Parallel Planes of Life

I have been fiddling with the idea to chronicle my experiences of past twenty five years since I have been walking on this earth. My first thoughts of penning down my life cropped up when I left my town the third time. The first time I left home was to work as a Medical Representative and I returned home on the 33rd day with a pay cheque of rupees 2800. Second time I left home was when I was crippled with a lot of un-fateful, dramatic events happening in life. All these events happened one after the other, as they say – it never rains but pours. I had exhausted all my energy to fight back, I needed a rescue and the best possible option I could think of at that point of time was to leave the place I was living in (not my home) for good. I returned back after three months. Somehow the candle in the wind was still fluttering and the fait in self had survived.


To make life more eventful or say spicy (for some) or as I say insightful is the fact that I am a homosexual man born in India. Now, that is not something astonishing or revealing. There are millions of others in this nation with similar orientation. I used the word insightful since we men experience what the society of straight men and women does not. Every day we go through a bull fight played on the grounds of our minds. Irrespective of gender and orientation, we all wish to create a space in society, a place of our own i.e. social acceptance. We want people around us to look at us with dignity, our voices are heard and some of us also wish to make a positive impact on society.


Now coming back to the lives of homosexual men in India, most of us are born in closed limits of acceptance. That is, our parents, relatives, neighbours and community all together have formed an invisible, unspoken limit of actions, deeds and behaviour of conduct. The extent of limits depends on the socio economic background of each of us. Some of the fortunate ones are born in families with more acceptance and resilience. These families or the cluster of families scattered around the cities have been the forerunners of changes in society. They were exposed to latest thought ware and experienced the changes as they happened. So men with homosexual orientation born in such families, realize their orientation at an early age due to exposure to media (print, online and television), talks at home, schools and liberal social forums. If you look around, you will find that in these fore runner families have accepted their children with homosexual orientation.


Another cluster of homosexual men are those who have been born in the lower and upper middle class (as they say) of society. You will find the most of the most fortunate and most unfortunate homosexual men in middle class. An example will explain: I met a banker two months back - a man in late twenties - married for more than two years. He opted for this posting hundreds of miles away from his home town just to escape facing his wife. Born and brought in the capital of one of the northern states of India. Belonged to the middle of the middle-class. His father retired as a manager of nationalized bank. The thrust was always on studies and achieving something which his father could not achieve. It was very obvious from his demeanour that he has always been the most obedient child to his parents. Parents wanted him to be an engineer - he did. Parents wanted him to get a management degree – he did. Parents wanted him to get marry – he did. The soul now manages millions worth of fund for investors, but could not manage his life. He didn’t have the courage to stand against marriage. What reason to give for not getting married? Fear of losing family support, alienation from relatives, stinking remarks, and above all the so called stigma from society of being a gay man stopped him to declare the truth to his family. There are hundreds of thousands of men around like this banker, even some of you reading this blog.