I was in the 2 by 2 (yep, you read that right!) compartment of a local train coming home from CST. A guy jumped in just as the train was leaving CST station and stood very close to me. Youthful in his looks, with a pleasant demeanour, he caught my attention immediately. As per the timeless ritual his hand brushed my privates. As luck would have it, my boss called me on my cell at that very moment and I had to answer.
After I had finished my cell-phone conversation with my boss he continued his advances. By and by he asked me, "where are you getting down?", in English. "VidyaVihar", I answered. "Then I, too, am getting down there today", he said smiling. He had a soft, honest face and I did not get perturbed by this development. "I am Amit. And you?".
"Deep", I said.
At Vidya Vihar we walked towards the RajaWadi garden. It was past 7 pm and a murky dusk had already settled in on this November Saturday evening. Amit was born and schooled in Kashipur. His father was a headmaster in the school he studied. His first realization of the fact that he was gay came at the tender age of twelve. His cousin brother, who had spent a dozen years on earth as well, liked to spend a lot of time with Amit. They would sleep in the same bed and one thing led to another. Amit fondly recollected the days, months and years that he spent loving his cousin. They had never heard the word "gay", yet their thoughts and acts together were the same as any homosexual teen in Denmark.
"It was always Vipin", sighed Amit, sitting down on the park bench, "morning, noon and night". I sat beside Amit. He seemed to have lost himself in his thoughts; I don't know if he remembered that there was I, a stranger, sitting by him listening to his reverie. "Vipin on my bed. Vipin hugging me. Vipin giving me paroxysms of pleasure with his mouth. I love you Vipin!" A single tear rolled down his eye. "That dreadful evening! The evening it all ended. Vipin fell over the rooftop trying to retrieve his kite. I can see it Deep! I can see it happening in front of me. Oh God! He is falling now!" Amit's anguish was so powerful that it seemed I was transported to that place and time. Suddenly I was no longer sitting on a stone bench at RajaVadi garden in Mumbai on a November evening in 2004. Suddenly we were back in Kashipur. I could see Amit's love,his very heart, falling to his death. Vipin smashed his head on the culvert and died instantly. In his breast pocket he had a picture of Amit and him together.
Amit had to stop narrating at this point because he was so choked with emotions. I patted his arm in consolation. "I was 20 at that time. Over the next few months I nearly lost my mind with grief", continued Amit morosely. "I was brought to a local hakim. He prescribed marriage". I could barely manage to whisper my protests to that. My parents would hear none of it." Amit's voice dropped to a dry rasp. "I pleaded with my illiterate mother to let me off. I wanted to kill myself. Seeing my suicidal tendencies my father got even more alarmed. They snared a demure lass of 16 from the next village and sat me down with her in the marriage `mandap'. I didn't know what was happening to me! In my pocket I still had the picture of Vipin and me as the lass put the garland of marriage around my neck. Later that night, when I saw her undress I puked and started sobbing hysterically. She got scared and ran out of our bridal chamber to my parents." Amit was silent for a while as the memories got too much for him. He seemed to realize then that there was me sitting next to him on that bench. He clutched my wrist. "I couldn't help it Deep! I just couldn't get myself to touch Geeta. Please forgive me God. I couldn't touch her!"
One day, as Amit came home from work he found Geeta hanging by her neck in their bedroom. The whole village came to watch their sorrow and condemn Amit and his hapless parents. The police got involved since they suspected that it was a case of dowry death. They interrogated Amit and his old parents for 7 long days and nights. When they were let go, the villagers wouldn't let the family stay in their village. Amit's father committed suicide by drinking Phenyl. His mother just gave up living over the next few months. Amit was left all alone with a set of hostile neighbours. When things got too much for him he ran away to Mumbai. That was a year ago.
Amit got a small photograph out of his breast pocket and proffered it to me. It had a beautiful lad holding Amit in his arms looking at Amit's eyes. The photograph was smudged with tears. "I have kept Vipin close to my heart Deep! All this time".
It was getting darker and we got up. "Time to go, Deep!", said Amit suddenly, "time for me to go". He suddenly seemed in a hurry to leave the garden. He seemed to realize that he had been talking to an absolute stranger and probably felt embarrassed. "So where do you live Amit?", I asked. "Some way down", Amit said gruffly, "some way down".
We got in the train at VidyaVihar together. I was going to Mulund – my home. Amit, I still wasn't sure. "Do you know what day it is today?", Amit asked me in the train. "It's the day Vipin was snatched away from me". I was shocked and felt very uneasy. There was something amiss in the way Amit was sidling away from me towards the door. The on boarding crowd at Ghatkopar pushed us apart. The train gathered momentum. Suddenly I heard cries of "gir gaya!", he's fallen down! I pushed my way thru till the door way. Amit was lying by the tracks, his head a bloody mess, the speeding train already sending the dreadful site receding into darkness.
I can never forget that murky evening till the end of my days. The day a homosexual man lost his life on the alter of a murky custom called heterosexual marriage.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Lonely
I read a report on a gay old-age home project being initiated by Prince Manavendra of Rajpipla, India. In the report, the prince was very hopeful about his project. It set me thinking. Loneliness, coupled with, old age is a very real possibility for many of us. Would I like to be banished to an old age home years from now?
If I find my soul mate and get married to him, will both of us stay in that old-age home?
One sees so many types of loneliness.
Lonely is the widowed mother whose children are abroad and who lives in a one room tenement in the heart of Mumbai.
Lonely is the derelict beggar on the footpath of a busy highway waiting to cross over to the other side where the garbage bin overflows with last night's delectables.
Lonely is the recovering drug addict who has been thrown out of his house by his family for stealing.
Lonely is the ten year old kid, recently orphaned, who sits by the kitchen of the orphanage watching the boisterous play of the inmates.
Lonely is the gay man, on the brink of adulthood, listening to his parents talk about his marriage with a buxom belle from his village.
Lonely is the old gay man watching, with rheumy eyes, the party animals smooching passionately on the dance floor.
Today I sit by my window watching the Mumbai rain, wondering if anyone's ever going to call and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I read "Sons and Lovers" for the hundredth time. I look at two grey pigeons in amorous pursuit of each other on the roof top of the next building. I spy, with bated breath, thru the window as my handsome next door neighbor walks out of the bathroom wearing only a small towel around his middle. Will he or won't he, take off his towel? He draws the curtains, oblivious to my stare and arousal. The skies are overcast. The roads are starting to flood. I think of the gay couple who have decided to spend the next 5 days together in a neighboring hill station. They had called me in the morning in great glee. Their lives' ambitions are getting fulfilled. I bless them, as only a true friend can. They are the same age as me and have been very lonely before they met each other.
There is love in this world, I decide. It's rationed though. Some of us get left sitting on the sidewalk.
If I find my soul mate and get married to him, will both of us stay in that old-age home?
One sees so many types of loneliness.
Lonely is the widowed mother whose children are abroad and who lives in a one room tenement in the heart of Mumbai.
Lonely is the derelict beggar on the footpath of a busy highway waiting to cross over to the other side where the garbage bin overflows with last night's delectables.
Lonely is the recovering drug addict who has been thrown out of his house by his family for stealing.
Lonely is the ten year old kid, recently orphaned, who sits by the kitchen of the orphanage watching the boisterous play of the inmates.
Lonely is the gay man, on the brink of adulthood, listening to his parents talk about his marriage with a buxom belle from his village.
Lonely is the old gay man watching, with rheumy eyes, the party animals smooching passionately on the dance floor.
Today I sit by my window watching the Mumbai rain, wondering if anyone's ever going to call and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I read "Sons and Lovers" for the hundredth time. I look at two grey pigeons in amorous pursuit of each other on the roof top of the next building. I spy, with bated breath, thru the window as my handsome next door neighbor walks out of the bathroom wearing only a small towel around his middle. Will he or won't he, take off his towel? He draws the curtains, oblivious to my stare and arousal. The skies are overcast. The roads are starting to flood. I think of the gay couple who have decided to spend the next 5 days together in a neighboring hill station. They had called me in the morning in great glee. Their lives' ambitions are getting fulfilled. I bless them, as only a true friend can. They are the same age as me and have been very lonely before they met each other.
There is love in this world, I decide. It's rationed though. Some of us get left sitting on the sidewalk.
The Gay Pride Parade in Mumbai on Sunday, August 16, 2009. One small march for queens, one giant parade for gay-kind (apologies to Neil Armstrong)
1500 homos marched in Mumbai. So what's been achieved? What's the use of such tiny parades? Some of my straight "friends" have asked me the "purpose of making such a public display of our sexual preference". "Keep buggering each other in your bedrooms", they argue belligerently, "Who the hell cares?"
So what if those pansies braved the heat outside their closets?
Many who donned masks at the start of the parades, decided to take them off, both literally and figuratively. So what? The general populace saw that the sum total of the sample called the "queer population" consists of "ordinary people" and not just those who dress up in garish costumes and make sexual statements publicly. So what? Some scared young-man sitting quietly in front of his TV on Sunday evening in the closeted comfort of his home had a flicker of hope in his heart. So what? So what if 1500 species in the animal kingdom have been proved to show homosexual behaviour? So what if a 5000 year old Indian treatise on sex clearly mentions homosexuality?
Demonstrations and public display of emotions may be distasteful to many. After all, it is easier to maintain status quo in this country and for all the macho guys to giggle derisively at homo jokes. Easier for all the people with "family values" to turn their noses up in disgust when they see a miserable queer being bashed up by the police in some stinking public loo. Easier for the heterosexual married people to think of some murderous homos preying on little kids. After all, it is best if homos are thought of as paedophiles and locked up. Lock them up! Punish them! Who the hell cares? Most of us are straight anyways.
Right?
OK, so it's all right that ugly, dark-skinned brides with poor fathers should be doused with kerosene and set alight just after they are married and can't afford the "required" dowry. It's all right that little girl children should be butchered as soon as they turn 2 days old. It's all right when women are not allowed to go to school or vote. It's all right that "lower cast" kids should be banished to some filthy municipal school. Who the fuck cares? After all, it's "them". It's not me. I am safe. I can sit in the comfort of my house, watch the news channels and say to myself, "It happens to THOSE people. I don't care!"
Wrong!
That bride could be your sister. That girl- child could be yours. That woman could be your mother. That kid could be you. You will care then! Your passions will overflow into "embarrassing public display of emotions" when your twin brother is being bashed up in that loo.
Many years ago one thin gentleman had decided to make salt at a beach himself when it was more fashionable to get it from the British. That thin gentleman, with a walking stick, marched a long way to show those Indians ensconced safely in their British houses that it is better to be unfettered.
These 1500 people who marched in Mumbai on Sunday have also shown us, the gay and the straight, that it is better to be free. That it is better to care. They have lit a tiny spark, just like that thin gentleman, with a walking stick, had done so many years ago, by picking up a handful of salt in the beach. The spark became a blazing inferno of independence. Aren't we all glad it happened?
What is the use of the ugly duckling? ONE DAY IT WILL BECOME A SWAN!
So what if those pansies braved the heat outside their closets?
Many who donned masks at the start of the parades, decided to take them off, both literally and figuratively. So what? The general populace saw that the sum total of the sample called the "queer population" consists of "ordinary people" and not just those who dress up in garish costumes and make sexual statements publicly. So what? Some scared young-man sitting quietly in front of his TV on Sunday evening in the closeted comfort of his home had a flicker of hope in his heart. So what? So what if 1500 species in the animal kingdom have been proved to show homosexual behaviour? So what if a 5000 year old Indian treatise on sex clearly mentions homosexuality?
Demonstrations and public display of emotions may be distasteful to many. After all, it is easier to maintain status quo in this country and for all the macho guys to giggle derisively at homo jokes. Easier for all the people with "family values" to turn their noses up in disgust when they see a miserable queer being bashed up by the police in some stinking public loo. Easier for the heterosexual married people to think of some murderous homos preying on little kids. After all, it is best if homos are thought of as paedophiles and locked up. Lock them up! Punish them! Who the hell cares? Most of us are straight anyways.
Right?
OK, so it's all right that ugly, dark-skinned brides with poor fathers should be doused with kerosene and set alight just after they are married and can't afford the "required" dowry. It's all right that little girl children should be butchered as soon as they turn 2 days old. It's all right when women are not allowed to go to school or vote. It's all right that "lower cast" kids should be banished to some filthy municipal school. Who the fuck cares? After all, it's "them". It's not me. I am safe. I can sit in the comfort of my house, watch the news channels and say to myself, "It happens to THOSE people. I don't care!"
Wrong!
That bride could be your sister. That girl- child could be yours. That woman could be your mother. That kid could be you. You will care then! Your passions will overflow into "embarrassing public display of emotions" when your twin brother is being bashed up in that loo.
Many years ago one thin gentleman had decided to make salt at a beach himself when it was more fashionable to get it from the British. That thin gentleman, with a walking stick, marched a long way to show those Indians ensconced safely in their British houses that it is better to be unfettered.
These 1500 people who marched in Mumbai on Sunday have also shown us, the gay and the straight, that it is better to be free. That it is better to care. They have lit a tiny spark, just like that thin gentleman, with a walking stick, had done so many years ago, by picking up a handful of salt in the beach. The spark became a blazing inferno of independence. Aren't we all glad it happened?
What is the use of the ugly duckling? ONE DAY IT WILL BECOME A SWAN!
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