Gaysi: The Gay Desi - Yes, we're legal!

This lovely poem is our first reader submission. Thank you, desinorse.

[Guest Post by desinorse]

this weekend
old memories
visited me
like so many
unwelcome
guests

days spent
waiting
for calls
for reconciliation
that would
never come

days spent
agonizing over
every word
that might
have turned
her away

days spent
entirely in bed
not wanting
to get up
and confront
reality

days spent
refusing
to believe
there could be
life after her
let alone love

days that
blurred
into weeks
and months
a year
of dazed misery

then you
came along
and eventually
won my heart
with patience
and quiet resolve

i feel now
like a
jigsaw puzzle
carefully
fondly
reassembled

almost together

but with
a piece
permanently
missing

———

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It’s been nearly 3 years since I fell in love with The Girl. I don’t think a single day had passed since then, where I didn’t worry about how I was going to break this news to my parents.

In fact, the fear of telling my parents came much much later. In the beginning, it was the fear of my own feelings. It was the fear of leaving the unhappy marriage I was in. ‘DIVORCE’ – that was a word that was larger than life, flashing in bright red neon with horns and fire breath.

Then came the fear of what people would think of me for being gay? Would I lose all my friends? Would I have to live a lie at work? How would I explain to everyone that I was married to a man for all those years and now I wanted to be with a woman. Nobody would understand.

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[Guest Post by Amrita, from Indiequill]

I’ve never found Sean Penn attractive. Shocking, I know, but all that brooding intensity is completely wasted on me, I’m afraid. Five minutes into Milk, however, as I watch him seduce the entirely-too-pretty James Franco in a matter of minutes with nothing more than a silly grin and a pick up line so tired they should shoot it to put it out of its misery, I suddenly got the hype.

It’s one of the many ways in which Penn so perfectly inhabits the character of Harvey Bernard Milk, the closeted insurance salesman from New York who became a gay rights activist, the first openly gay elected official in California and a symbol of hope for the LGBT community in the 1970s.

From the moment he bumps into Scott Smith (Franco), his lover for many years and a friend upto his assassination in 1978, in Milk, we’re constantly reminded that this is not a man who is conventionally handsome and is way too old to be deemed attractive in the gay scene he inhabits. But with his salesman charm and the sweetest smile you ever saw, his is a charisma that cannot be denied.

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A heartbreaking post from a fellow-gaysi, over at Devis with Babies:

But when my partner and I decided to get married that changed. My parents wouldn’t come. And, what was worse in my eyes, they wouldn’t discuss it with me. They just told me they couldn’t be there. When I sent photos of our ceremony in Massachusetts, they didn’t respond. When, two year later, I called to tell them about Raya, my mom cried and my dad said they had to go. I don’t call them anymore. But I write them letters every month. Raya has begun writing letters to them too. She calls them Ba and Dada. She has seen pictures and she knows about them. Every Diwali, we send them a diya that we make together. [Link]

When I was a kid, the apartment two floors above us was occupied by two ladies. They were both teachers. One of them was tall and stern-looking. The other one was short, roly-poly and generally jovial as you would expect someone of such a build to be. Both of them had short, cropped hair and they were always seen together.

I’d usually see them returning in the evening, with handbags and ubiquitous black bags, synonymous with Goan Catholics, presumably loaded either with students’ papers or with vegetables and meat for that night’s meal. I was a little scared of them, as I was of all teachers, even those who didn’t teach me or even at my school. Many years later an older neighbor-friend whispered to me in wise big-sister hushed tones,

They’re lesbians.

I haven’t seen them in years but I thought of them recently, when I started writing for Gaysi. I was about to say that I’d never known any lesbians closely but it occurred to me that perhaps I had. Or had I? They didn’t look like lesbians, which leads me to question,

What do lesbians look like?

A friend opined that they’re generally tomboyish-looking and don’t care too much about dressing in a ladylike manner. I retorted,

That described me in my teens too and I’ve never been a lesbian!

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An interesting conversation with a biologist friend. His point:

When we talk of heterosexual relationships (from an Indian perspective), our thoughts are mostly centred around terms like compatibility, personality, profession, education and such like. Sex, though a very important factor doesn’t hold much weight age (because saying it out loud is paap no?).

But when we speak of Homosexuality….

S-E-X is where everything starts and ends. Somehow it seems our society simply can’t comprehend the fact that a Queer relationship is also nothing but union of two individuals.

Funny no, a simple understandable fact barely has any takers in this country. If people of the world need some lessons in double standards, India is the place to be.

Worse yet, forcing their way into people’s lives, bedrooms, private spaces is becoming a rising trend for politically inclined religious fuckers.

So while our esteemed Government(s), Judicial System and Police Force continue with their age-old “hum dekhenge, hum soochenge, hum karenge” approach. This is what you could should do.

Join the Pink Chaddi movement.

The logic behind the campaign is fairly shakhahari; it’s all about showing some lurvee to our (in) famous saffron brothers aka. Shri Ram Sena. Why? Because we think it will add some color to their…Er…dull persona.

How it works?

Fairly simple; Sistas look for your old, torn, period stained…whatever the state, pink chaddis. Brothers are also encouraged to dig deep in their closets (don’t worry yeh andar ki baat rahegi) or buy some really cheap (pink) chaddis from the market and send them over to:

The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
C/O Alternate Law Forum,
122/4 Infantry Road
(opposite Infantry Wedding House)
Bangalore 560001
Karnataka
Contact person: Nithin (9886081269)

To know more, visit the Pink Chaddi Blog.

Lastly, in the words of a wise lady – Go forth and chaddify.