeps will no longer exist. Then at a blink of our eyes we feel so afraid and so helpless that all our thoughts and actions stop at a point. For a moment we feel like we are falling from the sky and there is no point to which we are going to fall finally.

We see people living a joyful life around us but we never see people dying a joyful death. We see people around us telling each other everybody is going to die what is there to think about it? Just live your life and have your fun because life is precious. There are very few people who live their lives with a full consciousness of death only saints and great human beings are known to be living with full consciousness of death. Normal people often go into depression if they get to know that soon they are going to die.


The building was poorly lit. At the every corner and on the walls there are red marks of spit of paan. There is a urinal at the first floor which has never been cleaned, the whole building stinks of urine. Almost the entire second floor is occupied by a diamond factory; hundreds of people are busy shinning small pieces of diamonds. There are few shops at the opposite side of that, but all are closed. In that darkness a patch of light has fallen from the door of a shop. A patch of light, a mark of brightness, light in which we can see, live, love, laugh cry and never believe we can die.


In that bright room in the semi darkness of the building there are people, some children some men and women of different ages. They celebrate the spirit of life. They all celebrate their preparedness to accept death when ever it comes to them and live life to the fullest. Joyfulness is in their smile, liveliness is in their existence, happiness is in their presence.
Medical science calls them people with HIV. I call them spirited lives or Vaishnava Jana.


They prey....

Itani shakti hume dena data
Manki biswas kamzor ho na.


O lord give me so much of power
The strength of my soul never weakens.....