Category: 2022

A Lover vs A Friend

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

There’s a syntax that happens when people fall in love. Their friends feel like subordinate clauses. As it should happen when people fall in love, their lovers become a priority. Most friends feel alienated.

In the modern world, where the need for self worth is all consuming, the necessity for the Self to feel secure and by default the friendships one already has an extension to the Self, become paramount. The love relationship then becomes of second nature. Something that is breakable and by default is transitory and thus needs secondary attention.

However, when marriage is in the picture all the other priorities become less significant – to a degree and for a certain period of time. Because marriage involves society and other relationships. In a gay relationship, where marriage isn’t the be all and end all, the validity of love becomes subservient to time and other human equations. And in a country where there are no gay marriages, gay relationships become temporary even in the eyes of the gay vox populi.

Gay friends speak of the love between two queer people frivolously. There are aspersions to the validity of the love itself, considering the amount of sex that is available out there in the community. Hurrah, for the sex. But the point I try to make is that sex is often seen as the be all and end all of a love relationship. Most people forget about the word “love” itself.

I will be the first to admit that love is a complicated emotion. Understanding it is probably futile. Thus, one can only feel it and the abstraction that it creates is inexplicable. One of the reasons why it’s so easy to think of it as not worth the bother. Sex is simpler. Easier. And people who have not felt the abstraction can only equate it to what is practical and attainable.

This I find bothersome.

What one must remember is that romance doesn’t last. Love does. Sex may or may not last. Love does. There are no two ways about it. When one feels, and when one feels deeply, the emotion penetrates the tangible heart. It manifests therein like a living, breathing thing. And as the passion and the romance wanes, the friendships return to their own spaces. They may come in a bit singed, if they don’t understand what love is. And if they themselves have loved, the singe heals. Love finds its own grooves and alcoves.

If only friends understood this. Friends and lovers. Each have their own spaces. Their own gardens. Their own gazebos. In the same heart.

My family

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

You know, my family? Pretty awesome set of women.

My paternal gran was a refugee from Sahiwal, Pakistan. Her family lost everything in the partition. She married a promising engineer and had four kids. She was a widow at 26. She raised the children on her own, not wanting to return to Punjab from Mumbai, because she would have had to marry one of his brothers. She lived a lonely life and loved me to the core. I lost her in 2000.

My elder bua married a widower with four children. She was self-made, strong and never asked anyone for help. She became a widow after five years of marriage. She raised her step children and managed the household on her own. She battled depression throughout her life. She was the first one I came out to after my mom. She wrote me a letter and in it, she said I love you no matter who you love. I lost her in 2019.

My younger bua paved her own path. She never cared much for the world thought of her. She chalked out her own destiny. She never complained. She made her wins for her family and her losses her own. She loved once and wholeheartedly. She saw her husband through his worst and was with him til he died. After, she was lonely and devastated. She was a poet. She understood me in ways no one ever could or has. She was my father. I lost her in 2021.

My mom is naïve in the ways of emotion and she is who she is. She has no malice in her. She is self-made. She married at 19 and by 20 she began working and never stopped until her retirement. She did the best she could, having two children to raise on her own because my father stopped working when I was 2. She battled against his alcoholism and shattered dreams of love and fulfillment. She braved cancer and she built her own home. The only one in my family to do so. She accepted me for who I am without any altercation or drama. I came out to her at 16.

My sister, another woman who loves me to the core. She followed me everywhere as a child. She looked up to me and gradually after I told her to find her own path, began forging it on her own. She never looked back. She worked and she battled her own demons – always privately. Because she took after my elder bua – she never breathed a word about her losses or her sorrows. When she married she did it because she wanted to.

My maternal grandparents rocked. They were the only couple I saw the happiest in each other’s company. From them, I learned that true love did exist. The kinds you only read about in romance novels. They were open-minded and funny. I lost my granddad in 1995, and my gran mom in 2003.

My furkids – Bonzo, Rolfe, Diana, Zoe, Zach and Xena. The loves of my life. I lost Bonzo in 1996, Rolfe in 2001, Diana in 2005 and Zoe in 2013. They have been my children and I have wanted none of the human kind when I have them.

I can go on and on about the rest of the tribe. My cousin sister, Natasha, who stood up for me at weddings and get-togethers, my jeej, Ignatius, who accepted me without an eyebrow raised, my niece, Danica, who has been my friend more than my niece, my maasi, who loved me like a son.

Finally, my partner, Anand. He and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, except the things that count. He stuck with me through thick and thin and showed me that marriages are not made by rituals and paperwork. The testament of love has to be unspoken and realised solely on emotion. There is no mountain that I shall climb where I know he will not follow. There is no tragedy he will go through where I won’t be there holding onto his hand. Love is not easy. But love is also not a fantasy. It does exist, even in the bitterest of lows and the cruelest times.

This is my family. If you knew us when all of us were together, you really could understand what it means to be a family. Now that I have lost so many over time, few of us remain, but yea, if you are included in our fold, trust me, you will know what it is to be loved.

Polyamory

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Like most gay boys growing up in the 90’s, I dreamed of falling in love with The One. Someone who would help me battle the world with our common sexuality as a shield. Someone who would love me unconditionally. Someone who would be possessive about me and who would bring me flowers each time I got upset. Someone who would never cheat on me in word, feeling or action. Some guy walking straight out of a historical romance written by Johanna Lindsey.

Life had other plans. Love had a different complexion.

I fell in love at 19. Got dumped at 20.

I fell in love at 22. It was a long distance relationship, again. So, I ran away – scared.

I fell in love at 24. I am still with him. Through the decades that followed, I realised love is not just what I expected in the first paragraph.

It’s sticking to the relationship and making it work when each of those ideas diminish into real life. When people in love realise that both are human. Human beings make mistakes. We have insecurities and hopes. Some are manageable and some are possible. Some are neither. And that is okay.

But as I grew, I also realised one important thing. The love I had at 19 and 22 and 24 all existed at the same time. I had not stopped loving any of the three. Because for me, love is forever. It doesn’t fade away. It’s as lasting as the blood running through my veins.

We’re taught certain constructs. Social constructs. Of one man one woman, since we’re children. The straight world in their history have talked of soulmates. Two of them. Break a heart in two. Couplehood. But as I opened my heart I understood that I could never stop loving the people I have loved. If couplehood works for people, they should go for it. If being in an open relationship works for some, they should go for that. If singlehood is what some want, then that is what they should get. It should be simple.

I lost people to death. I never stopped loving them. I love my mother, my aunts, my grand parents, my sister and all six of my fur kids. I don’t love one more than the other. I just love them differently. I love them according to who they are. Loving one doesn’t make loving the other less. Loving one doesn’t mean I have spent the love I have.

Love is an endless stream. It comes from the heart. Not from thought. It comes from feeling. Not from logic. Its flowing is constant and many drink from it, at the same or at different times. And I realised that I could do the same with my partners.

It was incidental. The fourth time I fell in love. I never even thought it was possible. It happened. And I was honest about it. I spoke to my current partner and he accepted the new love into our relationship. I understood polyamory.

Polyamory is defined as “the practice of engaging in multiple romantic (and typically sexual) relationships, with the consent of all the people involved.” The most important point here is consent that speaks of honesty. I am nothing if not honest. And in that honesty, we three spent three years together. We formed our own rules and our own boundaries.

The new love did not last. But when he left, in the middle of a locked down world, I was devastated. It was like an April storm had picked me up and was casting me around in its eddies. I have written about it elsewhere on this blog. This lasted for two years. The tumult has not yet ended completely.

In the interim, I met people. Scores of them. Most became friends. Some became sexual partners. But I tried hard not to fall in love again. Love rips the shit out of you. It literally does. So, I allowed myself to get emotionally connected to people who were far away. Knowing they would not be around me. People who lived in my city I stopped myself getting emotionally connected.

But love is love.

It happened.

But this time it came with fear. Fear of abandonment. Fear of loss. Fear of heartbreak. Because I certainly don’t want to get heartbroken again. He scares me. With his quiet, his anger and his ambition. I am in love with his simplicity and gentle nature. His beliefs and his hope. But they all scare me too. There’s this constant state of anxiety I am in. Because I know my love for him will last forever now but I am never certain if his will.

Love is all well and fine – but trust is paramount. Love came slow. Trust is yet to come in fully. The more I fall deeper in love, the trust is taking a slower time to appear. He keeps getting annoyed because of this. It is tough. But I have been through a lot. I have been to hell and back and I have met with the Devil of depression. The more I love, the more afraid I become. But that is fodder for another blog post.

Polyamory may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Many wouldn’t even want to understand it. But this post is not for them. Why would I care for some one who doesn’t understand love? My relationships are not meant as examples. They are just relationships, growing on mutual love and honesty. So this post is for those who want to understand why they love who they do. To them, I say, love, but love honestly and completely. And when you say forever, mean it.