India 2018: HIV/AIDS Is Still About Fear

It’s 2004. I’m waiting at the bus stop with my school friends. We’ve just turned 13 and almost everything we discuss revolves around sex. Mostly the sporadic erections that have most of us feeling proud and defeated at the same time. Our friend Shiv joins us a few minutes later, and chimes into the conversation. By now we’re discussing boobs, and Shiv, who used to be a treasure trove of random trivia, declares that humans can only have sex once, so we better pick our partners wisely, or we could end up getting AIDS. I don’t know what’s worse: The fact that he said it with so much conviction or that all five of us believed him. Back then, the idea of sex disgusted my little Roman Catholic brain.

It’s 2006. I’ve just realized that I like boys. A little more than I used to before, but I know for sure that I like boys. Nay, men. I’m sitting with my friends post Physical Training (PT) and unabashedly staring at my PT teacher who is suddenly the hottest man alive in my stupid brain. This is when a boy from the next division walks by. My friends, knowing that I never say no to a good dare, ask me to address the student as ‘Balbir Pasha’. For those unaware, Balbir Pasha was a fictional character created for an anti-AIDS ad campaign in India and the hook was “Balbir Pasha ko AIDS hoga kya (Will Balbir Pasha get AIDS?)?” So the name was mostly reserved for teasing wannabe playboys in my school. Needless to say, this instigated the guy to such an extent, he jumped me and threatened to break all my teeth if I ever called him by that name again. I was highly confused at that point—because I rather enjoyed his entire boy weight on top of me and yet I didn’t understand the rage. It was a fictional character for crying out loud.

It’s 2015. I’ve had my first bareback encounter. It doesn’t take much to get to that point to be honest. Also, it’s true what they say, it does feel better without a condom. I had always been wary of the butt stuff (as I used to say back then) because that’s how you got infected. Everyone believed so, and so did I. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into anal sex. My friends are always curious about poop scares and tissue tears and I agree that these are legitimate concerns, but nothing beats the real deal. Actually, I take that back. The fear and loathing of the next day certainly beats the rush of doing it without a condom. I have to make that one decision I always feared—getting a medical test. I remember asking 10 different gay friends where they got their tests done and which one was the cheapest and most reliable. I asked a couple of them if they’d accompany me, and two of them agreed. Yet, on the day I turn up at The Humsafar Trust office, I am alone and scared. I give my blood sample and they tell me that I’ll get my test results in two days. I am shitting bricks at this point. When I turn up two days later, I’m told that my test results are negative. I am relieved of course, but the consulting physician tells me I was one of the few lucky ones that day. As I exit his office, I see a young man looking pale and dejected. A shiver runs down my spine. “Never again,” I tell myself. That was foolish.

It’s 2017. I am researching guests for my podcast ‘Keeping it Queer’. A friend recommends I talk to Gautam Yadav, an activist from Delhi who is HIV+ and striving hard to break down the notions associated with PLHIV (People Living with HIV/AIDS). Up to this point, I had spent all my time being ignorant. I had just been getting tested every six months and ignoring profiles on Grindr were labelled HIV+. I’m still petrified of contracting the virus. But that one hour conversation I had with Gautam ended up changing a lot for me. All the stupid assumptions and stigma I had built inside my head about HIV/AIDS were busted. It’s still a difficult life, as Gautam explains on the episode, but it’s not one without its joys. Gautam is travelling the world today, helping more people learn how to lead a positive life after being diagnosed. He also convinced me to debauch a little less and get tested at regular intervals, not just for HIV but also for a range of STIs that one can contract (including herpes, chlamydia and gonorrhoea). My research also showed that the prevalence of AIDS is still pretty high in the MSM community (men having sex with men), followed by sex workers and drug abusers. According to Avert, an international HIV and AIDS charity based in the UK, “Male sex workers are particularly vulnerable to HIV. A study of men who have sex with men (sometimes referred to as MSM) who attended STI clinics at Mumbai and Hyderabad, found that 70% of them engaged in sex work. Of those who engaged in sex work, HIV prevalence was found to be 43.6%, compared to 18.1% among all men who have sex with men attending the clinics.”. However, every time I go to a clinic to get tested, I am always met with doubtful eyes. Eyes that scream “WHY ARE YOU GETTING TESTED? YOU ARE GAY SO YOU MUST HAVE AIDS FOR SURE!”. I am used to just looking at them straight in the eye, as they take my blood sample, and return that evening with the same expression.

It’s 2018. I’m finally in a steady relationship with the guy I love. I take the biggest step I’ve ever taken after coming out to my family—I tell my mom about the guy I am dating. My mother, in her motherly wisdom, asks me to not do anything until we both are tested. When I first came out to her, my mom was concerned about how I would live a happy life, but she was mainly worried about me getting infected. For the longest time AIDS has been branded as the ‘gay disease’. In fact, if you watch the TV movie The Normal Heart, you will see that the doctors back in the 1980s called the disease ‘Gay-related immune deficiency’ (GRID—it’s all about making cute short forms out of a life-threatening disease). The film is required viewing as it delves deep into what it was like to be exposed to AIDS in the 1980s and have your friends dropping unconscious like flies. I bawled my eyes out when I first watched it, because it hit so close to home. Ever since I started spending time with the LGBTQ community in my city, I have made friends who have come out as HIV positive. And that’s a coming out party that no one enjoys. There have been cases of smart young gay men ending their lives because the infection got to them. It makes you take a step back and wonder how it got so messed up. On one hand, sexuality is all about finding freedom in your identity and enjoying making love to anyone you want to, anyhow. But on the other hand, there is a big trade-off that might just end up ruining one’s life. With the advent of PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis), things are getting better, but the medication is never guaranteed to be 100% effective and has side effects. All we can do is practise safer sex and not go around demonising HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, don’t ever call someone Balbir Pasha.

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