Steps

This is a story that is taking place in the urban India of 2009 - not rural India or the India of the past.

A young girl of 16 gets married off. To keep her from eloping like so many others of her cohort have been doing. Lets call her "Rashi".

Rashi got married off to a man in a near-by slum. She left her home in a slum and joined her in-laws in another one on the other side of Thane.

On her marriage night, after all the ceremony is over, Rashi's husband locks the door and goes out, leaving her behind.

Gradually the truth about Rashi's husband seeps out.

When Rashi goes to the communal toilet, the other women start asking her how she could have married that man - a known womanizer. She asks them why they are telling such terrible things about her husband. When Rashi threatens to tell her mother-in-law about what the women are telling her, they get scared and ask her not to reveal what they said.

One afternoon she comes back home and overhears her sister-in-law berating her husband: "you are such an evil man. We had hoped that by marrying Rashi you would change your ways, and still you are behaving this way." When Rashi plucks up courage to come in, they both fall silent, and are not able to look at her.

After a year of this she cannot take it any more. She calls her mother to take her away. At 18 she is back home with her parents. A few years later she hears that her husband has fallen sick. She returns to nurse him. He dies. He had HIV.

Today Rashi has the disease too. Not yet 25. A widow. HIV positive.

And yet, through all this despair there are glimmers of hope. Rashi has taken steps to put her trust in Jesus. She says that she has forgiven her husband and her mother-in-law. She is not going to live in the past.

There is still much sorrow in this young woman. The road ahead is no bed of roses. But we are privileged to come along side Rashi.