कुछ सूखे पत्ते ...

कभी हम दिल की धड़कन थे, आज तुम पास न आई ,

वजह इस बेवफ़ाई की समझ कुछ ख़ास न आई !

क़यामत तक गिला न कर सकेंगे फिर भी हम तुझसे,

मुक़द्दर ही को अपनी ये  मुहब्बत रास न आई !!

Getting to Zero !!!

This was written for essay-writing competition on World-AIDS Day. Being a glib-writer, I had to toil hard to restrict it to the prescribed world-limit of 200 words. But it turned out to be exactly of 200 words (excluding the heading), you can check it yourself. Luckily I also got first prize for this.So here it is.

Gone are the days when ‘zero’ was an 
embodiment of negligibility and insignificance. Now ‘Getting to zero’ is accredited as the international theme for World AIDS Day from 2011 to 2015, the year of Millennium Development Goals of UN.

Any process has three integral stages: initiation, propagation and culmination. Similarly AIDS is to be attacked squarely with the aims of zero new HIV infections(initiation), zero discrimination(propagation) and zero AIDS-related deaths(culmination).

There are over 35-million AIDS-affected people worldwide which makes access to practical,and comprehensible information on prevention of HIV transmission highly imperative.

Educating people about the realities of living with HIV and providing axiomatic information to dispel the myths that surround a positive diagnosis and alleviate the ignorance about HIV can play sheet anchor role in evading misinformation and stigma.

Lastly, abatement of AIDS-related deaths, has to be achieved by starting treatment at the right time and putting a check over cases of people who are diagnosed late and therefore miss out on the benefits treatment could render.

As we get a picturesque picture by the dint of a ‘negative’, similarly we hope to reach to the zenith of HIV-free world, keeping an eye on this symbol of nadir i.e. zero.