Journeys in The Night- Untold Stories from India's Best- Known Writers

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A few years 40%, we went to downtown Chennai, India, to talk with a group of women about AIDS. We all sat together on a white mat in a small hotel room. There were about a dozen women there, wearing their best saris, gold necklaces, flowers in their hair, and bindis on their foreheads. As they talked about their lives and dreams-the things they wanted for themselves and their children-they sounded like they could have come from any walk of life.

In fact, they were all sex workers. They had come together as a community to learn how to protect themselves from HIV and slow the spread of the disease. We were there to learn, in turn, from them. We knew a lot of statistics from our work with Avahan, our foundation's AIDS prevention programme in India, but we wanted to hear firsthand what made women like them so vulnerable to the disease, and what could be done about it.

They all had turned to sex work because they desperately needed money. But often the income they earned still wasn't enough, and they ended up living hand to mouth. One woman, a mother, told us about the terrible choices she had to make, such as whether to buy milk for her family or get medicine for her sick child.

Some of the women had been forced to give up on more promising pursuits. One young woman had been a star student in school, but when her father came down with a debilitating illness, she dropped out so she could earn money to support the family. When they fell further into debt, she turned to sex work.

This group of women had all been ostracised by their families and neighbours. One woman had hoped to keep her work a secret from her husband and children. But when word got out, her daughter was disowned by her friends. The girl was so distraught that she committed suicide.

This kind of stigma is cruel and senseless. There are nearly 3 million Indians living with HIV today. If we're going to stop AIDS, we have to embrace every one of them-regardless of social class, line of work, or circumstance. That includes those who are especially vulnerable to the disease, such as sex workers and their clients, the transgender community, and injecting drug users.

It starts with telling their stories. That's why we are so grateful to the distinguished writers who have contributed to this anthology. Their work shows the human side of this disease, and it lives by the words we saw written on a poster in that room in Chennai: 'Open your eyes to HIV/AIDS.'

**Contents and Sample Pages**