In a smart blue tunic and red ribbons in her hair, 12-year-old Komal's laughing eyes hide a fear of death that stalks every student in her village school.
Within months or years she could be dead, but while she lives she is fulfilling a dream -- of going to school again after she was expelled from her previous one because she was infected with HIV.
"They used to throw water on me and tear up my books," Komal said as she reminisced about her days at a regular school. "Still, I wanted to go to school, but one day my teacher said don't come back."
At Gokul, a school for HIV-infected children in this dusty village north of India's commercial hub of Mumbai, each student has a heart-wrenching tale of discrimination and suffering.
The disease orphaned all of them, some were thrown out of school for their HIV status or abandoned by families. All got the virus from their mothers.
The school is among only a few across the country run by voluntary groups, where infected children expelled by "normal" schools receive education.
Rights groups and HIV/AIDS workers say conservative India's fight against the disease is being undermined by ignorance and prejudice. Sufferers are often denied treatment by hospitals, thrown out by families, evicted by landlords or fired.
Children remain the hidden face of this suffering. When a parent is infected, children drop out of school to care for them, or go to work to replace the lost income, until they become orphans, health workers say.
Prejudice is so deep-rooted that a southern state, Kerala, failed to persuade schools to take in two infected children and was forced to bear the cost of their education at home.
Children do not figure on India's estimate of 2.5 million people infected with HIV, but the government says about 50,000 children below 15 years are infected by the virus every year.
BORN OUT OF REJECTION
Among the students in Bhoogaon is Ramesh, whose father, his care-giver says, infected his mother because he wanted her to suffer his deadly fate.
All the students are aware of the fatal nature of their ailment. Seven children have died at the school in the past few years.
All of the school's 53 pupils are HIV positive, but none has AIDS yet and they are receiving expensive anti-retroviral treatment.
