A Beautiful Life

‘Darling, are you ready? We are getting late!’ I holler at Bhavna as I walk towards our bedroom. It is the twenty-fifth anniversary of our wedding, and you do not keep guests waiting on a night like this. They must have started arriving at the venue of the party – one of the ballrooms in JW Marriott.

I see Bhavna in front of the mirror. She looks gorgeous and elegant in the saree I have chosen for her, her lips in a pout as she applies the final touches of the lipstick. She turns towards me. Her face has the all-too-familiar expression, silently pleading – ‘Darling, don’t get mad! I am almost done.’ I smile and shake my head. When you have lived twenty-five years with someone, words start losing relevance.

As I keep looking at Bhavna, a switch flips somewhere in the darkest recesses of my mind. Images flash like a showreel in front of my eyes. 

I was fifteen and the world was cruel even then.

I was in front of the mirror when I was alarmed by the sound of the door opening. My mother stormed into the room just as I was about to put on her new lipstick. Both of us were startled, rooted to where we stood. Not a word exchanged between us. I could only hear the clock ticking away.

My mother finally broke the silence.

“Dev, what do you think you are doing with my lipstick?” She managed to ask, with a lot of difficulty.

I smiled and handed the lipstick back to her. “Unusual colour, Mom. Was just… just checking how it looks on the lips!”

I stormed out of the room as soon as I had blurted out that lie. 

It broke my heart every time I had to lie to my parents. Like when I wrapped myself in my mother’s saree, or tried her hair extensions, or put on her bra wondering what it would be like to be able to fill it up with breasts that I knew I would never grow. Those were simple pleasures of life that sent waves of ecstasy through my fifteen-year-young heart! But my parents would never understand. I was afraid to explain.

As I grew older, I realized that there were so many more reasons to be afraid! 

Sirens of police cars, for example. I had always been afraid of them. Whenever I went out with Rahul and returned late in the night in hired cabs, the sirens of police patrol cars would scare me. I would hastily take my hand off his, and make sure we did not sit too close to each other. 

When one chooses to walk down a path less trodden, one is likely to face roadblocks galore—self-doubt, resistance from the family and aspersions of the society. You get used to weird looks and hushed whispers. 

I remember the time when I went shopping with Rahul after our classes in college. We happened to hold hands. I threw caution to the wind and in a careless moment, I knelt against him as we came down an escalator in the shopping mall. A security staff in the mall approached us and asked us to ‘behave’. Later that evening in a café, when Rahul put an arm around me, we were warned that it was a ‘family café’ and we must ‘behave’. Of course, there was no way that we could dream of ever being ‘family’! 

The world was teaching me lessons—quick and early. The society and the law had no name for my relationship. When you do not have a name for a relationship, you conveniently end up calling it immoral, illegal and even ‘unnatural’.

The proof of our inner strength lies not in making unconventional choices, but in seeing them through. By that yardstick, I know I am not strong, because I am always at war – my mind and my heart always in conflict. 

There was a part of me that was willing to surrender everything at the altar of my love for Rahul, to fight traditions and customs that got in the way and to hold on to my love like it was my life itself and never let it go. 

But then, there was another part of me that feared ridicule and sought validation. I realised early in my life that the only way to gain acceptance was to conform—to hackneyed customs, to outdated norms in what we proudly claim to be a progressive society. All these at the cost of my feelings, and the tears I shed in the solitude of my room every night.

I remember the last time Rahul and I met. We went on a long drive, we were together all night, lost in our world where all that mattered was our love for each other, as true and as pure as the holy books. We got drunk, we made love, we even decided what we would call the babies we would raise together. Doesn’t every human being in love do that? So, what made us ‘different’?  

But guess what? I was not strong enough. I failed Rahul. I failed us. I hate myself for that, more than I hate the world around me. If I failed to stand up for myself, why blame the world? 

Even today, the rebel in me wakes up time and again and seeks justice for my tears. But I fail every time. I fail because there is a part of me that seeks acceptance, and the society we live in demands too high a price for it. I ask myself – does my weakness make me insincere in my love? Should you not love, if you lack the strength to take on the world for the sake of that love? Why does the world have to mercilessly trample under its unforgiving heels any love it fails to find a name for? 

I do not have answers to these questions.

Twenty-five years ago, I chose to conform, to fall in line. Stupid, cowardly, disgusting me!

When my parents fixed my marriage with Bhavna, the daughter of one of my father’s business associates, I played along with a broken heart.

Today, I have a home with Bhavna and our daughter. 

I am safe, I am dead. The dead do not have to answer uncomfortable questions.

I wake up from my reverie as I hear Bhavna’s voice.

‘Darling, I am ready! How do I look?’ she says as she strikes a pose.

‘Like a dream!’ I say as she slides an arm around mine.

We are ready for the cameras!

******THE END******

• A 2018 study commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) revealed that just two percent of the trans people surveyed live with the families into which they were born.
• According to a 2009 survey by Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) Humsafar Trust, nearly 70 percent gay men in Mumbai find themselves trapped in heterosexual marriages.
• Some studies have suggested that a significant percentage of gay men in India are in heterosexual marriages. This is largely attributed to the pressure to conform to societal norms, family expectations, and the stigma around homosexuality.