The Bangalore Pride March took place last fortnight and, as part of the events leading up to it, a queer reading was organised at Paradigm Shift, a restaurant-cum-activist centre. In what is a yearly event before Pride, the Writers' Corner calls upon participants to read poems, short stories or essays on gender and sexuality. When I attended the event last Wednesday I was bowled over both by the turnout and the quality of the readings.
I read too, an essay I had written for the website Medium as part of a series on what love/sex advice you would give your teenage self. The essay focuses on my coming out and how I shaped my identity as a gay man in the aftermath. It moves on to talk about where I stand today, and the lessons I have learnt over the years.
My essay was a cry for greater acceptance, as all the other essays and poems and stories read out at Writers' Corner were, but it was different in that it was post-anger. It was written with a greater understanding of life's mysterious ways and how we may come to value the very things we disparage when we are younger. Like most other gay men and women, I came out in a burst of courage and anger; a to-hell-with-you spirit that was deeply endearing. Also, one I no longer subscribe to. While this transition is natural, attending the Writers' Corner brought me face-to-face with a version of my younger self, a version I had addressed in my own write-up.
A young woman read a poem she had written in the aftermath of the Supreme Court (SC) judgment of December 2013 which recriminalised homosexuality after the Delhi High Court had struck down the section in 2009. The poem burnt with her anger, a mix of pain and pleasure at having come out a month before the SC verdict, sure in the knowledge that the future was hers and of those like her. Another participant read "How to Make Love to a Trans Person" by Gabe Moses, a stirring poem with lines such as these:
Realise that bodies are only a fraction of who we are
They're just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts
And honestly, they can barely contain us
We strain at their seams with every breath we take
We are all pulse and sweat,
Tissue and nerve ending
We are programmed to grope and fumble until we get it right.
Bodies have been learning each other forever.
It's what bodies do.
A third participant read out a letter that his mother wrote to the SC after the Section 377 verdict. It burst with the trauma of seeing a loved one branded a criminal for choosing love and the particular pain of the mother who should see this happen to the one she has raised and nurtured. Gay, lesbian and transgender readers read about their experiences, the casual violence of bigoted speech, the real violence that spills blood, the sheer joy of coming out, the wondrous beauty of love and sex. There were readings in Kannada, Urdu and English, each inflected with the joy and pain and hurt and happiness of not belonging, finding a community, and finally belonging. It was magical.
As I read out the essay I had addressed to my teenage self, I saw him in the younger crowd that spoke so viscerally and articulately about their desire for a different world. I am an idealist and I would love for the world in general and India in particular to be more equal, but I am also 30 and have increasingly learnt to make compromises. I know that LGBT equality in India is at best a mirage that might seem within reach on some occasions but which will ultimately disappear.
But that is the world outside of me. There is this other, slow-bubbling space of gay identity that each of us traverses. One such element, captured in the essay I read out, is the realisation of how ordinary I am. I spoke about how I hunger for a partner with whom I might have a family. I spoke about how, together with fighting to be recognised for my difference, I ache to be "normal". I spoke about how, after years of thinking of my gayness as a gift, I look upon it as no more than who I am. Even as I read those words, I scanned the room for reactions. Was I being disingenuous? Was I coming across as a phony?
I would like to think not. As with other things in life, there is no one truth to being gay. Perhaps all of us grow to look upon our past selves as impulsive, even callow. But meeting that past self via others at the Writers' Corner was an object lesson in the battles that we need to continue fighting. If the personal is political, it was clear from the heart-rending pleas of the speakers that our private journeys, marked by change and growth, won't do without appreciating where we come from and where we need to go.
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