Coming out, not a gay and glad experience

Coming out, not a gay and glad experience
Nilanjana Bose

CNN-IBN

Bangalore/New Delhi: A documentary made by a young Harvard student, Nishit Saran in 1999 became a cult for India's gay men and women and was, in many ways, the coming of age of the queer movement in India.

His was a coming out captured for posterity. Nishit died in a car accident in 2003, a young and a gifted gay man who would have probably been in the forefront today, fighting to get dignity for India's queer population.

His mother Mina Saran feels as strongly as Nishit would have about Section 377 - and tries to tell parents of queer children - that it’s okay to be gay.

“Everybody is an individual. If any one chooses to be in a certain way, why should there be a restriction if that is what is natural to them? Just because society says so? Nishit was a brilliant child. Didn't he have the right to live like other children and live like other children?” she asks

Coming out - many would say is a very Western way of dealing with sexuality. Ask any proud gay man or woman what it was like when they came out, and most would say: do heterosexual people have to come out when they realise they like the opposite sex?

But there does come a time when queer people feel its time to inform their parents and friends. Some take days to muster the courage - others just leave it unsaid.

Sidharth Narrain is 26, a trained lawyer in Bangalore and spends his Sundays relaxing at home, pretty much like anyone else. Till recently he didn't dare tell his parents he was gay and now, even though he feels better about coming out, it hasn’t been easy.

“Though my parents did not completely understand the issue and were not comfortable with it, they still understood I wasn’t doing anything that would bring them harm,” he says.

Ralph lives in Bangalore as well. Brought up as a God-fearing Catholic, for years he believed that God would punish him because he felt attracted to boys when he was growing up.

It was only when he met other people like himself that Ralph realised it was okay to be different. To not want to be with a woman, but with someone of his own sex.

“I have a lot of friends who were girls, I was surrounded by girls in college. I thought they are friends so let me make one of them my girlfriend and then may be I will feel or think differently. But it didn’t happen. There was not even a vague sense of attraction,” he says.

Saleem Kidwai is Muslim, a historian and author and a proud gay man. In the 70s, his was perhaps the first openly gay generation in India. But being Muslim and gay is something he carries off with a quiet dignity

“Luckily, I haven't been mocked to my face but the prejudice I have faced personally its no more or less than I have faced being a Muslim,” he says.

It's some thing that Fakroon Lakdawalla understands. Sixty-year-old Fakroon is from Gujarat but is settled in Canada. He is a deeply religious man and has been openly gay for years now.

“When you walk down the street you are accosted and sometimes not in a nice way. I have faced prejudice for being coloured and also for being gay. They say things like Paki fag,” he says

Fakroon, Saleem and Sunil have been friends for more than 30 years. Now in Delhi together for a reunion of sorts, this is a place close to their hearts.

The Jamaali Kamali mosque in Mehrauli in many ways pays tribute to male love. This is where a Sufi poet and his disciple - who the poet was very close to - lie buried side by side.

“This is the first monument where you have male bonding surviving as a monument very much within the sufi tradition which is so important to us Indian Muslims,” says Kidwai.

There are many who say India is not ready to accept homosexuality. But is it just about a way of life that many feel are alien to or is it more about giving people the choice and the right to live the way they want to, to love who ever they wish to - and to proudly be who they are?

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/coming-out-not-a-gay-and-glad-experience/77309-19.html