Tag: relationships

Heteronormativity

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Yesterday night, I was having a conversation with a friend and my mother and partners were present, too. I mentioned how different the relationship between my mother and my partner was when compared to my mother’s relationship with my grandmother, my mom’s mother-in-law. I told her how differently your son-in-law treats you as compared to how you treated my grandmother.

And she instantly retorted, without a moment’s hesitation, or concern for feeling or reality, “He is not my son-in-law.”

“Huh?” I was shocked. “Then what is he?”

“Your partner,” she snapped back.

Of course, in my head, a relationship that has lasted through twenty-five years amounts to more in my head. For me, marriage is not a piece of paper or standing before any god and promising to be together. It is love and concern that keeps us bound together. Unfortunately, a heterosexual mother wont really understand that.

I immediately wanted to retaliate. “Your daughter’s marriage that has barely passed two years of age amounts to labels and tags and, more importantly, respect, but my relationship that has seen us struggle to be with each other despite all odds, family, work, staying apart and then together after 6 years, coming out as a couple, standing up for each other, making our own lives together, braving hurdles of conflict and affliction, deserves nothing?”

But all I told her was, “my sister has a husband since two years because they are “married” and my relationship of 25 years is nothing?”

I haven’t been able to look at her since then. But it is not just her. It is my best friend who has suddenly become closer to my sister because they have the similar bond of talking about their husbands – which I could never have. Despite the fact that all my relationship secrets she has been privy to, she won’t ever be able to understand – because we don’t base our judgements of equality on love itself, but on gender, on sexual orientation, on what society expects of us.

Maybe someone with a deeper understanding of how things are and what emotions truly mean to someone, may get it. May. But then even if they do, they won’t really understand our throuple. Because polyamory is still a far way to be understood even by the gay community itself.

Today I woke up and read a post by a gay friend. He is one of my oldest friends in the community, and he had a post about gay marriages and in the comments section someone mentioned if it was possible in India. He replied with a list of couples and neglected to mention my name with my partners. Of course, it is because he sells the idea of gay marriage. I don’t fit the bill with two partners.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against gay marriage. You see, my point is I am not against any marriage of any kind. If there is love and concern and respect, any relationship between people is a marriage to me. But when the gay community falls back upon a heteronormative standard, it seems ludicrous.

We are not the same, we are different. Our sexuality ranges a whole spectrum of colour. We are gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trans, pansexuals, demisexuals, non-binary, sapiosexuals, asexuals, and a host of others. How can we fit ourselves into the normative standards of man and woman? We are not as simple as that. If any relationship can be simplified, that is.

I do not think that the human race is equipped to understand differences. Even if they accept them to be socially cool, they will never really understand them. Because you see, people do not understand love. If you get the nature of love, you will accept it in any form.

Most people understand what is different, because all of those differences cater to the five senses. Love becomes an abstract concept that can only be felt. And the brain insists that there is only one kind of abstraction. The way someone looks at a dark person or an over weight person and forms an idea of what he or she or they must look like. People look at love as they grow up and think that’s the way all love should be.

In order to simplify things, they actually create chaos. Accepting all forms of love becomes so simple. Love is love, after all.

This also then brings my self to my attention. I got stuck on a label, too. A “son-in-law”, what is that but a heteronormative label. And technically, though my mother didn’t say it in this way, she is right: He is my partner. Not any son by law, because neither does the Law accept our relationship in this country, nor does she treat him like a son. The sad part is that he treats me like his husband and lover and treats her like she is his mother.

And that is what shall keep us together for another 25 years.

Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I knew I’d like the movie. Because I am an Alia fan. Because I love family dramas. Because I enjoy Karan Johar’s direction and vision. I loved Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. And I wasn’t surprised that I ended up loving this movie, too.

Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani has all the masala and the twists for a Bollywood movie. And it feels like a hit without a single macho punch being pulled anywhere on screen. It also hit close to home for very personal reasons. There are simply too many similarities right now between my life and various episodes in the film. I think that’s important for a good movie. And that’s why I loved it – because I connected with it.

The story is simple. An intelligent, self-made, independent, educated woman falls in love with a rich, loud, narcissistic, lovable, carefree man. Families realise the disparity and the lovers decide to test themselves in each other’s spaces for a few months.

Spoiler alert.

In the midst of it all, you throw in a septuagenarian romance that actually brings the couple together in the first place and then links them further. Then there is the antagonist: a matriarch who governs with an iron hand (already done in Ram Leela with far greater flair) but this doesn’t include physical but emotional and mental violence. There is a house governed by ambition and a quest for material prosperity. The other house is governed by emancipation and a quest for intellectual betterment and acceptance.

The movie doesn’t just tackle the romance and the odds of the hero and heroine. But interlinked within the families, each character struggles to find a voice or realises that the voice they were using could be biased at best and cruel at worst, as well.

The film has both Pride and Prejudice. It’s a subtle encapsulation of how people look down upon people, how we form prejudices based on past experiences and why it is important to realise our own trauma and make peace with due apologies. Every person in the movie is flawed. And growth happens with the realisation of these flaws and seeking to better one’s self through mature, self-affirming decisions.

The only abrupt change that seemed jarring was the write-off they gave Dhanlakshmi, Jaya’s character. But in a way, it was for the best, because it was in keeping with her character that the change wasn’t radical or real, but implied off-screen.

Dharmendra and Jaya Bachchan are brilliantly cast in characters just made for them. Shabana Azmi steals the screen when she is on it, as the woman who experienced true love for a few days that lasted a lifetime. She battled abuse and raises a son who is different from the typical idea of what a man should be and do, in India. This is brave (uncannily) and well-handled by Karan. The scene where Alia’s father is ridiculed speaks to every boy who grows up being different, in a patriarchal society. To exemplify this, Ranveer’s Rocky wears an outfit that’s vomit green as he laughs with the crowd. I noticed it, Karan.

The monologue Rocky gives addressing the ridicule Rani’s father faced, after a Kathak performance, is worth an honourable mention. It speaks of the need to understand not just what is considered woke in the modern day world but also the dangers of cancel culture that circles around it. For those who say that never happens to men who are into classical dance, you truly either live in a different world or choose to ignore the problems that are very much around in this world.

Rani’s character excels in her confrontation with Rocky’s father. It reminded me of the confrontation Reena Roy has with Lalita Pawar, in Sau Din Saas Ke. But there, there is the confrontation between two women. That happens with Jaya Bachchan and Alia, too. But what is actually different is Rani, a woman, standing in all her glory, dressed in Red at a Durga Puja and confronting a patriarch. The scene resonates because she stands there with no trace of fear. It is a juxtaposition to the scene where Rocky laughs at her father for being who he is. She stands with the frustration of all liberal mentality that reaches a crescendo at that point. It teeters on violence. The dangers of that happening is almost as bad as the despotic power that Dhanlakshmi holds over her entire family. Almost. But not quite.

The costumes were extensions of the characters. Rani was mostly dressed in the most beautiful sarees, since Sridevi’s performance in English Vinglish. Red being her colour and the implication of red being the colour of true love and passion, given it being the colour of the most sensitive character, of Rocky’s grandfather, essayed by Dharmendra. It is perhaps the colour that flares out when poetry is ousted by industry. Rocky thus wears a riot of colours, because he has it all in him and Ranveer can carry off all of them because he knows he can. He tends to wear black and white, when he is with his family. Do notice that.

I don’t know if I am the only one who felt so, but Alia looked a tad uncomfortable in the love scenes with Ranveer. If she is in love with the man, there can’t be a discomfort in the intimacy. In some shots, she just seems to be pulling away rather than pulling in. For the character of Rani to fall in love with the character of Rocky, there can be no chance of a lack of physical chemistry. And by the interval, the love has to have cemented enough to be there in their eyes. Ranveer has it, Alia loses out here. The character of Jaya Bachchan too for all her superiority complex just allows her husband and his lover to meet up? For a woman who walks out of a Durga Aarti, how does she sit by in discomfort when her husband obviously is being intimate with another woman? I found this a bit jarring.

There are a multitude of old song covers. Mostly from a favourite film of mine, Hum Dono. And the songs set to the OST of the movie are not particularly engaging but they work for the tempo of the movie. My favourite is actually not the title song but Ve Kamleya. (Must throw in an aside here: the movie begins with a dance number, which I quite liked, but it’s not the song that is worth a mention – I grinned when I saw all the nepo-babies make cameo appearances in the song. Tongue-in-cheek there, Mr Johar.)

All in all, I end with my personal opinion that Karan Johar has created a wonderful movie. He has applied himself once again to creating a family drama for the modern world and he has succeeded. Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani is exemplary for the fact that it speaks of breaking away from issues that do not truly matter and finds shaky ground in a world that is itself trying to find a place for each person’s uniqueness.

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?