All I want is an ordinary life.
by Shahidul Alam

She was sixteen then. Working abroad, as many others from lower middle class families aspire to do. It is one of the few cases where a young single woman is allowed to go out on her own. She was told that she had an illness. Nothing serious. All it needed was treatment. But she had to go home. Looking back, she realised it must have been from a blood transfusion she was given after a car accident. Trustingly, on her return to her village, she had been to a doctor and had taken the report she had been given. He reassured her, but it was only when the police came to pick her up in the middle of the night and the newspaper reporters began hounding her that she realised what the doctor had done. It was another doctor who rescued her from jail, and helped her find a new life. When her family knew she was positive, they wouldn't touch her. The doctor came to visit her home. He put his hand on her head, and as she wept, he wiped the tears. "Do you not think that I care for my life?" he had said to the family. "I touch her, touch her tears. I have a family too. I would never do it if I knew it would kill me." That was a changing point in her life, and one for her family.

She is eighteen now. "I feel like a caged bird. I long to go outside. To make friends. But I know I can never be honest with my friends. There was a boy who loved me. We wanted to get married. I had to tell him I was positive. And then he left. I know he still loves me. How is it that someone who loves me does not want me to share his life? We could lead a normal life, we'd just have to be careful. I don't ask for much. Just to have a family, a home of my own. All I want is an ordinary life."

She now works as a counsellor in an NGO. A job given to her because she is positive. It has given a new meaning to her life. "You will never find a better counsellor than me. I know what a positive person is going through. I know the insecurities, the fears, the inconsistencies, the moments of rage, the lack of control, the longing. I've been there." I see her all excited about what she feels she can do, of how she can make a difference.