By Fazal Mujtaba

I first heard about that group through the community contacts.

An outreach worker mentioned them one afternoon. A neighbour hinted that a few boys had begun slipping out after dark. A shopkeeper said he was worried about someone he once knew as a cheerful child.

All of it added up to the same picture, so I followed the trail.

It led me to Shahnawaz. We met outside a chemist near Lal Chowk around nine at night, a time when Kashmir grows dark and deserted.

He asked the shopkeeper for a small bottle of distilled water. The man pushed it across the counter in a careful way, as if he already understood the purpose of the visit.

Later, Shahnawaz told me that he and three friends would gather in a rented room. They tried to make do with whatever they had. Even the simplest supplies were shared because buying new ones meant questions they did not want to face.

One of the four had tested positive last spring. The others chose not to know their status.

Shahnawaz gave a tired smile and said that if the result turned out bad, the mind stopped working before the body did. He said it was easier to stay unaware.

That unawareness is why the valley count keeps climbing.

By June this year, Jammu and Kashmir had logged 2,071 new HIV cases and 66 deaths since 2019. The yearly bricks in the wall are 361, 206, 272, 374, 338, 403 and already 117 in the first quarter of 2025.

The graph shows only gentle slopes. Behind each one is a person with a name and a story, whether a father, a bride, a nervous learner on the road, or a teacher hoping for a safe delivery.

Our valley often gives us a false sense of quarantine.

MENAFN30112025000215011059ID1110416801