NOT since the first reported case of HIV way back in the early 1980s has anyone — in the government, NGOs or the bureaucracy — explored so brilliantly the facts and myths surrounding the disease in India as Rajesh Khullar, a 1988-batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, in his novel Viral Match. Currently Commissioner, Faridabad Municipal Corporation, Khullar has twice been project director of Haryana Aids Control Department.
Despite a deluge of commercials on television, hoardings along city roads across the country, and Bollywood and cricket icons all emphasizing ways and means of preventing HIV, the subject still remains taboo and there is total silence about it. This needed to be bro ken,” says Khullar. The national cricket team launched the book at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore before the Test against Pakistan in December 2007.
Viral Match revolves around Vishal, a successful businessman, who has extra marital relations and infects his pregnant wife, Vandana. She learns that she is infected during a routine pregnancy test and is tormented by a sense of betrayal. She makes her husband get himself test ed before going in for an abortion. Vishal then tries to revisit all his sexual encoun ters to try to pinpoint how he may have become infected. He also takes into account the blood transfusion he was given during a past surgery.
Anger, frustration and mistrust over whelm the couple’s relationship as each suspects the other of being responsible. Games of hide and seek continue between them until Vishal summons the courage to accept publicly that he is HIV+. The couple then reunites emo tionally and makes a new beginning.
In a way, it is a misnomer to call Viral Match a work of fiction — a large num ber of people would identify with the plot. The most fascinating aspect of the novel is that the central theme has been discussed in a holistic approach, incor porating every aspect of human life and the shortcomings in governance of HIV in the country. For instance, it empha sizes how insurance policies discrimi nate against those who are HIV+. To strike a chord with the men at the grass roots level, spirituality, meditation and the theory of karma have been interwov en with the main theme.
This is a highly-researched work pre sented in captivating style that can trans form a reader into a trained soldier to battle the HIV menace. But its reader ship will be limited to the English speaking public. The government should have it translated into regional languages as an effective tool to fight AIDS and also for sex education.
Perhaps, after the success of Taare Zameen Par, the film about mentally challenged children, an Aamir Khan will pick up the theme of Viral Match for another Bollywood blockbuster.
