By Ganesh Nadar, IANS
Chennai : After discovering at the age of 25 that he was HIV positive, G. Kumar initially thought of committing suicide. But he chose life over death and went on to establish a successful NGO in southern India to support others like him.
Kumar was born in a small village in Tamil Nadu on Christmas day in 1977. After completing his schooling, he started working for his father who was a contractor. However, he dreamed of sailing across the seas and making it big in a foreign country.
In 2002, he decided to work in Malaysia and underwent health tests mandatory for migration. The tests revealed that he was HIV positive and his family was shocked by the news.
Kumar, now 30, said: “The day I told my family I was HIV positive, the atmosphere in the house was like somebody had died.”
With his plans of finding employment in a foreign country dashed, Kumar thought of committing suicide. Luckily, he did not carry out that plan. He saw an advertisement in a newspaper about other HIV positive patients and went to meet them in Chennai. There he learnt about a network that was helping people like him.
“I read in the papers that HIV positive people were helping AIDS orphans. I sent them Rs.150 and they sent me 15 cards to sell. They said the money from the sale of the cards would help others,” Kumar said.
On his second visit to Chennai, he met a man who had been living with HIV for over a decade and asked Kumar to start a network in his hometown.
However, Kumar’s family did not like the idea as it would mean going public with his HIV positive status. They refused to give him money as they said he would spoil the family name.
Kumar left his village and settled down in Tirunelveli district.
He said: “I conducted two meetings in Tirunelveli. I met others who shared my problems and everyone agreed that we should start a network. I got a place to conduct regular meetings. At the third meeting we started a society and registered it.”
At that time there were three networks in Tamil Nadu in Theni, Namakkal and Cuddalore districts. He again asked his parents for monetary help but they refused.
Desperate for money to run his HIV positive network, Kumar stole Rs.100,000 from his parents house and called them from Tirunelveli to tell them about it.
Kumar attended a training session in Chennai and in turn taught others how to live with HIV. His knowledge and contacts improved but the money ran out in eight months, most of it spent on bringing out advertisements asking other HIV positive people to join his initiative.
He also put up posters all over Tirunelveli with his pictures. Thus, he dared to bring HIV out of the closet in the Tamil Nadu town. In 2003, he rented an office space for his NGO.
“I did not tell the landlady that I was HIV positive. But later when she did find out she was supportive. Local government officials came for the inauguration of the office,” Kumar said.
After seeing the efforts he made to establish the NGO, Kumar’s mother gave him Rs.20,000 when he ran out of the money he had stolen. Later, New Delhi-based NGO the Indian Network for People Living With HIV/AIDS (INP+) heard about his network and decided to fund him.
For one and a half years, INP+ gave Kumar Rs.21,000 per month for paying his staff. Following that, Kumar’s HIV positive network, which now has about 2,000 members, has been continuously involved in state government programmes for HIV/AIDS patients and has not faced any cash crunch.
Kumar also regularly attends the meetings of other NGOs. His wife Jasinda is also HIV positive and has two children from an earlier marriage. She lost her first husband to AIDS. The couple now have three children and none of them is infected.
“If we create enough awareness, HIV will die with our generation,” he said.
(Ganesh Nadar can be contacted at [email protected])