I am a healthy man who enjoys sex. That might sound bold but it needs saying now or it would be hard to understand the nuances of my story.

I enjoy the feeling of love that a healthy sexual relation provides me. I’m scared of being left alone. But I guess I didn’t really understand what the word ‘loneliness’ could mean until I met this guy on my city’s queer circuit.

Ashish (name changed) is a PhD student.

This guy was Kabir. Kabir had visited more than 120 cities in this world and he was a globetrotter in the actual sense of the word. He was a poet and an intelligent man whose company I really enjoyed. We met a couple of times but somehow our relationship never reached a physical plane. Also, he was on the roll and did not plan to stay in India for long.

Saving myself from hurt
But love is a strange emotion and there was something that held us together. An unsaid promise that we would keep in touch kept us together. We would use social media and email to keep in touch. I would send him some of my poems, music and experiments with art while he would send colourful emails about his travels, both in prose and poetry.

I liked him but I also knew that I like people who I love around me, so I can express my love physically. So to save myself from being hurt I started distracting myself. I met new people, worked on new jobs. I still wrote to him, but with longer gaps between emails.

"Where have you been?"
Then one day I realised that he hadn’t written to me in ages. I hadn’t even seen him on Facebook. Where was he? Why had he not sent me any mail?

I did think of these questions and some more but decided to ignore them as I did not want to be ‘uncool’ by trying to be friendly when he obviously did not want to stay in touch. But that is not to say that I forgot him.

And one day I saw him online. I was nervous as I wanted to talk to him but I did not want to appear too eager. I couldn’t resist after a while. I decided to casually chat with him and ask about his whereabouts. After the initial greetings and an awkward silence, I had to ask him, “Where have you been?”

“In the hospital. I was diagnosed with HIV.”

Glad?
I did not know what to say. He was just 27 years old and one of the most beautiful people I knew. How could this happen to him? A part of me was glad that I had never slept with him but another part of me was appalled because of this thought of mine. Kabir was the first person in my known circle to be diagnosed with HIV.

I know that anyone can have HIV and that having HIV does not mean that one can’t enjoy a healthy sex life. But HIV as a reality had never intruded into my world. After all, we all think this is something that can happen to anyone but me or mine. And yet here I was, speaking to someone I had contemplated having a physical relationship with who was suffering from it.

Lonely in a crowd
I did not realize that I hadn’t reacted to his statement on the chat for a full minute within which he typed:

“One second can change your life. You become lonely even in a crowd. People say that they understand but I know they can’t. After all, even I am trying to understand my situation and come to terms with it.”

I did not know what to tell him but I knew that I was never going to stop writing to him. And sharing the poetry with him that I hoped expressed all my support and love.

By Roli Mahajan 
 
Photo: Vikram Raghuvanshi (The person shown in the photo is not Ashish.)

Relieved or heartbroken - how would you have felt?  Leave a comment here or on Facebook.