Fuck Off Y'all, Delhi LGBT community!

Yesterday, malicious, malign rumours around my personal life with my friend were spread in the LGBT community in Delhi in order to destabilize my ongoing relationship with my partner of fifteen years and my newly acquired friend on Facebook, with whom I am engaged in LGBT activism on Facebook. While we both respect each other and are fond of each other, we were hit by a bolt of malicious propaganda of the profile of my partner, the reason being, the supposed sudden knowledge of my ongoing fun and frolic with my friend which did not go down very well with my partner.

But the point is everyone else knew about it and the engagement proved that while on the one hand, we talk of regressive laws like Section 377 IPC, on ground, when two people of the same sex are engaged, all the world rejoices with them. Hence FUCK LAW! STOP SHOUTING and GO DO IT, if you want to!

The LGBT community in Delhi must know that their joy in destroying friendships and relationships between people of the same sex only reflects the instability of their own. And that like all relationships, it is very hard to break a partners who have been together, for a long time. Also, since we do not follow the normative way of life, it is possible for us to have more than one friendship with anyone. We are not monogamous, patriarchal and strictly limited within boundaries.

In my case especially, having moved and evolved over many relationships, my horizon is large and I care two hoots for words like marriage etc. If I can live a committed and loving relationship for 15 years, I can include one more same sex person to my relationship without having to go through marriage.

Having said that, if I so wish to enter the institution of marriage, I will do so and I will see how the Indian Court can stop me from doing that.

I say, STOP trying to prove you are a friend, when actually you are a dimwit, immature carrier of tales. And STOP harming people you love, or profess to do so!

Get the hell out of my way! You are neither loved nor respected any more by me! So Fuck Y'all!



Photo credit HERE

Each one, teach one.

Come November, the Pride March in New Delhi will cause a flutter of the different colours of the rainbow, causing TV Channels and other media, hungry to fill up pages and news slots to run helter-skelter picking up news and views and flashing them across national and international channels. Major discussions will take place on Television and brick and bat will meet and strike in air and newspapers. Then, as suddenly and passionately as it came, it will die out leaving late comers to catch up on social media. Shortly following this Mumbai will catch the fire and will themselves walk the streets with Pride. In both cases, the state will take care to ensure that while trying to put up a face of acceptance and support of the movement, it will ensure that the Pride March does not pass through highly populated sections of the city or close to places where the government sits and allow the Pride walkers to March in what one may call, less than truly visible locations so that the rest of the population are not inconvenienced by the Pride March. 

We are a hypocritical society, down to the chaddi/underwear. What we appear outside is not what we practice inside. Showing the world that there is place for Pride in our society, we hide deep seated paranoia on the other.  

After living for over fifteen years with her partner in a live-in relationship, Susan, an anthropologist by profession, was literally asked to leave her life with her partner, because, her partner’s mother came to live with her. Even though, earlier, she had no qualms about her daughter’s live-in ‘friendship’, and often, in more than words, she confessed that she was quite satisfied that her daughter had a ‘friend’ to live with, now, that she actually confronted the relationship on a daily basis, she found it impossible to live with the reality. She began to talk in a language that was more often the language of action, than of words, in silent speech, pregnant and bursting in the seam with the evil power to cast out Susan’s presence and throw her to the swine. Mind you, deep seated venom and vengeance of patriarchy against any ‘unestablished’, unaccepted norm is stronger than the whole Indian army in action at the borders of the country. 

If Susan put her books in one place, she would find that the place was soon occupied by her partner’s mother’s library. If Susan hung her clothes in the cupboard she used, she found she was asked to vacate it for her partner’s mother. If Susan was in conversation with her partner, she found, that they were soon joined by her partner’s mother without an invitation to do so. If Susan was sitting with the family, the language of conversation, soon turned to one Susan could not understand. In a nutshell, the very presence of Susan had begun to cause an allergy to the mother. What was more; her partner would not voice her objection to her mother’s odd behavior causing Susan to believe that by maintaining a silence over the abuse of space, her partner had indeed become accomplice to the abuse dealt out towards Susan. This was unacceptable to Susan who decided then to tear away from this mess till her partner came to some understanding of what to put where and how to compartmentalize her relation with her mother as different from her relationship with Susan. After fifteen long years, their relationship went into hibernation.

This is not an extraordinary situation in our society. Decriminalization of homosexuality, accepting gay marriages, and maybe in time, even accepting gay quota in the parliament will not take a basic problem out from our society and that is, we are a nation of hypocrites and what we mouth, may not be what we believe in our hearts. And this is problematic!

Together with advocacy for gay rights, it is highly important that we talk about acceptance, within our families.  We can’t allow the Susan kind of episode to carry on, as if there is nothing to do, but accept the situation.  There is an urgent need to create space for many issues around gay rights. 

And really it should begin at home, with the family, first.  

 

Silent is the lamp...

At the break of dawn, a lamp went off!

The year was 1995. I travelled to Delhi with two people from a film production company called Mantra Magic Films, from Mumbai. We were to remain in Delhi for 4 days to attend a Week of Broadcasting at Pragati Maidan. While my colleagues put up with their cousin’s at Nizamuddin, I settled into the very clean, very white, very British YWCA Guest House in Delhi. The room felt very cold and distant and while I was in Delhi, I wanted some warmth and friends around. I did not know anyone in Delhi, at that time except that I had got an address and phone number of two people, who were part of the women who desire women community in Delhi. I called the number and talked to someone, who said that they had a guest room where they put up women who came from out of town.

I checked out of YWCA and moved in with them. The house belonged to Giti Thandani and the two girls I met there introduced themselves as Cath Stuggart and Betu (Anandita)Singh. While I was away all day, I liked the warmth of their presence in the evenings, the quick breakfast with them in the mornings, little chats and sharing. I liked my little room on the top with an electrical kettle, tea bags, milk sachets, books and magazines on same-sex love. The little room was a sheer delight, with a window that looked out at the world, from the top. And on the last day of stay, I enjoyed meeting other women who desired women, in a neatly arranged beer and chips party on the terrace of the house.

I struck an instant rapport with both girls but Betu is someone I spoke to from Mumbai too after I returned. There was something in that child-like face that attracted me a lot. Cath Stuggart was staying over from England and learning Hindi and together they were doing a great job of managing Giti Thadani’s Office-cum-residence in Delhi, while she herself was in Germany.

The first beginnings of Sangini, began in Delhi, supported by the well-known Naaz Foundation. Betu and Cath were instrumental in bringing this to life.

Today, at the break of dawn, the lamp went off. Betu (Anandita) Singh passed away, the immediate cause of death being, stage 3 of cirrhosis of the liver.

This brings me to the main subject I want to write about.

The LGBTQ community in India suffers extreme isolation, marginalization and hence is an extremely lonely community. While there is a lot of companionship and friendliness among people, the togetherness is absent. People meet for drinks, dating, parties, but that real family feeling and togetherness is hard to come by. In the earlier days, the in-fighting overtook the outward seemingly out and about façade.

It has taken many of us a huge amount of courage to come out to family about our sexual identity. Very few families accept and support people who are out. So there is already the family one is fighting to find approval in and then there is the society at large, which finds any woman who is single, not partnered with a man, two women living together, something they cannot make sense of. Even tolerate. And what they cannot make sense of they want to eradicate. Kill. Or forget about it. This gives rise to the well of loneliness that very often hound, the LGBTQ community.

It is surprising that even after the decriminalizing of homosexuality, multiple films supporting same sex partnerships, so much literature, society at large has not accepted us in their midst. Families continue to ostracize us, or treat us with shame. If this is the attitude with families, then the society at large will also follow suit.

For example, consider the coming apart of a heterosexual marriage. Friends, family, extended family, friends of friends and all and sundry will come together to keep the marriage going. It is the opposite in the case of LGBTQ couples. Even in the community, people turn their heads away, and of course, the family beats hell and fire to break the relationship – in most cases. The laws of the land do not protect us, nor help us in any way, so that we feel included in the overall society at large. Do you mean that there is only one way to relate to another human being and that is the heterosexual way?

The well of loneliness is often filled with insecurities, alcohol, drugs and behavior that cry for help. But no one hears these cries, until it is too late.

These forced silences speak louder than words. These dead moments of life, even in a living body, are what regressive societies perpetuate and promote.

We really must wake up to some glaring, disturbing, uncomfortable truths that surround the LGBTQ movement in India. For that we need to know, about struggle elsewhere in the world and how they overcame it.

Now, the question is - who is going to bell the cat and make the first move?

Also read: Film review: And you thought you knew me by Pramada Menon

http://juliadutta.blogspot.in/2013/09/film-appreciation-and-you-thought-you.html

Film appreciation: And you thought you knew me.

Pramada Menon. Picture from internet

Pramada Menon’s debut film, “And You Thought You Knew Me” introduces the viewer to five women who identify themselves as lesbians, creating an intimate portrait of ‘the other’ . The film was first viewed by an audience at the ongoing Open Frame International Film Festival in New Delhi, 2013, focuses on narratives of and by women.

The film is tastefully made, in the beautiful Delhi landscape, portraying monuments, juxtaposed with the voices of women speaking about themselves and their experiences, being lesbian, in Delhi.

As capital of India both politically and for reasons of being one of the worst states, kissing partners with Haryana and UP, famous for daily rapes, honour killings, lack of respect for women, using and feeling that women are commodities to be used for sexual gratification and child bearing, all five women, who spoke in the documentary film, chose to come to stay in Delhi, for whatever reasons. In that light, it becomes increasingly, important, that they, and perhaps a lot more women, who identify to be “the other”, are able to negotiate their space to be here and live their lives, in the way they want to.

But wait a moment! Where are the women of the past, women, who stoically stood their ground to establish to themselves, that they too were ‘the other’?

The LGBTQ movement in Delhi or for that matter, India, did not start only 5 – 7 years ago. While it existed in whatever form, prior to 1980, when the first International Women’s Meet happened in Bombay, the exposure to women who identified as lesbian and were sharing their lives with many gathered during that meet, gave an enormous push to our own movement in India. In 1996, aided by Stree Sangam, a ‘women who love women’ group in Bombay, the first national three day, meet happened in Bombay which brought women from different parts of India together. It became apparent that there existed small groups of women activists, across India, who were trying to put voice to women desire to be who they were, identified, women who love women.

Shortly after that, an idea that had been mulling in the minds of women in Delhi, to bring out an anthology of lesbian writings, was published. The book, “Facing the mirror”, edited by Ashwini Sukhthankar, was published by Penguin, in India, and became an instant sell out.

The movement had found a voice!

Since then, there have been so many other forms of Voice, including the Pride March. So in that light, this film, by Pramada Menon, is an important contribution to the LGBTQ Movement in India.

Yet, I must end on a note of disappointment; in the film, the voices from the past are absent. Not a single woman in the film is over 50 years of age, and that means, that from 1980 to 2013, visibility of women who loved women, is still pretty poor. Perhaps, the very reason why, the film-maker chose a landscape of Delhi's Monuments, red walls, silent as tombs. The silence of the past, the women, whose blood ran with the urgency to be recognised, is deafening!

Indeed, one among the five women said so herself – Looking for a woman who loves women, is still as hard. Therefore, what is it that is keeping us away from coming out. Is it, our own fears, or is it that we fear the society we live in? Or is it just that we are still negotiation, who we really are?

Only time will tell. Especially now that we know, that gender identities are as fluid as water, running under your feet. The real challenge is to find our own voice, loud and clear, at least for the time being.

Kal, kaun dekha  - who has seen tomorrow, and what it will hold for me? Who I will be;  what will be my identity, my voice, who knows?

Pramada Menon is a founder member of Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action (CREA) in 2000. CREA (www.creaworld.org ) is currently based in New Delhi and aims to enhance the “capacities of a new generation of women leaders using a human rights approach. The organization works on issues of sexuality, reproductive health, violence against women, gender equity, economic justice and women's rights.”

Pramada began her career working with DASTKAR, a society for the promotion of crafts and craftspeople in New Delhi. Starting as a field assistant in 1987, she became the Executive Director of the organization in 1993. In the lead up to the 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference, she was actively involved with women’s groups on the issues of sustainable livelihoods. She left DASTKAR in 1998 and spent two years as an independent consultant working on issues of women’s rights--sexuality, literacy, empowerment and livelihoods.

Throughout her career, Pramada has spent much of her time conducting trainings with both men and women on issues related to gender, leadership and empowerment. She is a strong believer in the idea that young people need the opportunity and space to challenge themselves and to be challenged.(Courtsey: http://www.princeton.edu/gpn/profiles/menon/ ) “And you thought you knew me”, is her debut film.

Sneak preview of the film on FB: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151890865204468&set=vb.504095503008495&type=2&theater …

NB:Views expressed here are Julia Dutta's alone