"India is home to almost three million HIV cases, but AIDS is still stigmatized and shrouded in denial. It is stigma that leads to discrimination against HIV positive people in hospitals, schools, and even among families. Most importantly stigma fuels the belief that HIV is not our disease, but a disease of the other." "In this anthology some of India's best-known writers go on the road to tell the human stories behind the Indian epidemic and get to know this other: Kiran Desai travels to the coast of Andhra Pradesh, where the sex workers are considered the most desirable; Salman Rushdie meets members of Mumbai's transgender community; William Dalrymple encounters the devadasis, women who have been "married" to a temple goddess and thus are deemed acceptable for transactional sex. These writers travel the country to talk to housewives, vigilantes, gay men living double lives, police, and sex workers. Together their stories make up a complex - and gripping - picture of AIDS in India: who it's affecting, how, and why. Eye-opening, hard-hitting, and moving, AIDS Sutra presents a side of India rarely seen before."--BOOK JACKET.