CONTENT NOTE: this essay contains a brief disclosure of childhood abuse.
Since I was born, I have unknowingly signed an invisible paper. A paper to be in the war. Unknowingly, I was put in front of an army called parents and relatives. My biological parents named me without my knowledge, and my gender expressions were already decided and coded before I could speak a single word. I was at war. A war where the geography was my body, my mind, and my gender, which I did not know was mine. Back in childhood, these relatives – supposedly an army of my own – had opinions on me. My parents and my older brother held different opinions of me, yet some more of the uncalled armies joined the league called neighbours. As if by now, I did not have enough people who called me their own to decide what I should eat, speak, wear, write, and read, or even the way I dress and breathe daily. Did you see? I was at war without having weapons then, but my parents, brother, cousins, relatives, and the neighbours had the weapons of moral policing and hunting. These weapons were used time and again to cage my voice, to brand me an outsider or a threat to them for being different. I was at a war where my own armies would eventually turn against me and call me unholy and ravage me and reason it later – all without being involved directly, but I was at war.
While with age I grew, I thought the number of armies in the backyard was enough, but as I reached college, these armies grew – with or without my control. In the age of connections, I made a few known and unknown warriors for the first time. Ones I used to call friends, and others who just joined somewhere on my life journey. In the name of lovers, batchmates, playmates, and hidden abusers – the unknown and undesignated army grew in shape and size with patriarchy on their shoulders. By now, my body and mind were used as a weapon by those who claimed to know, yet I was unaware of my own power. As each group of the armies had their weapons, such as expectations, hurts, lies, deceit, advice, harassment, bullying, stripping me naked as a kid, and the list goes on, I was unarmed as of now. I was at war, but in uncharted waters where every second is an act of betrayal, yet I did not know how to use my power, or were my wings cut off? I did not have my own claims on the body that I was born with.
Speaking plainly, my body and mind were the territory that was colonised by these people before the law ever existed for me in books or conversations. I had no idea of human rights when I was young; it was only after the death of my father that I started joining queer workshops and meet-ups and realised, OMG, I am not the only one colonised, there are other colonies as well. My armies often had fragile egos; any opinion of mine scattered a thousand crystals of sandstorms around. When I stepped into college, I realised that I was at war with millions already because things that did not match or were not required to match. As I grew further, I realised that this nonbinary body was nothing but a vessel, and nobody owned the territory as it was not mine. These unkind armies were fighting for a land to colonise, which was not truly seen or known. That’s the irony, I myself took so many years to understand how my mind and my body sink together, but these patriarchs claimed, ruled, and justified the fittings of abuse.
Years later, today, the armies have extended towards the state and the governance. Now these armies have arrived at the border, and this one does not wear the face of relatives, friends, or lovers, but the STATE. It comes with a new kind of weapon called paperwork. While you read this, you and I are aware that paper was invented by Cai Lun during the Han dynasty, around 105 CE, but you and I are also sure that people existed before paper, right? Here is what nobody understands, apart from a few, because they are themselves at war with the system. You and I cannot legislate an emotion. You cannot put a fence on my body and the anatomy, but not my SOUL. My soul is ageless, genderless, and is ruled by no government. Just like me, millions on this planet are going through war while I am writing this and you are reading – not the ones with guns and missiles.
When we stand together – different people, caste, colour, gender, and ethnicity, we don’t make an army but a ‘Sanctuary.’ We are all the proof that nobody can be a king of stolen land, and our territory belongs to us. I own the truth, and the truth lies beyond my body and within me. I own the truth of my body, my mind, my soul, my gender, and everything that relates to me. As I grow more, I am no longer without a weapon; I have the biggest weapon, which fears nothing: the truth and my own lived experience, and this needs no validation, only acknowledgment.
As Nilamani Phookan writes: “Moi Buka aru Manuh, mur khorirot moi khasi rakhisu aronoi’r, morubhumi’r aru khagor’r protitute khurjo!” which roughly translates as: I am the mud and the human; on my body I have preserved the wilderness, the desert, and every sun of the ocean.
While wars on the philosophy of being are common since the propaganda of patriarchy, I am not bound to a governing principle that reduces me to paperwork. In reality, nobody wins a war; it is just to soothe the eulogies of the patriarchs. But what happens when the time ticks and the patriarch is killed by the war of time, called death? No kings, queens, or armies survived the wrath of time and nature, and I am that nature.
Untamed, uncharted, and uncontrolled. This is the beginning of the war of truth over lies, victory over deceit, and love above politics.
