Tag: pride

Pride Is A Protest

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I am a citizen of India.

January is Pride Month in Mumbai. There will be marches, talks, performances, and celebrations across the city. And yet, if I am being honest, pride does not come easily to me anymore.

I feel unsafe.

I feel unseen.

I feel neglected — not only as a gay man, but as a citizen.

When I was growing up, I loved this country deeply. I carried a fierce sense of patriotism. In my twenties, after completing my Master’s degree, I had the opportunity to move abroad. I chose not to. I stayed back to take care of my mother, and because I genuinely believed India would grow into a place where people like me would belong fully. I believed I would rather be a first-class citizen here than a second-class one anywhere else.

I am fifty now. And very frankly, I am beginning to regret that decision.

In 2018, when Section 377 was read down, I was 43 years old. That means that for most of my adult life, I lived in a country where my existence was criminal. Legally speaking, I have had barely seven years of not being considered a criminal. Seven years is not liberation. It is survival with paperwork.

And even today, that legal change has not translated into lived equality.

I cannot open a joint bank account with my partner in most Indian banks. I cannot nominate him. I have no legal standing if something happens to either of us. He won’t be considered “next of kin” to wean me of life support – if it ever comes to that.

Civil unions are still being fought for in the Supreme Court. Marriage — entangled as it is with religion — feels like a distant and almost irrelevant dream.

So I ask myself: what does citizenship mean for someone like me?

I pay my taxes. For things I sell; for things I buy. I vote (with no hope). I follow the law. I live in a home I inherited — thankfully — because renting is almost impossible. As a gay man, doors shut quietly. As a single man, suspicion follows. As a single gay man with dogs, the conversation ends abruptly. Even families face illegal discrimination in rentals every day, and nothing happens. The law exists only on paper.

I have three dogs. They are my children. I cannot have children of my own, and I have chosen animals — gentler, kinder, better beings — as my family. My youngest was rescued from Chennai, with nowhere else to go. None of my dogs have ever harmed anyone. They have never bitten a soul. They ask for nothing except play, food, and love.

And yet, even this is contested.

The Supreme Court has now turned its gaze on stray dogs — and on those of us who care for them. Feeders are harassed. Compassion is criminalised. Care is framed as inconvenience. I walked in protest on the 4th of January because silence, in moments like these, is violence.

At the same time, women in this country continue to be brutalised with terrifying regularity. Worse than the tapes are the cover ups that follow. Sickening. Children are raped and murdered. Just today, I read about a five-year-old girl assaulted and thrown from a building “for fun”. How does one carry pride alongside that knowledge?

Then there is the city itself.

Mumbai is choking. Pavements are blocked. Roads are gridlocked. Pollution is relentless. I cannot breathe properly. Last month alone, my medical bills crossed ₹10,000 — for chronic throat infections, doctors, medication. I am grateful I had my tonsils removed, or I would likely be hospitalised again. Delhi gasps for air. Indore reels under water contamination. Everywhere, the basics of life — air, water, safety — are compromised.

So I ask, without irony or melodrama:

What am I paying taxes for?

I have no civil rights as a gay man.

I have no health security as an individual.

I have no legal framework that protects my family.

Every day, I read something that scares me into wondering why I am still here.

And yet — I will celebrate Pride.

Not because I feel safe.

Not because I feel protected.

But because Pride has never been about comfort.

Pride is the hallmark of courage.

Before 2018, we lived in fear — but we lived like freedom fighters. We fought knowing exactly what we were fighting against. After 2018, the struggle did not end; it simply became quieter, more bureaucratic, more gaslit.

There is also something quietly sustaining about being part of a tribe — of walking alongside people who feel empathy, who understand why these fights matter. Marching together, standing in peaceful protest, reminds me that I am not entirely alone. That there are others who see what I see, feel what I feel.

I just wish we were enough to bring about real change.

Life feels bleak right now. I am filled with trepidation about what we have done to our world — and to one another. And yet, I am clinging to a fragile hope that things may still get better. I have to believe that they will. Because without that belief, resistance itself becomes impossible.

So this January, I will march.

I will protest.

I will ask for rights — for myself, for my community, for animals, for those who cannot speak.

I will do what I have always done.

Because Pride was never a party.

It was a demand.

And it still is.

Another Life Lost

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Earlier this week in Mumbai, Raj, a 32-year-old chartered accountant, died by suicide after enduring eighteen months of harassment and blackmail over a private video. The police confirmed that two individuals extorted over ₹3 crore from him by threatening to circulate this video. He was made to steal from his company and deplete his personal savings. His sister later revealed that the blackmailers humiliated him repeatedly, questioned his sexuality, and used threats to break him down emotionally. They even forced him to bear the burden of an SUV registered in his name, demanding EMI payments. The mental torture pushed him to a point where he could no longer carry on.

What the news report fails to mention — and what is so often left unsaid — is that the “private video” was of homosexual sex. Raj was not just blackmailed. He was targeted for his sexuality. He wasn’t just defrauded financially. He was hunted emotionally. And despite having made three complaints, the police failed to act.

This is not a new story. It’s an old one, a painful one, and an increasingly familiar one. I have heard it too many times in too many ways. Gay men being blackmailed for being in the closet. For wanting intimacy. For trusting someone. Sometimes it’s the hookup itself. Sometimes it’s someone pretending to be an ally. Sometimes it’s a calculated setup involving the local authorities, with “sting” operations meant to trap and extort. Always it ends in shame, silence, or something worse.

Before Section 377 was read down in 2018, the law was a weapon used to blackmail closeted queer people. After 2018, society simply adapted its weapons. The fear remains. The shame remains. The vulnerability remains. The closet has become a trap — not a refuge. You go into it to feel safe, and someone finds a way to reach in and destroy your life.

Our society demands silence from gay people. Families force their sons into marriages to preserve reputation and lineage. Parents say, “Have a child, and everything will be fine.” They don’t care that someone else — often a woman — is being lied to. They don’t care about the happiness of their own child either, as long as he conforms. The pressure is relentless. And so people remain in the closet. And those in the closet become easy prey.

I have seen my friends suffer. Some have been assaulted. Some emotionally manipulated by men who disappeared after sex, leaving behind guilt and self-hatred. Some took their lives. Loneliness is the most silent killer in the queer community. As we grow older, it intensifies. And when loneliness meets blackmail and social shame, it often ends in tragedy.

I was brave enough — if one can call it that — to have come out at sixteen, with some family support. Not everyone gets that chance. Not everyone is believed. Not everyone is safe.

We keep asking: why do we need Pride marches? This is why. We need Pride because Raj is no longer alive. We need Pride because someone, somewhere, is being threatened tonight for just being who they are. We need Pride because even today, seven years after Section 377 was scrapped, queer people are still being criminalised — not by the law, but by society.

We need authorities to stop being complicit through inaction. We need them to do their job. If a person files three complaints and nothing is done, who is responsible for the outcome?

This has to end. I wish — deeply wish — that every queer person finds the strength to be proud, to live truthfully. But I also understand the fear. The shame isn’t theirs — it belongs to a society that hasn’t learnt how to love its own children for who and what they are.

Until that day comes, we must keep fighting. For visibility. For justice. For those who didn’t survive. For those still too scared to speak. For Raj.

Support Structures

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

As I stand at the cusp of my fifties, I find myself reflecting on the arc of relationships that have shaped me: the people I’ve grown up with, the ones I’ve grown beside, those I’ve grown distant from, and those I continue to grow with. Most of them have been friends, some family, all deeply woven into the fabric of who I am. Because I’ve always loved with the entirety of myself.

For the longest time, I used to be devastated when relationships fell apart. I took every loss as a personal failure—proof that something in me had failed to be worthy of the love I so readily gave. But with time—and a great deal of heartbreak—I’ve come to see it differently. Now I know: I did the best I could. And so did they. No one is to blame. Life simply moved us in different directions.

Last year, I lost a 32-year-old friendship. It hurt, yes. But I don’t regret it. I stood up for who I am, for what I believe in, and I realised that I was not being treated with the respect I offered so freely. I had accepted my friend entirely, even her flaws. But she couldn’t meet me where I was. That wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t even hers. She simply wasn’t equipped to hold what I was bringing to the table.

Today, another moment came—and passed. An altercation with my partner, Anand, someone I’ve spent 25 years of my life with. We’ve seen some truly destructive storms together and somehow, we’ve always found our way back. Today was no different. He left. I felt the ache, but I didn’t crumble. Because here’s what I’ve learned: the things we believe will destroy us rarely do. The will to survive, to mend, to continue, is always stronger.

I saw it in myself. But I saw something younger in my family. As they watched the disagreement unfold, they became emotional, scattered, concerned not just for me but for him as well. That mattered. What is more important t o note: My family stood by not just me, but the man I love. And in that moment, I saw something I never expected to: the social scaffolding we so often deny queer people in this world—support—had quietly, finally, taken shape around me.

Even my other partner, (I am one in a throuple) asked me to call Anand. And I did. Not out of guilt or obligation, but because I knew there had been no malice in me, no cruelty and I wanted their anxiety to abate. What had occurred was a light-hearted joke misread, so I told Anand to come back if he believed in the word I gave him. And he did.

But it’s not just about that trivial argument. What moved me was everyone who stood by me and said: bring him back home. That’s what mattered. That home is not a place—it’s a choice people make, together, for one another.

In this Pride Month, I want to say this: queer relationships are not made of fairy dust and rebellion. They’re made of daily effort, missteps, recovery, repair. And while straight couples often have the privilege of familial support—two clans coming together to protect the sanctity of their union—queer couples are often left to navigate that terrain alone. When something goes wrong, it’s just the two of us, lost in a storm we’re often too young to steer through.

I see that now. At 50, I have an ingrained emotional sustenance I didn’t have in my twenties or thirties. Now I don’t need my family’s support. But standing slightly apart, observing with a kind of fourth-dimensional wisdom, I realise how rare and necessary it is that they choose to give it anyway.

That’s the heart of this. I’ve become my own person. I no longer need people to feel whole. But I choose them. That’s the truest form of intimacy, of maturity: to choose someone not from need, but from selfhood.

And to anyone reading this during Pride Month: remember that queer love thrives not just on passion, but on structure. On support. On society showing up for us the way it so readily does for others. When a queer couple falters, we too deserve a circle that rallies and restores, that says: bring him back home.