Fading

Nirmal is fading.

This young man - a father of a 5 year old girl - is in what are probably his last hours.

Nirmal has stopped talking. He is very quiet. He lies still.

In the heat of the summer the nurses and his wife have powdered him liberally. He lies in his bed at Jeevan Sahara Kendra being cared for by what can only be called angels - his wife and the JSK nurses who have been caring for him for the last week now.

There was a brief moment when he seemed to be waking out of the semi-conscious state that he was in on arrival. But that moment seems to have passed now.

Cheli, his wife, has been prepared for his death. She has called her mother, and has summoned his brothers. Some have already come, others are coming tomorrow.

As a team, the JSK clinical and nursing staff have worked hard to extend this dear man's life. The fact that it is now slipping away seems a defeat. Death is never, never easy.

But at the same time we have seen the love that our doctors and nurses have given this man reflected in the face of his wife. In all her own sufferings at this time, she has been so grateful and moved by the care our staff have taken for Nirmal.

The ravages that HIV causes continue to be played out in tiny, almost-silent tragedies. Our nation may not have the horrific levels of AIDS as some of our sub-Saharan brethren - but we have more than enough. Nirmal and Cheli and their as yet un-tested daugther are proof of that.

How soon Cheli is from being the wife looking after her dying husband, to becoming a widow living with her own HIV and caring for a daughter who has lost her father to this disease.