Flutters, flickers, flitters. An icky touchdown. And I’m all jitters!
It does not take a nano second for me to realize what has entered my room. I seem to have a deep, primal connection to these fearful sounds, and the aggressive and unpredictable being that causes them. I am not even going to name the creature, because my hair stands on end even as I write this. I know how I will react to the creature’s presence anywhere, but more so inside a room or house. It is always flight first, fight later – after recouping from a racing heart, marshalling my strength, and arming myself with a slipper and a rational mind.
I might even see the creature in my nightmares, and at one time, I strongly believed that these dreams predicted that I was going to fall sick. I had only anecdotal evidence though to back my claim. A gentle suggestion from my counsellor has sown the seeds of a counter belief in my mind. Encounters with the creature in real life are probably an outcome of Kolkata’s hot climate coupled with poor waste management in the city. But seeing the creature in my dreams could be an outcome of stress, and I do have plenty of that in my life.
It is not just the stress that everyone experiences in negotiating daily life, but also minority stress. The stress of holding back your queerness behind pretensions about your sexual orientation in social circles or perfectionism in studies and work, all the while dealing with overt and covert stigma, discrimination and violence. And there is no telling how many outings will be needed to eliminate the stress.
I was 14 and secretly in love with a schoolmate when I realized my difference, 17 when I came out to my parents as gay, and in my early 20s when I found myself starting Counsel Club (1993-2002), one of India’s earliest queer support groups. This venture was parallel to (but initially hidden from) my work as a journalist in a newspaper. Eventually, there was coming out in the media as an activist and to my extended family. Freeing yes, also exhausting.
Over the years, I found varying degrees of acceptance, from my parents, other family members, friends, school and collegemates, and colleagues. My work as a writer, archivist, researcher, and activist also received appreciation. But these acceptances were not without tears and agony, loss of childhood friendships, hurtful remarks by relatives, social exclusions by neighbours, and pressure for heterosexual marriage. There was a time when, more than me, my parents feared social ostracization, till luckily some family elders reassured them that my being gay was not a problem.
Counsel Club’s work, though liberating, was also carried out under fear of intimidation by the families of the group’s members, worries of police harassment, and threats of legal action because queer people were criminalized in India till 2018. The barriers were not just external; in the beginning, many gay and bisexual men I knew were also critical and pessimistic about a venture such as Counsel Club.
When I look back 25-30 years, I lose count of all the times I had to come out about my reality. And then, not long ago, I found myself reassuring my romantic partner, who is much younger than me, as he negotiated coming out to his close ones. Last year, we exchanged rings at home amid a small group of friends with much merrymaking and laughter, but deep down I knew that stress is going to remain my constant companion.
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When your gender and sexuality are also an integral part of your work, new layers get added to the stress you experience. In this ‘stress cocktail’ there is no separating my personal stress from the anxieties of my ageing queer colleagues in Varta Trust, which I co-founded with a group of friends and fellow activists in 2012 as a successor to Counsel Club. Our collective stress mingles with the distress of the queer individuals who approach us for mental health counselling and legal aid, as also with the joys and sorrows of people whose stories we document through our research and narrate in this webzine. Lace the cocktail with the indifference of policymakers, load it with ice cold laws that marginalize and criminalize queer persons with zero empathy, and ‘on the rocks’ takes on a whole new meaning.
Speaking of rocks, a stab of pain from my frozen shoulder triggers an image of a mountain of stress, ache, sadness, and longing in queer lives that is yet to be scaled. If this mountain is to be conquered, then we all need to eliminate the lava of violence in queer lives. Not just actual violence that repeatedly hurts your body and mind (or body-mind), but also anticipated violence that dictates every waking moment of self-expression – what you say or how you say it, what you wear, how you walk, and more.
Sometimes you resist these stressors through protest and pride marches, blogs, essays, poetry, hairstyles, clothes, your sexual and romantic intimacies, and the diverse families you forge together. Yet, you must keep looking over your shoulder. Many other times, the stressors numb you to the possibility of a different life and cruel becomes normal, demons become gods, and gods begin to emit more fear than light.
If not in the oceans, there is a tsunami ravaging your mind. If you have spent a lifetime as an activist, community mobilizer, human rights defender, or whatever expression embodies your vocation the best, you constantly worry about being able to take everyone along. While you aim to work for everyone in a marginalized community, there are some people you develop closer bonds with. People you have shared meals with or travelled with to scores of cities, villages, seashores and hills of India as part of work or holidays, queer couples you have helped escape violent homes, fellow activists with whom you have advocated, sensitized, and marched on the streets, souls you have grown older with.
Not everyone has had the privileges you have lived with – privileges of gender, class, caste, race, religion, location, or ability. So, will all of us equally survive the advancing years, social intolerances, or climate change that is upon us? And what does survival mean when you die numerous deaths along the way?
To be continued.
About the main photo: Cover of a file with records of legal reform campaigns that Counsel Club and sibling NGO Integration Society participated in, primarily in the 1990s. Photo courtesy Counsel Club Archives maintained by Varta Trust
Death by a thousand cuts as they say. Wish I had a magic wand ! 😢… But this stress and othering also allows for deep chosen relationship, to savor the little and unfrequent moments of joy more dearly and to continue to stay empathetic and a crusader for the world. So dear friend … Inspite of everything, you have so much to give and recieve.