AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India

Sixteen stories, sixteen lives India is already home to 5.2 million HIV cases–outnumbered only by South Africa. But AIDS is still a disease stigmatised and shrouded in denial. In this unique anthology, sixteen of India’s best known writers go on the road to uncover the country’s AIDS epidemic: the trucker who makes his punishing all night journeys; the disaffected youth in the Northeast, many of whom are now injecting drug users; and the housewives who have unknowingly contracted the disease from their husbands.

William Dalrymple meets the devadasis, many of whom have become victims of HIV; Kiran Desai goes to meet the coveted sex workers of coastal Andhra; Sunil Ganguly returns to his old haunt, Sonagachhi; Salman Rushdie spends a day with the hijras of Bombay; Sonia Faleiro looks at the destructive nexus between the police and sex workers; and Shobhaa De writes about when AIDS came home.

Together the pieces make up a complex—and gripping—picture of AIDS in India: who it’s affecting, how and why.