Tag: 2005

Birthday

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

This Sunday, I turn 48 years old. There are people who look at me and ask me questions about my external appearance. Social media is about appearances – and yes, I got on here over a decade ago because I wanted validation. You see, growing up, I was filled with insecurities and self-esteem issues. They have survived in me – like a heart beat that is consistent. I am quite sure even when my heart falters, they will not.

But over the years, I have learnt some valuable things. I have learnt finding and giving forgiveness is necessary. Envy is a waste of time. It is necessary to have a good friend and confidante by your side. It is important to be honest as often and as much as you can. When you feel honesty is hurtful, you need to be honest at the appropriate time, or be forever silent. I have learnt that the best of us are flawed, the richest are insecure, the most beautiful are frightened.

Being a romantic at heart, I found that love can last forever, even if it is not reciprocated. Love solves a multitude of woes, and the loss of it brings on a multitude of woes. I have learnt that time is fleeting. Even though Scarlett O’Hara believed in tomorrow, it cannot be trusted. The time spent with the ones you love is limited, and you need to let them know that you love them.

One important thing about love is that it never lives up to your imagination. It is not what you expect it to be. Life and love are similar that way. They do not stick to the plan, or the expectation. So, the key word to any relationship, even the one you have with your own life, is Compromise. You adapt, and you evolve.

No matter how dark the night, or how tortured the mind, or how torn the heart, time is a great healer. It fills all wounds. Yes, the scars remain. But they must serve as a reminder – not a lesson – as to who you are, what you have and can and will overcome again, if need be.

Death and loss are a part of this life. The fear of losing the ones I love consumes me. Being an atheist, I realise that this is one existence and I need to make the most of it. I need to tie up all loose ends and hope that my life has brought happiness to a few people and animals. My own death does not scare me. I have accomplished all that I have sought to do. I do not leave behind regret, just love.

I have never desired much in life. I was satisfied with what I earned. Ambition is not in my DNA – at least the monetary kind that brings in status. I have goals of a different sort. They deal with interpersonal relationships. Allowing people to be a part of my life and making them happy and giving them love. Yes, I would like to be loved in return.

That brings me to the crux. As I grow older, I hope to reach that place where I do not expect to be loved. A point in life, when I will not need external validation. I will be sure of who and what I am and finally be absolutely comfortable in my own skin. It will be enough for me to just love and live. But I do not see that happening soon, at least. As it is, thinking about tomorrow is not good for peace of mind. So I shall just end with a quiet hope that life will be kind this year. And if it is not, I will find the fortitude to deal with what it has in store for me.

Intimacy

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Growing up, I received a lot of physical affection from my grandmother and one of my aunts, on a daily basis. My father was an alcoholic and from the age of 13-18, I lived in absolute terror of his presence. Long story short, he was abusive. My mom was a single parent for all aims and purposes and she was too independent and driven to pay much attention to physical intimacy. She herself came from a home where her childhood was not a very affectionate one.

I realised I was homosexual at the age of 12. I craved for affection from another man. It wasn’t the fact that I lacked love. The complexity of emotion was far deep-seated and interwoven with pathology. I wanted the care and affection of another man – especially since I was gay. It was something as slight as putting his arm around my shoulders or holding my hand as a sign of bestowing importance and love.

It is somewhat tragic that I belong to a generation where I didn’t grow up too fast but learnt faster. Through my formative years, technology’s advancement was progressive and not radical, so I always felt out of place and alienated. I fought for my place in the world, and it feels like I am still fighting a losing battle against a backward mindset. I fell in love with men whose languages of love were no where close to intimate gestures – and the ones who were intimate ended up breaking my heart abruptly in a matter of years. The devastation that the latter inflicted left even deeper scars than those left by my father.

Relationships can be exacting, because they evolve, too. The tragic part is this: during the romantic phase where the other is trying to impress and gain my love, the affection and the intimacy pours out in a flood. It is my foolhardiness encased in romanticism that make me believe that this is not a phase. That this will not change in time. There are moments that bring in undiluted bliss and security. That is how I get pulled into the world that I wanted, because that is all I can see at that given moment in time.

Yesterday, conversing with my lover, I mentioned to him how he appeared to me in chats during the initial phases of our relationship. I said jokingly, this is how you sucked me in. He retorted, you should then have had sense to see how any relationship would start. You should not have allowed yourself to get sucked in. That struck home. There are glimpses of people we see, that they do not realise they are showing. Again, the romantic in me looks at the larger picture. There is of course the fear of abandonment and separation anxiety, because I love forever. It gets hard to be exacting.

So I step back and I sacrifice. I am the first to make my fear and desire known. However, I also realise that the cycle of any relationship is thus… Or are there truly relationships which remain steeped in the romance that they were born into? It is a complicated question. A woke Gen-z would state that I need to put my own needs first. But I also realise that any relationship is made up of at least two people. I have learnt through learning, understanding and observing that relationships should last even through things when they aren’t fun or easy.

Being an out gay man since the age of 16, I must also point out one thing that happens particularly with homosexual men. Since my family knows about me and has come to accept me completely over the years (I wouldn’t have it any other way, much to the chagrin of my sister), the men I fall in love with see me in my home. They see all my moods, my highs, my lows and my outbursts. And with me being me, quintessentially, I make no compunctions to hide who I am right from the start. So all my lovers see what they will get.

I, on the other hand, only see the best of them for the initial months. They enter my personal spaces. I never enter into theirs. So I never get the chance to see them lose their cool with their family members. I never see the way they interact with the people they profess to love and who are linked to them by blood. This happens very gradually for me. All I get to see is the excess of their love. When that thaws, I have already been drawn in, hook, line and sinker. So when they actually start treating me as family, I realise how they actually interact when the romance dies down.

My lover said one thing to me some time back. “I am not afraid of you anymore.” He comes from a patriarchal mind-set and his earlier partners have all been authority figures, who placed him in the back seat. So, when I love him wholly and completely, he sees me as an equal. It is ironic, yes. I would like all the woke people out there to read ‘afraid’ as ‘in awe’. All our illusions dwindle away, in the second year of the relationship.

How many of us make it through the third, without recrimination and with the realisation that the person we are in love with is human, and not Eros, we all set out to be initially?

Cling

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

As time passes and love grows older, our vision expands. It’s like taking a step back and not seeing just the eyes but the whole face. The kiss is done and you see his nose, his lips, his throat. You see the pulse beating there. There is another person in front of you.

You realise you are clingy. You want to be kissed often. You want to be annoyed with a constant barrage of cuddles. You wish for the hands to keep holding yours.

But you look downward and see that the hands that were holding yours are now busy on the phone. The eyes are forming texts. The mind is elsewhere. Differences in religion revolve around your atmosphere. Family matters rise to the surface. The kisses are temporarily forgotten. The life you have lived comes back in heavy memory.

You see the meme in your own phone and you wonder. If you forward it to him will he come close to you again? Will your vision only have his eyes in it again? Will you stop seeing all of his pulsations? Will he be content in your eyes too? How long will the language spoken by the eyes keep you both content?

I have no answers. So I search for a meme.