I keep on saying this and I’ll say it again, I wasn’t like other boys in my family. I was more of a computer geek than a sports star. I was timid and tender and other guys in the house were fighters and bikers kind.

There was a common joke in the house. Sometimes it used to motivate me as well. And this was used not only by the boys of the house but by the girls as well. BTW I forgot to mention, back then we used to live in a joint family set up. Now, back to the joke. If there’s anything related to physical work which I was not able to do, I was compared to a girl. Things like “ladki sala” (bloody woman) or “ladki log tumse achha karti hai” (even girls are better than you), were common.

I had been accused of this so many times that instead of taking offence, I used to ignore and stop doing what I was doing. As a child, I was still protected because my father was the eldest and everyone respected him in the family and society.

But you know, your family’s legacy won’t protect you always. Till high school, my sister and I were in the same class and the bullies of the class used to avoid troubling me so that they could impress my sister. However, when they used to find me alone, they would not let a moment go without laughing at me and calling me names.

Finally I entered college. By this time I had learnt how to ignore the comments and avoid getting into trouble. I came out when I was in the college. There were so many people who stood by my side and there were some who thought it was funny. During my college days, my friends became my shield. If anyone would say anything against me, my friends would stand by my side in my fight.

Till now, I had faced verbal hate and violence mostly. Not to forget cyber bullying is also a thing that I have gone through a lot. I’m a social bird and I’m quite vocal about my opinion and many homo-illogical-phobic people have cursed me, threatened me to come and rape me and my family. Surprisingly these kind of people are proud of being religious (I wonder what does religious mean to them).

The worst experience that I had to go through was the physical violence when I tried to protect myself from a drunk man. Just because my appearance was “clearly gay”, that drunk man came close to me for his nasty intentions and when I slapped that man, I was beaten up to the extent of heavy bleeding and my clothes were torn. And the people around watched in utter silence.

You can ignore a lot of such people who joke about who you are and try to mess with you by just putting your headphones on and turning the volume to the max but if anyone dares to harm you physically, do not stay silent. Speak up, and fight back.