Some time back, a friend and I had this conversation about homosexuality and how ‘deviant’ it is. It started me thinking. Why is it that an educated person, who has seen much of the world and someone who is respected by many, so myopic when it comes to homosexuality? Why is it that we label people rather than get to know that person as an individual?
I could write very objectively, logically and dispassionately presenting my idea, but I wanted it to be different. That is why I decided to write this. It is hardly mushy, political or philosophical. It is just a life experience.
When I got into college, I was fresh from a culture that was diverse. Having studied in a Kendriya Vidyalaya, I had friends across the social cross section. I grew up in an environment which was alive with different languages, creativity, loving teachers and most importantly-innocence. I loved my school. I still do. So, college was a bit different. Having joined a Women’s College, I thought that there was not much scope for fun like I was used to in school. (Oh, that prejudice was gone by the time I was a senior.)To make matters worse, there was a culture shock. Most students in class came from schools in groups. They had their own cliques, conversations, interests. I felt totally left out. So I began to mingle more, in a very superficial way. I was everybody’s acquaintance, but nobody’s friend. I became a front bencher because the gangs had taken up the rear benches. That is where I found a new friend. Let us call her X. So one day, X comes and sits down with me and tells me she couldn’t make it earlier that week because she had an NCC camp. I was alright. In my usual diplomacy, I enjoyed her companionship.
As an year passed, though she would disappear for weeks together, she became my closest friend there. She was strong, opinionated, but diplomatic; her NCC training made her extremely resourceful. You could say that where my heart became empathetic but needed a practical helping hand, she was always there. And of course, she was a brilliant actress. I have this passion for theatre, which she shared as well. (Funny, because, now that I remember, my roommate through my grad school was a brilliant actress as well.) In short, she is the only one of college mates that I found worthy of trying to trace after all these years. X was the person who was always full of these little insights that one marvels at. It was around then that my fight with a bunch of my classmates reached the peak. I think it was more of a prestige issue on their part to ‘put me down’ than my idea of silly quarrel. She stood by me then. I thank her for that. I will never forget the way she laughed when those silly girls finally elicited a public reply from me which left them sweating for months to come. I will never forget the way she rushed to me on my birthday, right after a camp and handed me a collection of O Henry’s short stories.
But best of all, I will not forget one particular incident. We were at the Mysore palace as part of a College trip. She kept looking at the roof and finally pointed somewhere and said, ‘That glass tile doesn’t match with the rest.’ You can imagine my confusion. I looked for around ten minutes before I came to ‘that tile’. She was right. One had a different pattern. As I looked at her with awe, she slowly walked away, unaware of my fascination at how observant she was.
Maybe I should have foreseen it. But well, frankly, it is a bit hard to assess sexuality when you are amidst a thousand something women everyday, who wander through the campus, completely and abundantly free, without a care in the world. It is a bit like the female version of modern day Rishyashringan.
So one day, we were talking as usual, walking along the road and I was admiring a guy who was walking in front of us. She suddenly tells me that she isn’t into that kind of guys. So I asked her what kind of guy she was into. Her reply was, ‘None’. That was the first time I had an insight into her sexual orientation. I think my first reaction was, ‘oh my’. The one thing that offended me was not the fact that she was a lesbian, but that she didn’t tell me for nearly two years. Till then, I was ideologically pro-gay. But, here was a closeted human being, in the typical Kerala society, who had become my confidante and emotionally close and I didn’t know the most basic thing about her. It freaked me out. I had never understood properly all the media sensationalism about a lesbian couple living together in Kerala, till then. I had never understood the emotional hurdles, the trust issues till then. She was waiting for a chance, assessing me, measuring me up to be her confidante all that time. I still feel the anger at times I felt then. Not at her, but at this system that makes an ordinary person not able to express herself. She was beautiful, self assured, funny, intelligent. But she couldn’t live her life her way because of society denying something that has been around ever since modern man began cohabiting the gene pool.
It has been four years since I saw her last. Typical of her, she just disappeared. Trying to contact her was useless. I hope that one day, in a characteristic Houdini act of hers; I turn around to see her smiling at me with those ever warm eyes. This is to you, my friend, who came, saw and conquered.
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