FUN-FILLED DAY: The Hyderabad district Collector, Arvind Kumar, and his daughter, Manasi, with HIV positive children on a visit to the Hyderabad airport on Thursday.

HYDERABAD: As the gigantic Indian Airlines aircraft taxied on the runway of the Begumpet airport on Thursday morning, there were more hands to wave it off than the usual ground flagman.

Nimble hands of over 60 tiny tots waved frantically as the steel bird soared into the skies, and then, their faces turned to one another, to babble on how big the aircraft was and how deafening the sound was. For them, an aircraft and the sight of what lay beyond the compound walls of an airport were alien. That was till the district Collector Arvind Kumar, along with Nrityanjali Academy, an NGO, decided to take children and women living with HIV for a visit to the airport.

Intolerance

"A majority of society looks at them with intolerant eyes. They are not accepted as part of society. These children and their mothers are from normal families.

The children got the virus from their mothers at birth, while their mothers got it from their husbands. Still they are discriminated against for no fault of theirs," Mr. Kumar said.

On Thursday, the eve of the Rakhi festival, the children, some of whom had come along with their mothers, some with their grandmothers and many with their relatives, also acquired a brand new brother as they tied rakhis on Mr. Kumar's hands. Jostling with one another, they tied the colourful bands on his hands, their lissom fingers fumbling but not giving up even as the thin threads kept slipping.

Some were intently looking at the television cameras that focussed on them. Some slowly turned their faces.

But for the children, at that moment, the airplanes mattered more. There, the gates had opened, and it was time to walk on to the tarmac and have a closer look at the aircraft.

"We are not allowed inside it, are we?" they asked. "Next time," promised Mr. Kumar as the children obediently stood in a line.

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