Guest post by ANONYMOUS
It may be a strange thing for a gay man to say, but I welcome the Supreme Court judgement re-criminalising the sexual acts I feel naturally inclined to engage in.
As someone who chooses to admit to his sexuality only before other gay men, and that too very selectively, you could call me closeted. Which means that I don’t feel as unfortunate as the ‘out’ lot which feels as though Indian law is asking it to go back into the closet.
I personally welcome the Supreme Court judgement because it will drill some sense of reality into my straight liberal friends who keep pestering, taunting, hinting, trying to make me say, ‘I am gay’. They will realise that there’s enough homophobia out there, enough of it for the Indian Supreme Court, considered a liberal institution, to re-criminalise ‘unnatural sex’. That gives me some semblance of an excuse, or so I hope, to remain closeted.
After the Delhi High Court de-criminalised gay sex, there’s been gay, gay, gay, gay all over the place. I don’t mind it. It’s helped Indian society to break the silence and talk about it, and I’ve myself noticed openly homophobic people change their views.
And yet, as a closeted gay man, I prefer the company of homophobic people. The company of people who think sex between the same genders is disgusting, gross, unacceptable. I have found that such people find homosexuality so gross that they don’t even ask me if I’m gay. They don’t want their worst fears come true. Perhaps they wonder and speculate, but all they ask me is when I’m getting married. If they ask me something like who are you seeing, or why are you single, and I reply with some excuse or joke, they shut up and it’s over.
But then there are these liberal, sexually liberated straight people who go to pride parades to march for my rights. And they insist I reveal who I sleep with. Some ask directly, ‘Are you gay?’ Supposing I am, and I want to remain closeted, how do I answer that question? Basically, you want me to lie, right? You want me to say I am straight when I am not? Or you are implying that I don’t have the right to be closeted? In your worldview there are gay people and straight people and if someone doesn’t have a straight partner to display like a trophy, you think it is your right to ask, ‘Are you gay?’
Perhaps you’ve never thought about it. It’s not your dilemma. You’ve decided that you are not homophobic, that you want to support the rights of sexual minorities, and voila! The world has changed. Everybody who is gay now has the moral responsibility to tell you they’re gay.
What is the point of your support to the idea of sexual equality when you make me uncomfortable by your demand to define my sexuality? Why is it ok in your worldview for people to gay, but not ok to be single, apparently partner-less and not willing to turn up for your parties with a partner?
“There’s a friend of mine. He’s gay.” I have heard that sentence so many different people that I have lost count. But I used to make a list of people who talk about their gay friends as though their sexuality is all their identity. There are doctors and lawyers, south Indians and north Indians, pianists and violinists, and then there are the gays.
When good straight liberals inquire about my sexuality, I feel they want to add me to their list of gay friends so they can talk about me with the opening lines, “There’s a friend of mine. He’s gay…”
Directly asking someone if they’re gay is rude but at least honest. Most people use more insidious ways. More than a few straight-liberal-liberated friends have on more than a few occasions sat me down and interrogated me. Sampler of actual interrogation statements I’ve had to hear from straight, liberal friends:
- “Are you seeing someone?”
- “Why aren’t you seeing someone?”
- “Why is your love life such a secret? Tell us. Tell us. Tell us.”
- “Who’s your girlfriend… or boyfriend? There’s no shame in love.”
- “Why don’t you ask out that woman friend of yours. She’s hot…”
- “How is it that we’ve never heard of you seeing anyone? Not possible you’ve never had a partner. You just don’t tell us.”
- “Love is important dude. Have you been in love?”
- “Do you like kids?”
- “Are you still virgin?”
- “Aap to homosexual hain… hahahahahah.”
- “People say you are sexually frustrated.”
Each one of the above statements has come from someone or the other who has been to a pride parade at least once, has at least one LGBT friend, and all of them generally support all good causes in favour of the oppressed of the world.
Thinking about who these friends have been, I do realise not all straight liberals make me uncomfortable in this way. But the ones who day make up for the rest! The interrogative pressure is like re-living all those years of manic, suicidal depression when one was barely able to come to terms with one’s own lack of attraction to the opposite sex. Cross that mental block and there’s this patronising lot of good straight liberals which desperately wants to show the world they’re so liberal they have so many gay friends. This pressure to come out has been and continues to be humiliating. It is like the world telling you that you are a liar and a crook and you better come clean to be more respectable.
Homophobic people don’t subject me to such interrogations. I don’t know what that is the case. You only have to laugh at their polite misogynist jokes and sustain their hetero-normative worldview and you’ll be fine. They don’t worry about my private life the way straight liberal friends do.
I have overheard two straight friends discuss my sexuality. One said to the other, “We have to help him come out!” Why do liberal straight people think it’s their personal burden to ‘help’ their closeted friends come out? Such unsolicited help is not help; it is an attempt to forcibly out people. My homophobic friends do not, for whatever reason, carry any such burden for me. They understand better than my good liberal pride parade-going friends the dictum ‘jio aur jeenay do’. Sexual equality is about live and let live. Forcing people out of the closet is not in keeping with the idea of live and let live.
Strangely, it should be the homophobes who should be outing closeted LGBTs, and it should be the straight liberals who should be advocating the right to choice about being out or closeted. For some reason, in India today, it is the other way round.
You may never have had a chance to wonder why I don’t come out to you.
Perhaps it was because of that homophobic joke that you once cracked, laughed about it, and then to show that you are not homophobic you added, “Now to a less homophobic story…” Self-reflexivity doesn’t make homophobia less homophobic, I’m sorry.
Or perhaps it’s because I saw you used the word ‘gandu’ to refer to how homophobic people see us, and then laughed about it. Your laughter gave away that it’s a joke for you. You won’t ever be found using the word ‘katua’ for Muslims, even to refer to how Islamophobic people refer to Muslims in this society. It would be just too politically incorrect.
Or perhaps because when we were sitting in a group in a bar and another group entered to take a table next to us, you said, “So that is the g-crowd.”
I want to remain closeted because I don’t want to be The G-Crowd. I want to be merely part of The Crowd. When I enter a bar with you nobody looks at us to say, “So that is the s-crowd.” The whole point of sexual equality should be that labels of sexual identity shouldn’t affect people and their sense of self. But that isn’t good for the good liberal. Your commitment to identity politics demands that I identify myself as gay so that you can give me tea and sympathy, so that you can support my cause, so that you support to sexual quality is not abstract. If all gays were to be closeted who would you ask equality for?
I understand your dilemma but I don’t want to go around calling myself gay because I feel that the best of good straight liberals and the big bad world alike judge people by their sexuality. My choice of music and clothes, colours and movies, friends and foes, is all judged by my sexuality.
Coming out can be of use if it helps me break free. But coming out is the biggest trap. It is the ‘billa’ waiting to be tied around my neck. It is the slot I’ll be slotted in. “There’s a friend of mine. He’s gay…”
Maybe I want to remain closeted because of that time when you refused to go to a bakery called ‘Angels in My Kitchen’ because you said that name sounds so gay.
Maybe I want to remain closeted because when I told you someone had given their child a ridiculous name you had said, “I hope he turns out to be gay. Parents like these deserve it.”
While you gossip about my sexuality, I don’t want to wear the ‘billa’ you want me to wear around my neck because then perhaps you’ll be too conscious before me to crack such homophobic one-liners. I want to let you be yourself before me!
Perhaps I don’t want to stand up and say “I’m gay” because I feel I don’t owe anyone an answer about who I have sex with.
Perhaps I feel that since you never had to come out as straight, why should I have to come out as gay?
Perhaps I don’t want to declare my sexual orientation before you because you’ll proceed to the next step of asking even more uncomfortable questions about love, which is even more difficult an issue than sex if you’re gay!
Perhaps I really don’t have a partner. Perhaps I don’t want one. Not my problem if that sounds bizarre to you. Perhaps I don’t find it possible to be in a relationship. Perhaps I’ve been in and out of too many. Perhaps I don’t want to talk to you about it.
Perhaps my partner wants to remain closeted. Perhaps we both want to.
Perhaps my partner is not only the same sex as me but also has a wife and two kids! Which should make you wonder why most gay men are married. Could it be because a single man above marriageable age without a girlfriend appropriately displayed around social occasions will be subjected to the speculation, “Is he gay?’ and the interrogation, “Are you straight?”
Every time you interrogate someone about their love and sex life – ‘interrogate’ as in repeatedly pester them beyond a simple are-you-seeing-someone – you are possibly contributing to a gay man ruining the life of a straight woman he seeks to marry. Just to escape this social interrogation. You will happily blame such social pressure of hetero-normativity and homophobia and the law. But you will not feel any guilt yourself because well, you march in pride parades with your straight partner, in solidarity with the gay men who march with masks to hide their faces
Perhaps I don’t want to give you the privilege of a grand coming out because the one time I did come out to a straight friend, I felt she had been interested only in the gossip value of it. For years I had listened to all her pain about her straight relationships, and now that I was telling her my pain of a break-up, because I really needed to share it with a third person, all she had to say was that I never told her I was gay. She had no words for my broken heart. LGBT people sleep around like animals, why would a straight woman who doesn’t cheat on her boyfriend sympathise with my broken heart?
Yes we all gossip about who’s sleeping with whom, whether we are gay or straight. But can I please request you to also investigate which married man you know is sleeping with which single man you know? Make your speculative gossip more challenging (and scandalous).
Homophobia in South Asia operates differently from the West, something those importing rainbow flags and pride parades don’t seem to realise. Visitors from the West are surprised to see ‘hijras’ in our society. Unlike the West, our transphobia does not seek to make them not exist. They are part of our society. They are on the margins but they are there.
In the same way, homophobia in our part of the world does not say that gays shouldn’t exist, that their sex makes god unhappy. Homophobia in our part of the world sees homosexuality as a reality, but the phobia lies in their being objects of ridicule. The Bollywood stereotype of the effeminate gay man is how society wants to see gay people.
And that is why it’s so very easy for good straight liberals to support de-criminalisation and walk in pride parades. Their latent and unselfconscious homophobia comes out over banter and alcohol. I have seen a straight stand-up comic be friends with an effeminate gay man and mimic him in an insulting way behind his back. That is the way homophobia works in our parts. Homophobic people are at least not hypocritical in this way; they’d rather that that LGBTs remain as closeted as possible so that homosexuality doesn’t become more and more acceptable. Somehow that suits me better than the pressure of outing myself from the good liberals who want to banish homophobia.
Since all gender is performance anyway, how does it matter whether I identify myself as gay or straight? Let me enjoy performing my gender as straight while being gay.
If you have read this far you’re probably slotting this article in the category of gay rage. You can protest all you want on my behalf, but your rage will remain rage and my rage will be called gay rage. Until my rage is also called rage, I prefer to pretend I’m straight even though I know that you know that I’m gay.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
This is an interesting perspective you have offered. I think you are on to something about how a lot of people, who are prima-facie not homophobic, do make jokes about being gay now and then. And I understand why their liberalism makes you upset. However, your article got me thinking about identities. How does my identity as a woman affects me as an indiviadual.
For the longest time I tried to be ‘gender-neutral’ in my expressions and my views. But I feel that the way people view my/ or other women’s responses can never be gender neutral. Its always ‘this feminist girl’ not ‘this person who believes in feminism’.
But of late I wonder whether I can ever be free of the burden (for the lack of a better word) of this identity. Not just in the eyes of other people, but in my own eyes. How I see the world, does substantially stem from what my gender is.
Anyway, I will not presume to comment on the correctness of your perspective. Thank you for writing something so thought provoking.
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yup
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well written article. Made me think a lot.
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How convenient!!! I absolutely agree with you that whom you have sex with is completely your business and yes I may not be privileged enough to know about your coming out. Fair enough! Are you one of those bystanders in any movement who prefer letting other people make the noise and face the scorn while you when the time comes , enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Would you be comfortable coming out when it would be of no consequence at all to be gay which I am extremely sorry to say just might not happen in your life time in our country. So why not get married have a child or two to make it a tad more believable because now thanks to certain individuals like you it just might be thought that if you are unmarried and a certain age you have to be gay!
I as a single woman who is not gay in her 30s I too have to answer questions …. Now should I pretend I am married to some guy and have three kids somewhere just to make my life a bit easy. Let me tell you the MCPs can give a great competition to the homophobes.
I am not trying to do the moral policing here you have an opinion I have mine but do you think women got their right to vote easy or to be educated. We all know about the african american slave history, in our country we know how the minorities are treated so what should we all do. We all have our struggles and we have to be brave about it and fight for our rights. It may not happen today but someday and there will come a day when it would be okay to be who you are no matter what and probably no one might be interested. But till the day comes and after that we all need to be proud of who we are and be honest about rather than keeping quiet. Do you know why there are so many crimes against women because we have been taught to keep quiet.
Keeping quiet has never really helped in the past and it will never help in the future.
We all have our truths, I have mine … you have yours.
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I think the post was not so much about ‘keeping quiet’ or ‘being a bystander’ as it was about expressing a view about the ways in which well-intentioned straight liberals create unsafe spaces for gay people; a view we don’t hear enough.
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A view we don’t hear enough? Are you kidding me? The specific instances of latent homophobia/queer phobia that the OP describes (the jokes, the ‘gay rage’, privileging vanilla sex monogamy and marriage/kids) is not a prerogative of straight folks. One, there isn’t a homogenous queer community – we are l,g,b,t,q, i, hijra, poly, kinky, slutty and swinging (amongst other things). Two, ‘we’ (?) other ourselves ALL THE TIME. (e.g.recalling my queer friend’s outrage at another queer friend asking her why she is single or another queer friend being unable to suppress her giggles at the ‘performance’ of a beautiful hijra person). Hell, if the OP can acknoweldge self-loathing growing up gay, why not extend the same generosity to others who occupy the same hetero-normative world that he/she inhabits?
We other ourselves and people different from us all the time and are called out on it all the time. As a queer person, I have had to train myself to be sensitive to difference – and I consider myself privileged (in ways that shraddha above talks of) and remember speaking in fear of offending somebody or saying the politically incorrect thing – it’s a f***ing minefield, identity politics. Personally I wish that cut each other some slack. That we appreciate ‘intentions’ and not jump onto well-meaning folks yelling blue murder every time they make a mistake.
Also, while choosing not to come out is as valid a way to be as coming out, the OP has his/her agenda and strategy a little out of whack. A world where gay love is as ‘invisible’ as straight love (that doesn’t have to declare itself like gay love for instance) can only come about through a systematic visibilizing of queer ways of loving and being – and whoever welcomes that whether to claim the ‘liberal’ badge or not is my friend. Staying invisible whining it is a homophobic world out there sort of brings that old ostrich image to mind. Oh does it burn too close sometimes? Suck it up..
Meanwhile I’m hanging out with my ‘good liberals’- more love to your kind my good liberals! Please tell me- kindly- ways in which I’m homophobic like I will do you. Peace.
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My understanding was that the author wanted to show how straight liberals who identify as queer allies may act unintentionally to perpetuate those specific instances of queer phobia. I hadn’t heard a critique of liberals in this way for some time which is why the post stood out to me. But I completely agree with you that such actions are not the prerogative of straight folks for both the reasons you talked about, in addition to dangers of divisive identity politics and how queer love can be only be ‘invisibilized’ through a systematic visibilizing. Thanks for pointing all of this out !
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Thanks for sharing. Given the organization of our society and its institutions, It takes a self-conscious person to be aware of the privileges we own and abuse, whether these privileges are drawn from our sexual orientation, gender, caste, class or nationality or some combination of these socio-political positioning and the spaces they afford/deny us. It also takes serious and sustained commitment (and hard work) to unlearn bigotry and to translate that self-consciousness into behaviors and thought processes that are not oppressive.
It seems to me that conversations about human rights (for all citizens), violence and issues of social justice are no longer the prerogative of liberal public intellectuals,social scientists or development sector workers in India. There is a much wider, more public engagement with these ‘issues’ and perhaps the quality of these public discourses is not as informed or enlightened as they ought to be, but my own hope is, that these initial struggles will get us there. Your article gives me hope because it is one more instance of wanting and advocating for change. A rightful and proud demand for more than superficial engagement. For mindfulness. So thanks again, for sharing.
Reading your article reminded me of something Arundhati Roy had written,I quote, “Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, If I listen carefully, I can hear her breathing.” I hope her words provides some solace.
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Very nicely written. I guess i don’t sympathize with you, but i definitely realize how one feels when you are identified with some name apart from the rest, and that too in a weird way.
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thank you for writing such an amazing article.
though i somewhat qualify for being the culprit as per your view but it has surely made me think and has really opened a new dimension to me. but as Navneet Kapany has said in the above comments people need to assert their identities to get their rights, i think then only your view of the world will be achievable.
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Thank You for writing such a thought provoking article. One of the first article that goes out of the mainstream debate and raises a very strong counter point reflecting the chasm in the way people walk their talk.
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On the face of it, my first question to anyone is, why are we so gender biased? Why do we not go beyond the body and what the mind thinks about the body? Yesterday’s Heterosexual is calling themselves queer, at the same time enjoying all the privileges that a heterosexual partnership/friendship brings with it as a package. On the other hand there are those who really can’t say, what they are, because sexuality, gender is a changing thing and is at all times in transformation, quite like what the Buddha said – everything is in a state of change – queer is safe; can’t say, is better than a declaration; what if tomorrow, I do not want to take the responsibility of what I say I am? Best place to be, is in a state of change, forever changing so that, I can decide best on what suits me, when. So I am not heterosexual – who can bear the burden of being one!, nor am I gay, for that implies I have no right at all. Queer is safe. It allows me to choose, where I want to be, depending on, where the privileges are, and also the funds.
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Very interesting presepective. I agree with the point that when we constantly keep defining ‘gay’ or ‘straight’, we constantly keep trying to fit people in boxes whereas sexuality is not something that comes in one.
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The closeted teens thank you for your courage and for being am inspiration. Oh wait …
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Thank you for writing this beautiful article. Even though I don’t agree with half the things you have written, it took me a while to figure out why I didn’t agree with those things.
Now, here’s what I think :
I am gay and I have come out to a variety of people in my life up till now. I have heard my friends make gay jokes, guys come up to me and say how they find me even hotter because of being gay and some people telling me how they find me disgusting to my face.
But, unlike you, I don’t mind people questioning me about my sexuality. I get why they want to know. I get why they tell everyone’I have a gay friend’ as if it’s something to boast about.(Like it’s similar to being friends with an alien.)
I think it is perhaps because we ARE aliens to them. They’ve been brought up by ‘straight’ parents. Amongst ‘straight’ brothers and sisters. Watching ‘straight’ couples romance on screen. Cracking ‘straight’ jokes all their lives. The ‘straightness’ has seeped into their brains, and they don’t even know about it.
But they are willing to learn. Which is why they go to pride parades ‘to fight for your rights’. And you have a wonderful opportunity to teach them.
Imagine you are out to all your friends. Imagine that your friend, who pointed out the ‘g-crowd’, has a little brother who, seeing you out and proud, comes out to him. Imagine you standing up for yourself when a ‘straight liberal friend’ cracks a gay joke. Imagine him never making a joke like that again. Imagine your friend coming out to you. And his friend’s friend doing the same.
When the minority is no longer an (invisible) minority, segregation will stop. When there will be gays and lesbians working openly as lawyers, doctors, teachers, chai walas (etcetera, etcetera, etcetera) in each and every profession in the world, there will be no out group. When you will tell your friend all about how the ‘gay you’ is no different than the ‘straight her’, how your heartbreak is no different than hers, she will be better able to understand you (and anyone like you) in the future. When there will be so many out gays in the world, people will no longer care if you come out or not. And neither will you.
All I am saying is, this is a vicious cycle that you must get out of. You, right now, have the power to change things the way they are. Please, use it.
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As the author of this post I want to respond to some of the comments made here. Mainly, the idea that I should come out precisely to assert myself and correct, oppose and struggle against homophobia, whether it comes from straight liberals or outright homophobic people. I find it hilarious that some of these comments come from people who are themselves being anonymous in their comments. One such person urging me to be out says s/he is herself selectively out and and does not write his/her name! It’s so easy to be preachy without walking the talk oneself, I suppose that’s true of everyone, gay or straight, post author or armchair critic.
One comment sarcastically says I should have the courage to come out so as to be an inspiration to all those closeted teens – while not having the courage to reveal his or her own name!
I guess that alone says everything I want to say. But since more than one comment is making such points, let me elaborate.
Firstly, why is it presumed that one does not challenge homophobia while pretending to be one of these hypocritical straight liberals?
Yes, coming out and making yourself visible is important. Yes, it did help me come to terms with my own sexuality to see out people around me. But coming out is an individual choice, one that different people make at different points of time. In fact it is an every day choice. Who do you out yourself to, when and how, and why… I find it laughable that there are people here demanding that I out myself as if they don’t know it’s not easy to do so. It has consequences in terms of losing friends, associates, jobs… A day after this article was published I heard a young woman in a live-in relationship with a man complain about “gay gaze”, about a suspected gay man leching at her boyfriend, about how it’s weird. She was saying this in the context of an event, making a case for not inviting a straight woman to a party because “she hangs out with gay people and will bring her gay flatmate to the event, making everyone feel awkward.” She was given a a strong hearing by those she said this before, including me.
Whether hearing such things makes me comfortable about coming out or not, whether I am ready to come out and be that person who makes people awkward or not, who becomes part of the g-crowd our straight liberals can patronise, is my CHOICE. And these people above who don’t seem to appreciate how important CHOICE is do NOT support freedom. They only support mindless identity politics-driven activism that talks about the LGBT ‘community’ without realising that communities are made of individuals who think, act, feel and fuck differently. Anyone who does not respect the right of people to be closeted, and does not respect the right to privacy and choice in being closeted, is not a friend of the LGBTs and is WORSE than homophobic people who, as I said, don’t pester me about my private life.
A world where everyone admits to their sexual orientation needs a world where the privileged people of the majority sexual orientation do not other sexual minorities. My article was an attempt to say that the prying, bullying and patronising of the straight liberals around me is not building that world.
Perhaps I owe them a ‘thank you’, as also to the LGBT activists and all the out people, for helping build a world where I am not being hanged to death for naturally not feeling inclined towards sleeping with women. Just as I expect all women to say thank you to me when I march on the streets against rape, or just as I expect Dalits and OBCs to say thank you to me for supporting reservations, and so on. THANK YOU. Will you now please leave me alone and stop asking why I don’t have a partner to bring for your party?
I agree that visibilising the queer is important so that the Supreme Court of India can’t see the LGBTs are a minuscule minority who don’t matter. My article was telling you about the challenges of visibilising. I understand some would be upset at what I have written, because perhaps they’ve been shown the mirror and they don’t like what they saw in it.
Lastly, as some have said in the comments, a truly equal world recognises that identities are fluid and labels are limiting, stereotyping and marginalising. What precisely is your problem with someone who does not want to identify himself with any gender label, and is only begging to not be taunted and humiliated for being single, and at best to not be urged directly or indirectly to accept a gender label? Why is that too much to ask for? What kind of brave new world do you feminists, activists, scholars, intellectuals, poets, artists and fart-ists want to usher in, that you will welcome me with a garland if I said “I’m gay” but object to my existence if I said I’m nobody? With such a position are you really committed to the values you claim to be committed to?
You may want to understand this:
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Na main moman vich maseetan
[Nor am I the believer in mosque]
Na main vich kufar dian reetan
[Nor am I in the rituals of the infidel]
Na main pakan vich paleetan
[Nor am I the pure in the impure]
Na main andar bed kitaban
[Nor am I inherent in the Vedas]
Na main rehnda phaang sharaban
[Nor am I present in intoxicants]
Na main rehnda mast kharaban
[Nor am I lost nor the corrupt]
Na main shadi na ghamnaki
[Nor am I union nor grief]
Na main vich paleetan pakeen
[Nor am I intrinsic in the pure/impure]
Na main aaabi na main khaki
[Nor am I of the water nor of the land]
Na main aatish na main paun
[Nor am I fire nor air]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not what I am]
Na main arabi na lahori
[Nor am I Arabic nor from Lahore]
Na main hindi shehar Nagaori
[Nor am I the Indian City of Nagaur]
Na hindu na turk pashauri
[Nor a Hindu nor a Peshawri turk]
Na main bhet mazhab de paya
[Nor did I create the difference of faith]
Na main aadam hawwa jaya
[Nor did I create adam-eve]
Na koi apna naam dharaya
[Nor did I name myself]
Avval aakhar aap nu jana
[Beginning or end I know just the self]
Na koi dooja hor pacchana
[Do not acknowledge duality]
Mai ton na koi hor syana
[There’s none wiser than I]
Bulle shah kharha hai kaun
[Who is this Bulla Shah]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Na main moosa na pharoah
[Nor am I Moses nor Pharoah]
Na main aatish na main paun
[Nor am I fire nor wind]
Na main rahnda vich Nadaun
[I do not stay in Nadaun (city of innocents)]
Bulle shah kharha hai kaun
[Bullashah, who is this man standing?]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
Bulla ki jaana main kaun
[Bulla! I know not who I am]
From http://haroonsaeed.wordpress.com/2006/09/13/bullah-ki-janna-i-know-not-who-i-am/
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Dear author,
Perhaps the world that both of us want to create can, according to you, be only created by people sitting in their closets shouting to be left alone. Perhaps, people who are willing to remove labels by being visible are kidding themselves, because man, this is a big bad straight world. Perhaps, homophobes care way more about freedom than us liberals do and maybe that is why when the High Court decriminalized homosexuality in 2009, many of them took to the streets with placards in their hands urging for the decision to be undone.
Sorry for trying to be patronizing. That was never my intention. And THANK YOU for pointing out my silly mistake. My decision to not post my name was not about me being elusive, it was more of an attempt to adopt a pen name.
But anyway.
My real name is Avali Khare. I am a student and I live in Bhopal in central India. And I am most definitely not a hypocrite.
PS : If you ever lose your job, friends or anything else because of homophobia, I will always be willing to stand with you and protest. Maybe you would find that overbearing (and would blame me for pushing you out of the closet) but it is what I believe in.
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Very well written. As a single young person of “marriageable age”, I can relate to this account. It so happens that I’m neither homosexual nor a man, yet I’m subjected to similar interrogations about the absence of a boyfriend. I too am expected by my liberal friends to clear the air over whether I’m a lesbian, because then it would make it so much easier for them to accept the absence of a man in my life. I agree with the author; I too, often end up preferring the company of the more conservative lot with whom I do not need a partner in order to be simply accepted as part of the crowd.
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Relatable stuff.
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