Not wanting to make light of the matter at all, I feel this speaks about our modern crises in deep meaningful ways, not to mention our real response to HIV/AIDS. Swarmed and bombed from all sides with crises, wars, death and destruction en masse we really have to prioritize which kind of virus, calamity, dynamite am I the most probable to hit and therefore need to take note of. And World AIDS Day is a day for figures and statistics, which I guess tell us how much closer/higher is the probability for us to succumb.

That is how we largely respond and that is unfortunately the problem. HIV/AIDS has (and rightly so) entered the realm of our most intimate spaces, behaviour and obsessions. It is a day when the world data machine spews out progressively alarming facts which say a critical thing: Sexual activity is alive and kicking, increasingly unsafe and resolutely irresponsible; it is not something that can be relegated to just one day of thought but a concern that needs to become a part of our daily life.

It also tells us some other unsettling things as the figures keep changing to undo all projections/expertise/know-how claimed on HIV/AIDS by the so-called experts. A very disquieting thought don’t you think? If researchers and ‘experts’ keep getting it wrong like this where are we headed? For instance look at the following figures/statements:
HIV/AIDS was thought to be a disease that infected the high-risk groups such as- men who have sex with men, commercial sex workers and promiscuous women. But now statistics tells me:
· No less than 41.8 percent of new cases are caused by heterosexual contact.
· Worldwide 47% of all people living with HIV are women.
· In India of the 5.1 million cases of HIV/AIDS in 2004, around 38 percent of were women.
· More than 1 percent of pregnant women have been tested HIV positive in neonatal clinics in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, and Nagaland in India.
· Worldwide young people (15-24 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide - more than 6,000 become infected with HIV every day.
· In India over 35% of all reported HIV/AIDS cases occur among young people in the age group of 15 to 24 year.
· Globally, women make up 60% of the 15 - 24 year olds who are HIV+.

· AIDS deaths in 2005 totaled to about 3.1 million worldwide. Number of people living with HIV and number of people newly infected with the virus in 2005 is 40.3 million and 4.9 million respectively.

So Everybody must be in the high-risk group. In fact now experts have moved on from the term ‘high-risk groups’ to ‘high-risk behaviour’. So whichever group I belong to doesn’t really matter: I am at RISK.
But how many of us are really giving a thought to RISK.

How many of us actually went back home on 1st December and discussed it with our partners? Or are we still holding on to the (mis)conception that we are not at risk from the virus because we are heterosexual, non-promiscuous and abstain from pre-marital sex?

The World AIDS Day has come and gone. Leaving us predictably alarmed by the ever-growing numbers of HIV/AIDS infected in the world. India alone is supposed to have 5 million people who are HIV infected and the U.N calls this a ‘conservative’ number. But amidst all this is the never-ending debate of morality.

I read in the newspaper that the Planning Commission’s recommendations for legal sanctity to prostitution and homosexuality (to bring these groups into the care/awareness ambit) had political groups up in arms saying that decriminalization will lead to moral turpitude.

And that is not all:
· A global sex survey says that 49 percent of Indians believe that abstaining from pre marital sex will help to avoid infection. While the rest of the world is voting for safer sexual practices for the young we want to ‘control’ them.

For those who berate multiple partners as the root cause here’s another scary statistic:
· In 2004, it was estimated that 22% of HIV cases in India were housewives with a single partner.

AIDS is not just about being terminal, expensive to care for or contagious. It is the disease where sexuality and morality have been tap dancing together for more than two decades. It is about discrimination, isolation, judgement and rejection. HIV positive people have a whole new life of suppression, guilt, hate and fear to cope with in addition to the uncertainty of death. Everything is wrong with the way we think or do not think about this blazing calamity of our times. And assigning it one day of importance is metaphoric of our psyche as a people don’t you think?