Imphal, November 26: Deserted by her own family members and in-laws and abused by her own confidante, Meena (name changed), a young HIV positive widow has been trying to piece together her shattered life with the only hope of bringing up and educate her son whose life is also hanging by a thread today.

Recounting her ordeals during a training programme on HIV/AIDS for youth and community leaders of Imphal East District organised by SEACOM in collaboration with AIDS Consortium, New Delhi at Bal Vidya Mandir, Porompat today, Meena who is a representative of Meitei Leimarol Sinai Shang (MLSS) said the attitude of the society towards young widows who have unwittingly become HIV infected should be changed.

Coming from a middle class Nepali family, Meena whose right leg is slightly deformed from birth, had a love marriage with a person from another community at the age of 15 years.

Little did she realise then that her in laws would never accept her and look for any given opportunities to berate her.

Right from the first day of their elopement, her in-laws started ill-treating her calling her a handicap girl who bewitched the only son of the family.

After the death of her husband in an unfortunate incident and birth of a son, Meena was chased out from her in-laws home who insisted that she had no right over the child of their late son.

Nowhere else to go, she went back to her paternal home, but her parents refused to give shelter as she had married a man from another community against their wishes.

With the help of benevolent woman, Meena started running a pan dukan at Lamphel for sustenance.

But the society is unsympathetic to such hapless women.

Apart from suspicious nature of the people to rent out room to a young widow who is still in the prime of her youth, many lecherous men tried to lure her to fall into their trap.

It was at this time, she approached an advocate who frequented her pan dukan for assistance in connection with the legal battle for taking over the custody of her son.

Though the man in black gown who is out there to fight for justice, pursued the case on her behalf, he took advantage of haplessness and outrage her feminine modesty.

'I did not have the money demanded by the advocate and gave in to his desires, although my body cried out in pain deep within.

I console myself by thinking it is only a small sacrifice to be made for the sake of my son', she said while trying to hold back the tears swelling up in her eyes, remembering the harrowing experiences she had gone through.

Though she finally won the case and united with her son, her ordeal was yet over.

'As the society would not allow a hapless woman like me to live peacefully and my son to grow up normally, after years of keeping alive and worshipping the memories of my late husband, I though it might be better to have a man in the family', she said.

Subsequently, she married a man who was also a regular customer to her pan dukan and had always taken care of her and her son's needs.

However, she did not know that the man was a drug addict.

Much later when her second husband passed away then only she came to know about her HIV status.

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