Tag: 2005

Family

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

The other day I went to my partner’s mom’s home. She had invited me for Diwali, after 22 years of my being with her son. I sat with her over the season’s greetings and made small talk. After all these years, her acceptance should not have mattered much but it did. And today, after thought, I realized why it mattered.

I am a family guy. Always have been. Apart from not having a father in the real sense of the word, I have had a marvellous family. I grew up knowing freedoms. The right to choose, the right to be, the right to love. I was taught this by fierce women, in both my maternal and paternal families.

My grandmothers were Naseeb and Gai. The former a widow at 26, who raised four children on her own in the ‘50’s. The latter a Gemini who showed me what it was to love another man. My grandfather, Firoz, taught me what it was to be liberal, kind and loving. My aunts, Rajinder and Harwant and Zarine, were independent, free-thinking, caring women. The former two took the place of the father I never had.

My mother, Gaver, who single-handedly raised two children and made a home in the city of Mumbai. Something no one in the family has or since done. She educated us and molded Geeta and me into the people we are today. Free-thinking, free-willed people, who I like to think also have the compassion and the empathy shown to us by the earlier generations.

I will not forget Behram Maama, who taught me what it was to be a good father. Amarjeet, my chachu, who taught me resilience; because of his constant battle with schizophrenia and the final one he lost to throat cancer. He was a brilliant painter, despite being colour-blind.

I think back on my family and I am filled with separation anxiety. I had a full family, but in my generation I have a mere handful of siblings. I have gone through more than my share of loss. Since the age of 19, I have faced death and continue to face him – almost like a friend who comes calling after short intervals. For company, he has taken Mervin, Nana, Chacha, Bonzo, Dadan, Rolfe, Diana, Zoe, Maasi, Munni Pua, Goodie Pua…

My family has literally and metaphorically given me lessons about death and life. It has taught me how to be honest in order to live without added complications. It has taught me how to love – fully and completely – and what sin actually means. In truth, it would mean breaking a heart that loves you.

As I looked at my partner’s mother, someone who accepted our relationship after decades, I realized how lucky I have been to be a part of the family that makes me belong. In my family, acceptance was never a problem. Loving meant accepting. There may not have been complete understanding, in the truest sense of the word, but, despite that, there was never rejection. I was assured there was never any chance of it. My family taught me love. I am me because of them.

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.