Category: Articles

A photographer for the National Geographic

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia2 Comments

I have reached a saturation point of not wanting to participate with the world. I open Twitter and trolls are all over – it’s not the viciousness that gets me but the sheer stupidity. I open Facebook and I see a list of people fighting over what they think is right. I open a favoured news feed and I find another series of deaths, a build up of a shameful politic, a deterioration of the wild and all I end up feeling is let down by belief.

I’m not intending this to be a rant. It isn’t. I’m just so done and writing this takes me into this cesspool that the world has become. People talk to me of hope.

And I tried that. I even tried the whole after life heaven thing. Realised too late that even metaphorical fathers are a let down. I do want to believe, you know. I do want to believe in the goodness of people. That somewhere there are people that believe animals are worth saving. Every battle has two sides. The ocean is dark and yet it can be beautiful.

I have no clue why I am writing this. Probably to fill up another space on this blog. Get a pretty picture. And yea, think that this piece will get noticed, maybe even liked. But once I put it up I will forget about it. Like I forget about the fact that people want to save the world, not for the sake of the world, but because of the children they have produced and/or hope to produce. A world in which killing becomes a part of a game, where movies that end with death become super hits, murder and violence is filmed and broadcast. A world where the Hunger games make complete sense.

Speaking of hunger, I must incorporate what happened the other day. The other day I went to the mall – and I made a mistake of choosing to go there on a Sunday. Worse, I was hungry. So I went to the food court. It’s like an oasis on the African savanna. Only difference here is that the young are in no great danger. So they burgeon and overpower sound and space.

We’ve all become so American we don’t have to go to America anymore. Which is a good thing. We have decided being a part of the third world isn’t great. I admire the move, upward or downward is all a matter of another debate. But why not? Let’s have a go at it if you want, these days it’s all about the argument. About having a voice. Let it be heard, even if it has the merit of nails on a black board. One must not discriminate or else one shall be discriminated against.

I should get back to work. Something to do to maintain the lifestyle I am used to. Switch on the air conditioner, not because I am cold, but because I am having a problem with allergies. It’s a vicious cycle. We are all caught up in it. Even if we realise this, the solution to it is a whole different ball game. It may put us into another cycle.

Yet, I just don’t want to care for the moment. And although being a photographer for the National Geographic is hard, how can you not hurt to see a fawn strangled by a lioness, or a buffalo being torn apart by wild dogs? I need to turn the mind off for a while and deaden it with the process of work.

Throuple

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia3 Comments

I find myself in a very – I would not say, difficult – I would just say, different situation. You see, I am in love with two men, at the same time.

It is not a unique situation and I am certainly not the first person to do so. Pick up any love story and you will find a triangle. However, ever since we have a concept of love we are told it has to be between a couple. It has to be two. That is the ideal situation. All triangles do is bring pain. Take any love story where the hero is conflicted between two heroines or a heroine with two heroes.

If it was a different world, Bella Swan would not have had to choose between Edward Cullen and Jacob Black. It has probably to do with the fact that two males would not want to share. There are questions of possessiveness and jealousy and protection and coveting. None of those are actually portrayed as very conducive for any relationship but we are all human and we all feel them and so we decide a one-on-one, monogamous model is always paramount to any love relationship.

I have realized something different over the years. When I was 20, I fell in love with a boy who vowed fidelity, commitment and love. Long story short, his family did not accept his homosexuality and I was let go without a by-your-leave. I was devastated. I fell in love again and that did not work out because of cultural expanses and distance issues. But then I fell in love again and the relationship lasted.

A and I overcame calamities and deaths in the family, sicknesses and alienations. That was everything external that imposed on the relationship. We lasted for ten years. Then another year and another and love did not diminish. But then in our thirteenth year, I was brought face to face with his infidelity.

I took a hard, long look at our relationship, everything that we had faced and gone through and I assessed the options before me. At the age of 38, I was given enough experience to derive from it some wisdom. I realized that I had never really stopped loving the people I loved. The opposite of love has never been hate, to quote a cliché, it is indifference. And I certainly was not indifferent to all the men in my life, past and present. If I was, they were not really that important in my life at all.

So, I decided to open up my relationship.

I have heard so many experiences of people in open relationships. When I used to hear about them when I was single and looking for love, I always was appalled at the ideology behind such a relationship and I used to judge people in them. As karma would have it, I found myself in one. It took me months to get into bed with another man. When I did however, I realized (so many realisations, if you note) that sex had nothing to do with love. We all like to think that one person can take care of all our needs and the needs that cannot be taken care of have to be sacrificed at the altar of monogamy.

I must admit it took me a while to get used to the idea of being with other men. But when I was with other men, I realized how each of them was different from the other and how my needs could never be truly met by any one of them. Not completely. I appreciated my partner more. I ended up loving him more. I never stopped feeling a twinge of jealousy when he would be other men. I am human after all. But they were giving him something I could never do, I guess. And I wanted A to be happy, and I was not unhappy myself.

Then in the wake of this relationship move, I took better care of myself. I grew more independent. I stopped being emotionally dependent. I stopped being clingy and possessive. I did not expect him to appreciate everything I was capable of and everything I thought I should be loved for. He appreciated me in his own way and I learned that he did not have to love in the way I thought he should. I was not him. He was not me.

Being gay gave me the option of being in an open relationship without being condemned for it. I am sure there were and are many, in the gay world, too, who feel the way I used to feel when I was younger. They do judge and do denounce the way I live my life with my partner. But this brings me back to the ideology of how I tackled my being gay. No one else had the right to tell me what to do with the person I loved and how I wanted to live my life. Of course, being gay never was a matter of choice, and this was how I chose to live with my partner. There was the difference.

But then, don’t straight people choose to live monogamous lives, because society asks it of them? Haven’t we all been conditioned to expect monogamy? We see it all the time, read about it all the time, told about it all the time. Monogamy is accepted in modern times. That is what is the ‘norm’, ‘the appropriate thing to do’, ‘the way to be’. All those Hindi movies, where women and men loved forever. Jhilmil sitaron ka aangan hoga, rhimjhim barasta sawan hoga… All those romance novels and fairy tales where the hero swept the heroine off in his arms and walked into the sunset.

However, by that idea, being straight is also the ‘norm’, and I am against the norm anyway. We have these constructs in our head, these patterns that we should live up to. The moment we move out of the box, the moment we break the pattern, all hell breaks loose.

But I have moved out of the box. I have broken the pattern.

How so? Well, I fell in love with a guy. He fell in love with me. V accepted that I was in a relationship and I would not leave A. So, he told me that he would accept the relationship of being a ‘thruple’: what the urban dictionary defines as a three-way relationship. Properly known by polyamorists as a triad. Amusingly known by many gay men as a ‘thruple.’

The relationship is complex and yet simple. I have no recourse to think otherwise. When it gets complicated, we hash it out. When it is simple, we enjoy it. I love the idea of sleeping in between the two men I love. It is an inexpressible feeling. We joke together, laugh together, watch movies together and take care of each other. We know all of each other’s secrets and we know how to deal with them. We really do not know what the future holds, but then does anyone?

Being gay has just been decriminalized in my country. What consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is their business. The State agrees. But then comes the family and its acceptance. It is not necessary again, but it smoothens the process of life. I went through the process of coming out with me being in love with two men. At first, it is difficult to understand. Then it is difficult for the elders to divide loyalties and duties. They also think that I am pushing the buck.

As it is, they accepted my sexuality. Now they have to defy society’s world view further and say that their child is in love with – and in a relationship with – two men. It is difficult and it is completely out of the box. But knowing me, I am the sort who always wanted to be honest about my life with the people I love. So, when family fails to understand, it is jarring. I feel I have to get used to being out of mainstream love. I have to do something ‘normal’ in order to balance the ‘abnormal’ in me.

It is so devastating, in fact, that I wonder if my life has been enough. That is about all people can take. I keep pushing the line. I keep expanding my world view. I keep moving further and not backwards. But maybe the line stops here? Logically, I am old enough not to care about what others say. Some of my more intellectual friends would scoff and remind me that telling everyone everything is not the rational way to go. Everyone will not understand, because everyone is not the same. And it comes back to the same explanation of how I am and how I choose to live my life. So, we go about in circles.

Sometimes, it just gets tiring. Going around and around in circles. But I will say, that I have not been running in the same one. All of mine are loops within expanding loop and the gyre keeps moving into larger spheres. But where every circle ends, another larger one begins, and sometimes I feel as though I am a test rabbit running in a loop in some time warp wheel of Fate and Time. Running and reaching nowhere… Again, that may just be in my mind, because it is not necessary to see the outward manifestation of some preexisting notion of a goal to achieve.

Maybe that is the whole point of this thing. Expand and just reach. That is where my ambition shines.

Promises and lies

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia1 Comment

When someone you love hurts you, the feeling compresses your lungs. You can’t really cry, until it has all sunk in. Your breath stops. Your heart beats a dime a dozen and then you get a cascade of arguments in your head. Your mind and heart are in revolution against your self and you are besieged inside and out.

I have struggled all my life against society and its rules. It told me how I should behave as a boy. It told me that I wasn’t really worth anything because I was different from the rest of the boys. It told me that there was a certain way to be to live within it and I wasn’t that way. I struggled against my father, who was a victim of society by himself, because he thought that I should be a certain way too. His love for me was overshadowed by his fear of what he believed in.

My grandmother who was born in 1918 accepted me, but he did not.

I was bought up by strong women. I saw some who had unconventional marriages, some who chose to remain unmarried and were ambitious, some who were conniving and yet had hearts capable of immense love, some who became widows and raised children by themselves and some who had bad husbands and had careers thrust upon them. I learned so many things from them. Mostly, I learned that society doesn’t put food on your table. That one has to do himself and so in the long run, society can go and fuck itself.

So I came out at 16 – to one such woman. I came out to another and another and another and they all accepted me. I felt resurrected because if they had my back no one could touch me. So I learned that honesty was rewarded by those who mattered. That being honest had nothing to do with being accepted but how true you can be to yourself. I admit, I was honest because my honesty was rewarded.

Maybe if I wasn’t rewarded with acceptance, the honest streak I have in me would have been controlled. Would control be a suitable verb to use here?

Over the years, I believed more in love and less in god. I believe more in death than I do in life. I believe that one pays for what one does, either in a good way or bad. I have faced loss, people I love, dogs that are like my children pass by like sand from an open hand. Through it all I have lost more than I have gained. I repeat the same things over and over and I don’t seem to learn despite the fact that the rewards have lessened and punishments have increased.

The things I believed in lie in a broken pile somewhere in a darkened corner of a room I dread visiting. People profess love but they don’t really understand it. Maybe they have it right all along. Maybe the expectations I have need to be torn down completely and I need to rebuild on something that speaks of maturity and reliability of independence within and without.

The men in my life have used my trust and in short, made me wonder on the credit of being honest. I am faced with disillusionment, betrayal at the worst and apathy and uncertainty at the least. All promises have been broken as though they were mere words, air. No hooks of honesty to grapple them to the real world and asking them to materialize into truth.

It has come to the point where I do not even believe that happiness was created only to break the monotony that sadness offers. Everyone wants to have a good time. They indulge you when it suits them and without a moment’s notice, they bare their fangs or they leave you stranded, holding your heart, looking manic.

I always had an idyllic world view. Now I know better. I can trust no one. The only problem that I see with that is that I cannot stop loving.