A novel idea
The Hindu : “Have you heard the one about the two four-year-olds?” asks IAS officer and first-time author Rajesh Khullar. “Two children are talking to each other and one asks, ‘Why do people throw their used condoms out in the corridor?’ The other one looks quizzical and replies, ‘What’s a corridor?’” Some people might take such a ubiquitous awareness of condoms as a good sign, but not Rajesh. “It’s just made us more complacent,” he says of the “Use Condoms” refrain that dominates current HIV/AIDS awareness programmes.It might seem like the media is cluttered with information about HIV. “On the face of it, everyone knows about HIV/AIDS. But no one really knows the details. For instance, what happens when you go for a test. What do they test for? Do they ask you to enter your name? What happens? Thomas Hardy once said about his writing: Petty done, undone vast. With AIDS awareness, it is: Petty said, unsaid vast.”It was to tackle issues such as these and provide comprehensive information without sounding pedagogic that Rajesh wrote “Viral Match”, a page-turner revolving around a couple who may both be HIV positive. “This is the only medium to provide so much information to a population that can read. Even in a movie you can’t say everything. And you can have this book around for the story, but in the process clarify all the fears, doubts and suspicions that one has always had but was afraid to ask. The toughest part of the book was deciding how much information to give without the reader being ‘accused of reading a book on HIV’.”Although the book has taken two-and-a-half years to write, Rajesh says that his research began many years before, during his two stints at the Haryana State AIDS Control Society. “Those were two postings that when I relinquished charge, I left with a twinge, a feeling that we haven’t done enough.”…More
