Living with AIDS
Srinivas Kuruganti
USA

In the latest UN estimates, the number of people living with AIDS in India is around 7.4 million. It has been predicted that by 2010 there will be 20 to 25 million AIDS cases in India, more than any other country in the world.

In 2001 I started photographing patients and staff at the Freedom Foundation HIV/AIDS clinics in South India, one of the few privately run facilities where AIDS sufferers can go for treatment. Through documenting lives in the clinic I became interested in how the virus is spread through the community and began a series of stories which focus on high risk groups such as truck drivers, eunuchs and male sex workers.

Most of the people I interacted with and photographed at the HIV/AIDS clinic were afraid of the stigma attached to the disease. Their friends and even immediate families were often unaware of their sickness and in this sense they led double lives. Likewise, the male sex workers often had daytime jobs as janitors, bank clerks and other such occupations and at night they would come onto the dark roads and pick up men. Many of their clients were army personnel and men from middle class backgrounds. The eunuchs were a lot more public in their soliciting of male clients yet many changed their gender identities between day and night. For both the HIV patients and the high-risk groups, living with the disease, or the threat of it is just one aspect of their daily struggle for survival.