Pehchaan

One of my friends shared his experience of travelling in a packed local train. It was a fairly short distance to his destination but as the train started moving he felt someone touch him. That was not the usual touch which you may experience in a crowded train. Slowly the touch became intense and at specific places. For my friend it was clearly an unwelcomed touch. He somehow tried conveying to that person about his discomfort. We had a third person standing with us while our friend was sharing all this. After listening to all this, he unintentionally said “what a pervert”

I could not imagine what “that” guy would have felt about this episode. It was easy and so mainstream for all three of us to label him as ‘abnormal’. So this made me write about what is still considered as eyebrow raising topic. Yes, I am talking about my gay and lesbian friends. But this blog is dedicated more so for others.

 It has always been easy to follow the flow. By flow I refer to many things here. During my times (I consider myself old now :D) the flow was to either take science or commerce. If you choose either of them, you are in the flow. You satisfy your parents, make ways easy for your career, and set the right example for your younger siblings’. I told my parents I want to pursue Arts. With great difficulty (and may be they also would have imagined answering to questions like- ohh so she wants to be a teacher, is she pursuing arts because she scored less in 10^th, maths her weakness) they let me do what I wanted. It was not easy, people did ask these silly questions to them and me as well.

 You can think of all the times you have gone against the flow. I am sure if not tough, it wouldn’t be an easy journey for you. So I wonder what journey it would be like for our friends who are not in flow like majority – when it comes to sexual orientation. Forget journey, the first step in this journey is the awareness about yourself, about your body. I am really not sure how does anyone come to know that he or she is gay or lesbian. Unfortunately most of the times, our encounter with opposite gender comes mostly at teenage when we really start feeling those zones. Who would these friends be expressing to, to know whether what they are experiencing is normal, whether it is right, whether they would be able to live their lives like this.

 I guess once there is some awareness, the next milestone would be acceptance. The person would struggle accepting his / her own self and then there comes bigger struggle – to be accepted by his/ her loved ones. Society is not even remotely involved yet. It easy to suggest such parents, siblings to accept your loved one’s sexuality. They would have their own share of challenges – the top concern might be who would be my child’s companion for life, how can he / she become a parent. I am not mature enough to imagine and express the concerns of this person and his / her family’s concerns.

 Just think about this one. I like someone for a long time. That person also likes me. We are madly in love with each other and decide to make our family. One day I get to know that this person has decided to marry someone so that this person’s family gets a normal (or so called normal) son and daughter in law. The person left all the promises unfulfilled to fulfil the wishes of parents. Very recently my love got married to someone else (someone this person didn’t even know well). I was shattered. Could not stop my love from falling in this trap. (This is just one narration that I could share to describe profound pain in someone's life)

We may have friends / family members / our partners / or even ourselves who might be going through these emotions, these physical trappings, these mental upheaval. It's difficult as it is in a society like ours to first accept ourselves that we've a different sexual orientation than the majority, to not feel weighed down by the guilt of bringing shame to our family, to try and convince our loves ones that it's something as normal as the nature itself. All this when it has been imbibed in our minds that homosexuality is unnatural, that we need to seek psychiatric help to get rid of such feelings and that we would be less entitled to societal acceptance and respect if we choose to come out to the world. Imagine having to live with misplaced sexuality lest the dishonor it would allegedly bring to the family or worse due to fear of rejection. And I know that my post is just touching the surface level. I am sure there is much more that even I am not aware at this point. What we can do is - to make this place a bit accepting and a bit nurturing to all around us.

Hope some of you might feel encouraged to share your encounters on this subject