Destiny is a change: unpredictable and imponderable. This story is about a boy named ‘Gyaan’. Gyaan was a promising student. He was a charming boy: a jovial person who enjoyed the company of his friends and had a proactive social life. Teachers reckoned him as a ‘morning star’, the one for the future: a future known only by the supreme.
Life is not a fairy tale. One day while returning from school he saw a person lying on the road who had met with an accident. He was severely injured and drenched with blood. Gyaan rushed him to hospital thereby saving his life. He was lauded by one and all for his compassionate act. His popularity grew further and life went on. Few days later, medical check up and blood test was being conducted in his school. Gyaan was also examined. The blood report sent a shock wave. Gyaan had been found HIV positive. This news spread like a wild fire in the school. Gyaan fell numb when he came to know about the medical report. He burst into tears and shuffled out of his classroom. None of his friends or teachers came to console him. He went home and took a break from school for a few days.
He was trying to come to terms with his disease with ample love and care from his parents (who themselves were sombre from within). He resumed going to school after the break. When at school he tried to behave normally. But things were no longer the same. He was given a cold-shoulder by his friends who kept distant from him. He felt strange at being subjected to a shoddy treatment. He was isolated from the students and made to sit in a corner of the class. He was barred from taking part in any of the school activities. He felt lonely and estranged.
One day the entire school was swarming with a buzz. A meeting had been called between the principle and the parents. One of the parents stood up and said “sir, you will have to expel that boy from this school. Our children are at risk of being infected from him.’ Another parent cried “oh god! My child will get AIDS if he goes near that boy, we will not let him study in this school” in a histrionic manner. The meeting went on for an hour. The principal finally bowed down to the pressure exerted by the guardians. His rustication shook him from within. He was submerged in depression: enraged, frustrated but helpless. The stigma and discrimination he had been subjected to broke him completely. Amidst all this Gyaan came to know from the hospital that the person whose life he had saved was HIV positive. He was shattered as he realized that while taking that person to the hospital his hand came in contact with his blood. Now he came to know that he had been infected from that person because there was a minor cut in his hand. His grief knew no bounds and in frustration he decided to end his life. That gloomy night Gyaan jumped from the terrace of his building. He was no more. The morning star had faded into the dark night, perhaps the darkest. The bottom-line is that we need ‘GYAAN’ to subdue ‘IGNORANCE’.