Tag: thoughts

Only Time

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Who can say where the road goes? Where the day flows? Only time.  

And who can say if your love grows as your heart chose? Only time.

I switched on Enya as my mind needed to stop its whirlwind, and this was the first song that played. These are the first lines that were sung to me.

I’ve had a tough week. Sunday was chaos, with an old relationship breaking down. It’s a trying time when you see all that you built over decades diminish in a few minutes.

Depression set in around that time. And the week has not been kind. I had a small accident with my new car. Then I had a revelation with a partner that made me realise that everything changes with time.

Irrespective of what Shakespeare said about the alteration of love, I know that there are graver and more terrible things out there: the crashing of identity, the mislabelling of gender, the murders in the name of love, and the genocide in the name of religion. But I guess every moment in time has its devastation.

We paint a kinder picture of our childhood, but I know that I had terrible trauma in those years too. They made me who I am today. This Blanche Dubois who wishes to be the modern-day Stella but fails—all the time.

Those lanterns I keep putting on the harsh bulbs of life keep burning up. And any moth, that comes close, burns. Like I burn—irrespective of all the light around me.

I am caught up in this pain that seems to abate and make me think that it’s over. But something happens with the people that I count on and it all comes crashing around me.

Saurabh came to meet me after two years. He came up to me as I went to greet him at the door. He said, “Oh my god, you look so good. You look lovely.” And I burst into tears. I couldn’t stop crying. I wept for minutes in his arms.

I suppose it’s a build-up of pain and fury at the world around me. I try to overcome this weight of being needed and wanted. This weight where I find myself comparing my character, my body, my passion, my ability, my longing to the ones around me. The weight of finding myself short in every aspect because I see myself through other people’s eyes.

I’m not macho enough. I’m not handsome enough. I’m not intelligent enough. I am not kind enough. I am not capable enough. It goes on and on—these thoughts that harass my mind and create this incredible surge of helplessness.

I can’t bear to show this. I can’t bear to keep this hidden. Then there is the ridicule of the tears. Will I be judged for them? Aren’t men not supposed to weep? Rowling would say it’s not man enough, I suppose. My tears as a man wouldn’t be real for her. Would they? But then who even is she to me in the larger scheme of things? But won’t my mother count in this scheme? My best friend? My lover?

Then Saurabh comes in. He lashes out at every insecurity and sees me. I weep. 

377

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I have been a part of the gay community since ’98. I know all there is to know about Article 377. There were three judgements passed on 377 – one in 2009, one in 2011 and one in 2018. The last of which was brilliant and removed the criminalisation of CONSENSUAL sex between two adults irrespective of gender.

Section 377 is a British colonial penal code that criminalized all sexual acts “against the order of nature”. The law was used to prosecute people engaging in oral and anal sex along with homosexual activity.

As per the Supreme Court Judgement since 2018, the Indian Penal Code Section 377 is used to convict non-consensual sexual activities among homosexuals with a minimum of ten years imprisonment extended to life imprisonment. In its ruling, the Supreme Court stated that consensual sexual acts between adults cannot be a crime, deeming the prior law “irrational, arbitrary and incomprehensible.”

In 2018, the Supreme Court decriminalised consensual sex amongst homosexual couples.

But Section 377 was retained in the IPC, criminalising sexual offences against animals, men, and transgender individuals.

On August 11 this year, the government introduced three criminal law bills in the Lok Sabha to revamp the criminal justice system and replace the Indian Penal Code, Indian Evidence Act, and Code of Criminal Procedure.

The bills were then referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, and after several rounds of discussions, the Committee suggested changes, including the retention of Section 377 in BNS.

The three bills were withdrawn by the Union government earlier this week, citing that they will be reintroduced with revisions. However, the new draft of BNS has no mention of Section 377.

Lawyer and rights activist Aravind Narrain said that the new Bill need not retain Section 377, but that a new provision must be introduced as part of the laws on rape to criminalise sexual offences against men and transgender individuals.

“The present rape laws only cover rape against women. The aim is to cover this gap and make rape against all persons an offence. Therefore, a new provision criminalising rape against all persons, not just women, must be brought in. This would cover everyone who faces sexual violence,” Aravind told TNM.

Just goes to show that most people don’t think that “real men” don’t get raped. And if they do, then asking for justice is not the way to go. “Be a man” and keep it all in. Sigh. I can’t even call it misandry. Just an appalling defeat of human rights.

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.