Lucknow: Ram Kishore, a resident of Udaisarai village of Fatehpur district in Uttar Pradesh, who works in Mumbai and comes home once in a year during Diwali was shocked when he was asked for a HIV certificate by his wife before allowing him to share the bed.
Not only Ram Kishore, most of the men returning home this Diwali from Mumbai, faced a similar situation in their homes. Anita, a mother of two, also insisted her husband for undergoing a HIV test before maintaining sexual relations with him.
According to a report in 'The Times of India', Udaisarai village has about 200 homes and about 250 men from this village are working in Mumbai. They come back home every year around Diwali. Apart from the money and gifts, these men also bring the deadly HIV virus alongwith them.
Most of the women and elders in this village have united against the deadly virus. Sometimes by persuasion or by counselling and sometimes by force, men returning from outside are made to undergo the test.
This is not that the women in this village are not happy with the homecoming of their husbands. But they have a strong reason to be afraid of. Till last ten years, Udaisarai was also like any other village in the state from where most of the men go outside in search of work and livelihood. But a random medical checkup in government health centres in 2005 found out 55 HIV positive cases.
So far about 44 people have died in last ten years and about 12 patients of HIV are undergoing treatment.
