Tag: thoughts

Polyamory

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Like most gay boys growing up in the 90’s, I dreamed of falling in love with The One. Someone who would help me battle the world with our common sexuality as a shield. Someone who would love me unconditionally. Someone who would be possessive about me and who would bring me flowers each time I got upset. Someone who would never cheat on me in word, feeling or action. Some guy walking straight out of a historical romance written by Johanna Lindsey.

Life had other plans. Love had a different complexion.

I fell in love at 19. Got dumped at 20.

I fell in love at 22. It was a long distance relationship, again. So, I ran away – scared.

I fell in love at 24. I am still with him. Through the decades that followed, I realised love is not just what I expected in the first paragraph.

It’s sticking to the relationship and making it work when each of those ideas diminish into real life. When people in love realise that both are human. Human beings make mistakes. We have insecurities and hopes. Some are manageable and some are possible. Some are neither. And that is okay.

But as I grew, I also realised one important thing. The love I had at 19 and 22 and 24 all existed at the same time. I had not stopped loving any of the three. Because for me, love is forever. It doesn’t fade away. It’s as lasting as the blood running through my veins.

We’re taught certain constructs. Social constructs. Of one man one woman, since we’re children. The straight world in their history have talked of soulmates. Two of them. Break a heart in two. Couplehood. But as I opened my heart I understood that I could never stop loving the people I have loved. If couplehood works for people, they should go for it. If being in an open relationship works for some, they should go for that. If singlehood is what some want, then that is what they should get. It should be simple.

I lost people to death. I never stopped loving them. I love my mother, my aunts, my grand parents, my sister and all six of my fur kids. I don’t love one more than the other. I just love them differently. I love them according to who they are. Loving one doesn’t make loving the other less. Loving one doesn’t mean I have spent the love I have.

Love is an endless stream. It comes from the heart. Not from thought. It comes from feeling. Not from logic. Its flowing is constant and many drink from it, at the same or at different times. And I realised that I could do the same with my partners.

It was incidental. The fourth time I fell in love. I never even thought it was possible. It happened. And I was honest about it. I spoke to my current partner and he accepted the new love into our relationship. I understood polyamory.

Polyamory is defined as “the practice of engaging in multiple romantic (and typically sexual) relationships, with the consent of all the people involved.” The most important point here is consent that speaks of honesty. I am nothing if not honest. And in that honesty, we three spent three years together. We formed our own rules and our own boundaries.

The new love did not last. But when he left, in the middle of a locked down world, I was devastated. It was like an April storm had picked me up and was casting me around in its eddies. I have written about it elsewhere on this blog. This lasted for two years. The tumult has not yet ended completely.

In the interim, I met people. Scores of them. Most became friends. Some became sexual partners. But I tried hard not to fall in love again. Love rips the shit out of you. It literally does. So, I allowed myself to get emotionally connected to people who were far away. Knowing they would not be around me. People who lived in my city I stopped myself getting emotionally connected.

But love is love.

It happened.

But this time it came with fear. Fear of abandonment. Fear of loss. Fear of heartbreak. Because I certainly don’t want to get heartbroken again. He scares me. With his quiet, his anger and his ambition. I am in love with his simplicity and gentle nature. His beliefs and his hope. But they all scare me too. There’s this constant state of anxiety I am in. Because I know my love for him will last forever now but I am never certain if his will.

Love is all well and fine – but trust is paramount. Love came slow. Trust is yet to come in fully. The more I fall deeper in love, the trust is taking a slower time to appear. He keeps getting annoyed because of this. It is tough. But I have been through a lot. I have been to hell and back and I have met with the Devil of depression. The more I love, the more afraid I become. But that is fodder for another blog post.

Polyamory may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Many wouldn’t even want to understand it. But this post is not for them. Why would I care for some one who doesn’t understand love? My relationships are not meant as examples. They are just relationships, growing on mutual love and honesty. So this post is for those who want to understand why they love who they do. To them, I say, love, but love honestly and completely. And when you say forever, mean it.

The Abuse of Love

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

We take so much abuse in life. As a child, I was bullied because I was effeminate. I remember a boy uprooting grass from the mud and slinging it across my face. I must have been eight years old then. I remember walking down a market with my father beside me. a man came across us and grabbed my genitals and squeezed. It hurt and I told my father. He said if I walked the way I did, it was meant to happen. Through my childhood, I saw the tantrums of an alcoholic father. He was caught up in the grips of his own addictive neuroses.

He banged the walls of the house with his fist. Each sound would reverberate through the house and I would find succour in the hands of my grandma. He would punch his fist into walls, doors, the floor. He would return home every day, smelling foul. He would slam doors shut or open, depending on his need. To this day, when a door slams, my heart grows cold. Today, the Zoomers would talk of emotional abuse being tantamount to physical abuse. I have heard it said, “first they hit near you, then they hit you.”

When my mom moved into her home, my parents attempted a reconciliation. But she forgot that she would be leaving a jobless alcoholic alone at home with her son. There was no grandmother around then. The beatings began when I was thirteen years old. He would ask something of me, an errand, a command, a threat and I would stand up to the bullying. In school, I was different and so, hounded and ridiculed. I would find a means to escape. I would flee to the lavatories, spend the recesses there. At home, I could not do that, he would have kicked the door down.

On hind sight, he would not have done that because then his abuse would be realized by my mother and my aunts. Instead, he would grip my neck, like Mr Spock in Star Trek. Of course, the pain was excruciating but I would not pass out. He would cuff me on the side of my head for disobeying an order. Sometimes he would throw food. As I grew, and realized who I was and became vocal and shameless about it, I decided to fight back.

The fights then grew worse. I pause as I think about them. I was thin and scrawny and he was massive then, fuelled by the force of alcohol. Eventually, I realized my homosexuality was his trigger. He admitted to me, about two years before he died, that he knew I was ‘like that” since I was two years old. I have known fathers who have allowed their 2 year old sons to dress up in skirts. My father did not belong to this tribe. The last time he laid hands on me, he nearly choked me to death. He probably would have, if my sister would not have yelled out to my maternal grandfather who had come visiting our home.

I remember how shaken up I was after that. Today, I have knowledge on where my anxiety stems from. There is this build-up of pressure. Knowing that there is this figure who is supposed to have protected you, waiting to attack if you do not do exactly what he says. There are people out there, in the midst of humanity, who are capable of the most gruesome horror. I have read about them and understood their reasons. I have been on the receiving end of violence. Physical, emotional and mental.

The men that followed in my life have stories of their own. I have been abandoned by two, I have been forsaken by one, and with the last who still stands by my side I have been left unheld. It is confusing to me at times that our languages of love are so problematic. Men who are intimate have no qualms in abandoning you at their whim and fancy. Men who are cold can love you without any sign of intimacy. It never really comes in a single package and I wonder if it ever will. My quest for a man who doesn’t abuse seems futile. I have not given up on the idea of being loved. I have given up on the idea of us being divine.

We are all flawed. Sometimes, terribly so. I have been a stern father, but I have been intimate and loving, too. I have been a demanding lover, but I have been honest and affectionate. There are no hard and fast rules on love. My father never beat my mother. In his own way, he loved her. He just drew a line at loving a son he didn’t expect to have. But isn’t that what love actually is? It’s a promise you make without expecting your own charter of rights to be fulfilled. For better or for worse.

The Night Boy

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I saw an episode of the second season of Modern Love last night. It reminded me completely of myself. I have been a lover of the night, since as far back as I can remember. I love the night. Everything about it is beautiful. I have stayed awake at night since school. I would study late and then I would go to school. Nothing really changed in college. I couldn’t get up for the early morning lectures when it came to degree college. I hated waking up in the mornings.

Staying up in the day drains me. It literally takes away my peace of mind. As it is I do not do too well with peace. I am melancholic and the nature of day drains me further. There are too many people to deal with. Too many interruptions in what I wish to do by myself. There is traffic. There are irritations. There are frustrations.

The night is quieter. I wouldn’t say it is quiet, living in a city like Mumbai that never sleeps any which way. It has an ambience about it which I can never find during the day. Even the elves in J R R Tolkien’s universe awoke at night. They looked upon the stars – they were the first things the elves saw. I won’t dramatize this by saying that stars are what I love. No, it’s the moon that gets me every time. I love the moon. My favourite song happens to be Moon River. Everything to do with the moon mesmerizes me.

There is a quote I often find myself narrating, “I am not the sun, I am the moon. I soothe, I do not burn.”

This stays with me. When I chance upon the Moon in Tarot, I am mesmerized by the imagery. It is meant to be associated with the darker nature of the self, the psyche, intuition, sleep, a deep delving into the soul, if a soul there is. I think about the moon and then I think about the night. When I wake in the day, it is evening. I greet the dying sun and I am content. As he settles for the night, I find myself blossoming. Sunsets are more beautiful than sunrises. We just like to romanticize new beginnings, the end of the day can be grander and way more poetic.

For some people, like most of my loved ones, they bloom under sunlight. Mom is a bit like me, but she has to cave in to the others because she has a home to run. Doorbells and maids, food and shopping, and her daughter who doesn’t like the night. Then sometimes, I am accused of not being a part of the world, but I am. The world doesn’t die at night. There is a whole new world that opens its arms to me.

There are owls that fly by silently. Moths flutter in towards lights. The rain feels fresher, darker. Dogs move about quietly and sometimes when they fight their voices ring out. It feels like I am not quite living in a city around three and four in the morning. Memories are easier to grasp. People are easier to read. The moon is bright when it is full and you can talk to it without anyone else eaves dropping.

I can read. I can write. I can cry. Poetry comes easy. Words make prose without necessity. Meeting up people who are also night birds brings in a flock that jabber and chatter and sometimes breaks the quiet. It gives me the time to engage, not just with like minded people, but with one’s own self.

Most times, I see the sun rise. The sky becomes a dark blue. Then it lightens. Birds fly and the owls rest. Ribbons of grey filter the sky and somewhere in the east, the sun rises. Sometimes, the sunrises are beautiful to watch. Especially in the overcast filters of the monsoons. And after I say hello, it’s time to sleep.