It was an interview that happened about 20 years ago, but the memory is just as vivid.

Agreeing to meet only if his name was not published, the young man from Chennai (then Madras) sobbed uncontrollably as he recounted the hostility and stigma he had to live with after testing HIV positive. Displaced from his regular life and identity, HIV had turned his life upside down.

Many years later, another encounter, another face that feared discrimination. Sitting on the upper berth in a train from New Delhi was this man who took a handful of medicines, hoping no one would notice. On being asked, he revealed, he was HIV positive.

This anxious face of living with HIV resurfaced again last week in the very public “coming out” of Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen. In a television show, a restless Sheen told the anchor he is HIV positive.

Sheen’s revelation has triggered discussions on the multiple partners he continued to have after knowing his HIV status and the drugs available in the market to protect people intimately involved with those living with HIV.

But shorn of legalities, the worrisome truth is that Sheen went public to stop the “barrage of attacks” by people who threatened to reveal his HIV status. “My truth soon became their treason and a deluge of extortion and blackmail took centre-stage,” he says, explaining how he had to pay to keep people silent, a situation he may not have faced with any other illness.

“I never thought it would be such a big issue. It is unfortunate that it is, even in a country like the US,” says Anand Grover, co-founder Lawyers Collective, referring to how Sheen was threatened on his HIV status. Sheen, though, is getting some very public support and may have the financial and legal strength to ride this out.

But as another World AIDS day comes up on December 1, we need to pause for the many out there living with HIV, trying to cope with the stigma and fear — of telling their families, getting or losing a job, getting a place to stay or even getting medical attention. Discrimination is very real for them, even today. Despite global campaigns to support people with HIV/AIDS, the world has few champions with the illness. Queen singer Freddie Mercury, actor Rock Hudson and basketball star Magic Johnson are a few public names who have confronted their reality. South Africa’s judge Edwin Cameron with the country’s highest court, is gay and HIV positive and a pillar when it comes to breaking down the stigma.

Earlier this year, Nigeria passed an anti-discrimination Bill to protect people with HIV. India too needs to step up and bring in the pending anti-discrimination HIV/AIDS law.

Only then will people like the young man in Chennai or my co-traveller from Delhi have the courage to step out of the shadows and live with dignity, and not in fear.

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