Category: I Am

My Children

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I am stressed. And I am tired. Recuperating after an illness and taking care of three furkids. Zachary, who is this beautiful Virgo brindle boxer, who came into my life when I was in the depths of agony at having lost my girl, Zoe. My family bundled me up and took me to Pune to meet him, they disregarded their own grief as they shuttled me there because I was inconsolable – when I think about her I still hurt.

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Bonzo and I, 1982 (?)

It hurts when I think about Bonzo, the spitz who saw me through childhood, who put his head in my lap through those horrible teen years when I was estranged from society and did not know where to go or be.

Undesired I thought I was until he wagged his tail when he saw me, and in many ways, I was cruel to him, as we all are in matters of neglect caused due to life or human pain and all he did was love me. He was a part of my life when I was four, and he lived with me until I was 20.

Rolfe and Diana came into my life when Bonzo left it. We got the siblings from a family in Dadar.

Rolfe was the last of the litter and Diana was the stronger one with beautiful eyes. She was a burnished brown and he was a dappled fawn. She and he started my love affair with boxers. I remembered the first time Diana smiled at me. I thought she was snarling but she was actually baring her teeth in a simile of a smile. I remember the good times, I remember falling in love for the first time and they being around me, the walks we shared in those days were so filled with a crystalline life. It sparkled.

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Diana, having a rest after a session of play on our terrace.

Diana developed mange around the same time my heart broke. She and we braved the plethora of vets we made our journeys to and fro. She was misdiagnosed, mistreated medically. Chosalkar who just had a mobile clinic then said it was an infection caused by heat since it started around her muzzle. When we met Dr Chavan she had reached the end of her tether. He brought her back through rigorous treatment and her own sheer dent of will. Scorpio child.

When Rolfe fell ill with a stomach infection, it was a mild case of diarrhoea and vomiting. Diwali time. Dr Chavan was out of town. When I took him to the dispensary at Khar, they injected him with wrong medicine on an empty stomach and he flew into convulsions. They abandoned him and asked me to rush him to the SPCA hospital. I did not know that that would prove to be a fate far worse.

They refused to treat him until I admitted him. I did. They did not give him treatment but waited for his blood work until the next morning. I left him there. There are very few things in life that I regret, and the regrets I have I can count on one hand, and all of them have to do with my kids’ medical treatments. I still remember going home. Diana wondering where he was. We thinking that he would be okay – it was a pet hospital after all.

It was a Friday, his condition had not improved. I still remember the small cubicle they had kept him in. I couldn’t imagine how I could have allowed it. But he was my second child, first time at a hospital, I thought it was for the best. They tested his blood and the blood work would come back the next day. Fees were taken. IV drips were given. He was lucid and we walked around the compound. We stayed from the time the hospital gates opened to the time they shut at 6pm. I left him again.

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Rolfe and Diana, the very first day I bought them home.

Saturday we find that the lab had misplaced the reports, there were none. So the tests were retaken. IV drips were adminstered. We stayed. To find that the test results would show up on Monday. The lab was closed on Sunday. Two days were spent in agony. By Monday, Dr Chavan returned and surreptitiously asked us to have him discharged. But by then my mom, sister, Anand and I wanted him out. I have never yelled at “doctors” the way I yelled then, I had him discharged and I brought him back home. I knew he was dying by then. He couldn’t walk. I got him home at 5:45pm. Rolfe met Diana and in a few minutes of lying on our hall floor passed away. I remember. They say the death of a dog you have loved is like the death of a child. I agree. It will never cease to pain. He was with me for six years, 1995 – 2001.

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Diana, at 8 and Zoe, at 1.

Zoe came into my life in April 2002. She was a Bandra girl. Her mother was Becky, a beautiful fawn boxer with a large face. Apparently, she was a star, said her owner, she had acted in a movie with Anil Kapoor. I smiled. And when I went down into the litter of pups, I noticed Zoe bundling towards me with her pink nose spotted with black spots, she had such lovely markings. I picked her up and it was love.

When I got her home to Diana, Diana accepted her with no fuss. No jealousy, no tantrums. She was a calm, beautiful natured girl. My Diana. When Zoe was three, Diana fell ill at night. She had trouble breathing, and on consultation, the doctor said to give her electrol water and keep her calm. But she was calm. Her breath was laboured. I kept her company through the night, and fed her water, and held her and soon I dropped off to sleep. Mom woke me and told me that she had passed away. Hers was a death I could bear. I was with her, she was 10, she came in my life in 1995 and passed in 2005.

(I took a break right now, I couldn’t keep up with the emotional upheaval and went and hugged my mom who was busy doing paperwork. It’s nice to save a few hugs for people, too.)

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Zoe, in 2012.

Zoe came into my life when my relationships flourished. It was a good time for me. I had settled in a career. I had a good bunch of friends. I had found a footing in the life that I had chosen. She was my golden girl. She was possessive, bossy, obedient, loving. She had beautiful markings and people stopped and asked about her. Everyone wondered on how beautifully she behaved. She was intelligent and sassy. Most of all, she loved me crazily. I used to sing “Zoe, I love you”, to the tune of the old Hindi film song, “Bhool gaya sab kuch, yaad nahi ab kuch” from Julie.

She also saw me through the toughest times of my life, post 2005. I learnt a lot about life when she was in it. That stretch of a decade was when I grew up. I learned that life comes with a lot of heartache and pain, and the good times are fleeting and rare, but they are what make life worth living. I always used to count her as one such good thing in my life. Her time with me was hers alone, I didn’t share it with another kid, after Diana. So it was her and me against the world.

She developed bladder stones during Diwali of 2008. She stopped peeing one night and I went crazy. She was diagnosed by Dr Chousalkar who by now had a clinic in seven bungalows. After he eased her discomfort, I began oscillating between him and Dr Chavan, who now had bitten the commerical bug and taken a clinic for himself at Vakola.

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Zoe, looking up at what used to be our old flat, to her it wasn’t just an abandoned, old structure.

We shifted homes in 2012, since our home was going through redevelopment. We moved a block away. Zoe would run to our old compound on our evening walks and look up at the broken building where our flat used to be. She remembered her childhood. I was trying to forget mine. Mom was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 and began her therapy. In the midst of all the turmoil, Zoe’s last year with us was fraught with tension.

She developed Degenerative Myelopathy at the end of September, 2013. Slowly, she lost control of her hind legs. I ordered harnesses for her. I would carry her down and she would try and keep up. I knew the end was near. I used to believe in God back then. I used to pray. I remember standing under the shower one day and saying, “if you are around, take her, don’t make me do what will pain me the most.”

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Zoe, one night in October, 2013, wearing the first harness I helped her walk around with…

On 27th October, post dinner, she started retaining urine. She was in extreme discomfort. She couldn’t stand, obviously. I couldn’t help her urinate because she couldn’t. I spoke to my doctor friend, he suggested I try and use a catheter and try help ease the urine out. We tried. This happened around 2am on 28th, and she lay in the bathroom, with me trying to help her and she looked at me and kept looking at me – I know she knew I was trying to help. She just looked at me.

I gave in to fear and love. I took her to the SPCA hospital at 4am. The ward boys there checked her and went and woke the doctor there who didn’t want to treat her without me admitting her. I told them I was not going to do that at any cost. So the doctor, tried using a metal catheter and poked her vagina. I stopped him, after a few seconds, because I knew she was in pain. That brought me back to the same space I was in with Rolfe years ago… I told him that was inhumane and he said he wouldn’t touch her then unless I admitted her. I told him to fuck off and picked her up and brought her to Chosalkar’s clinic. At 5:30am.

I waited for two hours, until the doctor came on my request a little early and inspected her. He helped ease a bit of urine out, but said that the doctor at the hospital had hurt her and it was best he didn’t investigate. He gave her a saline drip and a pain killer. Her urine eased out.

I brought her home.

When she began retaining urine again in an hour, I knew it was time. My friend, Bhavesh, brought his own vet to check her and he suggested I let her go. At 2pm on 28th October, 2013, I have made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I asked him to put her to rest. When she died, so did my belief in anything supernatural. I had to take her body back to the SPCA hospital for cremation. But as luck would have it the electric crematorium was not working, so they built her a pyre, and that was the last I saw of my golden girl.

Zach (brindle) and Xena (fawn)

A week later, Anand found Zach on OLX. We drove to Pune and found his home. I met his mother and all of his siblings. When I got him home, he was aloof and distant. That was his character. He was one of the most handsome boxer pups I have ever seen. But he took his time to thaw towards me. He is loved by everyone who sees him. He is gentle and has a kind heart. He is my big boy. But I didn’t want to have just one this time. So I found Xena via a website. She was in Bangalore. She has the perfect face. Wide, deep intelligent eyes and big droopy ears. The dominant one. The bossy one.

It’s not easy for me to see any animal in distress. If I can, I help. That is what being human amounts to me. When I heard Bilbo crying out in distress, last Sunday morning, I had to go down in my pajamas to see what was happening. When I saw him cowering in a corner surrounded by men with sticks, all I had to do was bend down and open my arms. He ran right in to them. He could have perceived me as one of that species that was trying to harm him. He didn’t. He noted the compassion and that makes him a far more empathetic species.

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Bilbo

Dogs complete my family. I love them. I will not have children of my own. I believe I was not meant to have any. So be it. But these dogs are my children. They have given me what a child would give. Affection, acceptance, understanding, company, satisfaction, heartbreak and love. Many times I am faced with the question of whether the heartbreak is worth the love. But I smile. That’s like asking me why do I live when I know I am one day, going to die.

What Then Is Homophobia?

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia2 Comments

I am gay. I knew what to call myself at the age of thirteen. How? I was teased in school. Before that I knew that I liked guys. Sexually. My sexual awakening happened when I saw Christopher Reeve fly through the sky in 1980 as Superman. He was and still remains a fantasy for me. I didn’t know why I liked him. I just did. Now of course, I know plenty of reasons why I did. Daddy issues, idol issues, the need to be protected by someone larger that life who was male, a plethora of reasons, actually. Almost ascribing to all the clichés one can think of.

No, I found out what to call myself by a boy in school who wanted me. When I didn’t really understand what he was after, he didn’t have the guts to actually voice it out himself, and what followed was him name calling. One of the names being ‘gay’. I began to read about it and what followed was a journey of self discovery. I read and I read and I read. I devoured everything that came my way in book form. The book that really was an eye-opener was Nancy Friday’s “Men in Love” – gosh, that book was really something. I learnt how to notice my body, how men would think, what different kinds of sexual thought pervaded the human mind. I realised early that sexuality is fluid and I wasn’t the only one who fantasized – and that my fantasies were pretty ‘vanilla’.

Through my teens, I was awkward, a book worm, a geek, a nerd, a momma’s boy. Name a derogatory word, in the likes of ‘pansy’, ‘sissy’ and I have been called it. It was difficult growing into someone who wasn’t afraid of the world. I didn’t know I had it in me when I was mocked in front of an entire Economics class, during high school, in what was termed as ‘Icy Day’, a day where boys and girls sent out anonymous mint candies to people they liked. Someone, presumably a secret male admirer, had sent me scores of them and each of them had messages that were read out before the entire class. Pithy messages in Hindi declaring infatuation – and of course, I smiled through it all. Intuitively, I knew I was the butt of a joke. The class laughed and I smiled. Inwardly, I was frozen.

When I left, the class representative, his name was Shiamak, came up to me and asked me, ‘are you gay?’ I looked up at him and said, coolly, ‘why? Are you asking me out on a date?’ Post that burn, he never said anything to me and no one ever teased me in that year.

I learned to walk differently, I dressed differently, I moved out of a zone and into another. Much later, I realised something. Throughout my formative years, I had no real male figure to look up to, I was surrounded by these amazingly accomplished women, who I wished to emulate and be like. So I adopted their mannerisms and affectations. Moreover, I was under the impression that to attract a man one needed to be like a woman.

As I grew and educated myself on the gay subculture, I realised that I could choose to be who I am and I had to act like no specific gender in order to be liked. I read and books like ‘The Persian Boy’, ‘Men in Love’, ‘Maurice’,  and movies like ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’, ‘Get Real’, ‘Victor Victoria’, made me appreciate who I could be, and I became me. The three years of degree college, immersing myself in Literature and Psychology, molded me into someone who had no reservations of being effeminate and no remorse about being manly. I understood that there was no such word as ‘normal’ and one needs to just be true to himself.

I came out to my mother at the age of sixteen. My first step to being out as a gay man. The process wasn’t a painful one, but the anxiety that formed its prologue was agony. The fear of a boy trying desperately not to allow the love his mother has for him change, on account of something he cannot change, is always filled with such pathos and such trepidation. Someone asked me why do gay guys celebrate pride – in my head, there are a million reasons, but the most important one is this: A homosexual child has years of either fear, or resilience, or anxiety, or loss, or merciless browbeating, or sacrifice, or pain, or confusion, or pressure, or regret or all of it together until that moment when he recognises who he is, and takes the step out of a dark closet. That step, to me, is why we have Pride.

Over the years, I have struggled, not greatly, but in the countless, little moments, when a student pokes fun, or when a family member smirks at another, or when the doorman gives you an all-knowing look, or a straight friend makes a casual remark that is hurtful… and these are many… but in effect, these mean little when I expect two entities to appreciate the fact that I have rights just as any straight man. The first being my family and the second being my country.

I have been proud of both, throughout my life. My family is fantastic, anyone who has met them knows this to be true. My country is mine – the place where I was born, the climate I love, the people who recognise me as a part of the earth I played on. I refused to give it up for a land of opportunity. I fell in love with someone who wanted me to move with him to a foreign land… and I gave that up because of these two entities. I do not regret that move. Never have.

Until the Supreme Court verdict upholding Section 377 in 2013. It broke my heart. Then in 2014, my family supported a rise to power that spoke clearly against homosexuality. That shook my belief in the support system I had. It wasn’t cataclysmic, it was insidious and it was there. I didn’t understand the logic behind it. My faith was shaken.

The second time that happened was from the only other safe ground I have left to me. The Community. I have always looked to the gay subculture as my second family. I got into the ‘circuit’ when I was recovering from the heartbreak of a first love. I could never gain complete succour from people who loved me but were straight. Somehow in my mind, they didn’t really understand what had happened. They blamed the boy I was in love with as having a bad character, but it was deeper that that. He wanted to be famous and his career wouldn’t make any concession for his being gay. He was scared, true, but he was scared because he was gay. He had something to lose, something he wanted desperately. Only another gay person could relate to this feeling of seclusion, and yet of being one. It is a paradox.

So I found my place to be, at twenty-two, at a meeting I was randomly invited to. You know the feeling where you hear people speak a language and you instantly recognise it as your own? That was what happened. I revelled at finding this safe zone. This place where I could talk and be heard and more importantly, be understood, because of the advantage of common experience. It felt liberating.

Over the years, I realised that human beings do not think collectively. Which is fine. But they also do not like to think about a thought opposed to their own. In the past few months, I have realised this to be glaringly apparent. On gay dating apps, there are words like ‘straight-acting’, ‘no fems’, ‘no sissies’… these transport me back into that corridor outside that classroom with that boy whose sole purpose at that point in time was to belittle my spirit, to hollow out something that he would never understand. I am instantly transported back to that time when a gay friend of mine says that walking the Pride is unnecessary but he will be there at the party that happens post it.

But of late, that corridor seems to be the world, including the one in which I thought I was safe and secure. The term internalised homophobia has more than one meaning. It’s not necessarily self-hate because of being queer, it could just as easily be hate towards the other, because the rainbow flag apparently has begun to discriminate from within. People see what they want to see, blinders can also be rainbow coloured. The plight of common experience is not enough anymore to bind people together. We are caught up with our own petty grievances. This is what enrages me.

I have been cheated. Over and over and over.

Where is this united front that we talk about? We smile at each other, the way I smiled so long ago, on that day of those icy declarations that froze my heart. People say I love you and go and vote for someone who agrees with the fact that I am a criminal. We decide to walk hand in hand in Pride, but cannot wait to accuse the other for personal gain, when the gain basically is for part of the larger community any which way. We cannot see beyond the circles of what we consider Right. Common experience has no value. A common enemy has no prestige. Different though is irrelevant. But one’s own differences should be appreciated?

I will walk the Pride. I will continue to love my families, the straight and the gay. But this year, I will do this with a part of me dead.

Love

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia2 Comments

I was listening to an old Hindi song. It was Meera telling Krishna that, in essence, he loved only Radha, and yet people blame her for loving him – unrequitedly.

श्याम तेरी बंसी पुकारे राधा नाम
लोग करे मीरा को यूँ ही बदनाम

To which he replies:

सावरे की बंसी को बजने से कम
राधा का भी श्याम वो तो मीयर्रा का भी श्याम

This is an element of love I think that very few people realise. Apparently, it’s something that I happened to learn after forty years of living and loving. Though I knew I was the kind of person who never “fell out of love”. Truthfully, I believe if someone can do that he or she wasn’t in love in the first place.

Romantically, in my life thus far, I have been in three relationships. And I still love all three men. How is that possible? Easy. Each person is an individual. Each person has his own unique and utterly different character. I loved M because of his passion, his voice, his energy, he was my first love. I remember the first time we kissed. I remember the times we shared. I remember his smile, his handwriting, his hair. So the love I have for him is unique, it was custom made for him. It manifested out of me, because of him.

When he left me, I was devastated. I was bereft. I felt as if a part of me was wrenched away. The feeling of loss surrounded me for over years… but I never stopped loving him. I couldn’t even think of him negatively. He had broken my heart, but ironically, the love in it never broke.

The same happened the second time I fell in love… Anders was a Dane. A quintessential dream come true. Blue eyes, strawberry blond, taller than I, mature and calm. An architect. The first movie we saw together was The Horse Whisperer, in Sterling. I remember the first time we kissed, too, we were both actually trembling. The way he made me feel was so different from the way M had made me feel.

At that point in time, at the age of twenty-three, I couldn’t really tell the difference in what I felt. I believed love was love, and like Meera, I would be left bereft. Of course, he loved just me, and truly and deeply – in all the ways love songs would describe it. But after M, I didn’t trust love and, since he was from abroad, I thought that this relationship would meet with the same fate. However, he did return from Denmark. He bought me the most beautiful Christmas tree, all the way from there, because he knew how much I love celebrating Christmas. He had come to spend the holidays with me, and this time it was I who broke a heart.

I was protecting myself, and I was trying to be the mature one. I didn’t think that it would work out because of geography and because of cultural differences. He was willing to try, and I was afraid to. I didn’t realise then that the way he made me feel only he could, and that he was he and not M. I remember his tears, and I remember holding his face against my neck, my hands in his hair, and wondering how I could do that. But I did. Not because I did not love him, but because I was afraid that this love would end the same way the last one did. That was my terrible error. Our relationship ended, but I have not stopped loving him.

When I fell for a guy seven years my junior, I was just beginning to give up on preconceived notions on how love should be. Of course, at twenty-five, I was jealous, possessive and had set views on how love should form its nature. I didn’t realise then that each love forms its own path when two individuals walk it. I tried for many years to make Anand see love through my perspective. I couldn’t understand that romance had nothing to do with love. Passion had nothing to do with love. Jealousy had nothing to do with love. Possession had nothing to do with love.

When he cheated on me thirteen years later, I was not as upset about the physical tearing but about the fact that he couldn’t tell me what was going on with him. By then I had evolved enough to know the difference between the hurt felt post the breaking of trust as opposed to him having sex with another man. So we made a compromise – amongst the hundreds already done – and moved on with love in tow.

Through my teens, and my twenties, I tried incorporating all that I had read and seen in my relationships. There are knights in shining armours, but not always riding horses, or wearing armours. There are love confessions on tall buildings, but those can happen in a quiet bedroom as well. There are beautiful sunsets and hands intertwined in silhouettes but the intertwining can happen on a casual walk to an ice cream shop. I didn’t realise all of this earlier, and I would be upset.

I have learnt that I cannot mold another person to love me in the way he is not capable. But in no way does that mean he doesn’t love me. Love cannot be gauged. It can only be felt.

Over the years, I have come across many men. I related to them over poetry, music, movies, families, events, spaces and thoughts. I realise now that each of them spoke to a side of me that no one else could. Each of them cajoled and satisfied a part of my heart that had hitherto been neglected. In my own way then, I loved and love so many who came across my path. And none of this love ever tampered with the love that already existed in different spaces of my heart.

This is what I understand now. Love isn’t restrictive. It is surely exclusive, but it forms a new facet to include a new exclusion. Who says that love happens once? It happens all the time. That’s the best part of it. It is like this ever expanding light, it reaches out and forms new lights, like some mythic orbit of newly created stars. Each star shining with its own light, special and its very own.