My coming out story...

It seems a long ago that I devised a plan to carefully play my cards and present my preferences to my mom. I've been wanting to talk about it ever since. So here it is...

Never have I planned my life, I live everyday as it presents itself to me. Yet, for once I felt the need to structure how this act would be performed. I tried several times to create an ideal conversation. But it somehow refused to appeal to both my instinct and better judgement. Until one day, I read an advertisement for a play. It was not any ordinary commercial play, it was an experimental theatre act written by Chetan
Datar- 'Ek Madhavbaug'.

The play showcased a single actor (actress actually), a mother. Living all by herself, as her grown up sons pursued their careers elsewhere. On one eventful day she receives several blank calls, frightened and frustrated she threatens the caller with dire consequences. The threats finally instigate the caller to speak. The caller accuses her son to be a faggot, and further adds that it is due to him that the caller's son has attempted suicide!
This news shatters the mother out of her wits. She goes through the personal belongings of all her sons. To her shock she finds a pendrive in her youngest son's belongings revealing diary entries of his troubled childhood where he was confused and frightened. He expresses his feelings abundantly; tears flow as fast as words, streaming down the mother's cheeks as she imagines the turmoil her youngest son went through.
The play ends with an enlightened supportive mother who stands by her son's side as they visit her son's partner at the hospital. The partner survives the suicide attempt and they live happily ever after.
An alternative end has also been suggested, wherein the youngest son suicides like his partner who committed suicide due to parental pressure for marriage.

It was a lazy saturday morning that I read the advertisement. I was to meet my three school friends for a dinner followed by a slumber party that night. The play was on sunday, late in the evening.
My mind was already contemplating.
I might not be a long term planner, but the things I do in everyday life, I do them in a very orderly manner.
That night, a part of me wanted to share my anxieties with my friends, the other half was worried sick that I would jinx the situation. I decided to keep mum, my friends did question me. They always know..
I might deceive the world with my one act plays but there are few who always sense my trouble. These three school friends are amongst the people who know me really well, my maternal grandmom who I call 'Ajji'
and my maternal aunt who I call 'Aaii' complete the list.

The next morning as I made my way back home, I chalked my plans.
After the lazy sunday lunch, I told my mum that I had read bout this advertisement in the newspaper for Chetan Datar's play.

A little about Chetan Datar. He is a most prolific playwriter and director. Sadly he passed away a few years ago at a very young age. Chetan was also my mom's childhood friend. Chetan and his brothers often played together with my mum and her friends. She often told me about how he was a quite little kid, but a very sound man indeed! He was younger to her by a few years. The last she saw him was when she had visited our old  abode in South Bombay.
She tells me, "Chetan asked me to join him for a cup of tea at his place. She had to decline, although she wanted to catch up on all those years. But, she had an appointment to keep. Now that I think about it, I too wish to have met him, he has played a major role in my coming out story.. Sigh!

My mom agreed on my plans to go for the play. She knew nothing bout the subject of the play. Dad wasn't at home that sunday, we had dinner quite early and headed for the theatre. We purchased two tickets and took our seats. There were few other people in the audience.
The play began..
and ended...

We stood up, applauded and left the theatre. It was a very strong subject and an essentially intensive drama. Mom was quite on the way back. I started talking bout the various other Indian perso nalities who are supposedlygay.. As we reached home, my sis asked me bout the play. I took her to our room and explained the situation to her. She asked me to sleep beside mom that night and explain everything to her. I gathered
my guts, lying beside my mom, words which are usually my forté had now deserted me.
I asked mom how she found the play. She expressed her liking for the actress and the scraipt. We chatted a little about Chetan Datar.
Once again I gathered a little courage. This time I atleast had the courage to tell my mom that I wanted to
tell her something that was connected to the play. I saw the expression on her face change and I lost my strength once again.
That was it, I couldn't do it anymore. My sister was sleeping on a single bed beside ours. She frantically gestured me to start talking, I gestured back that I couldn't. I was terribly choked up. It felt like
an invisible hand was choking me, denying me my freedom of speech.
Finally my sis got out of her bed and onto ours and told mom that I wanted to say the same things that the youngest son in the play had told his mother!
That was plainly put. My mom got the gist of things.
There were a lot of tears and drama about why I didn't tell her bout this earlier.
Ofcourse, she also asked me about whether I was sure bout this. So then I had to tell her very objectively bout my first relationship with Sreelakshmi. Thankfully, there weren't any pointy questions!
Mom kept asking me though, why I didn't tell her about this earlier. I told her frankly that, I wanted to get a job, put aside some money...create a cushion around me in case things turned ugly, which in some cases they have.

This awesome lady is my mom btw...    :)

Mum rebuked me saying how I could possibly think that she would desert me for this reason! After all her argument was right, she's a mother. Then again I was just taking care of the contingency plan.
I slept in fits of an hour or so as our chat had continued till 4 in the morning.
I was extremely exhausted after all this. I had made my mom a few promises. That I would not go public with this and also not tell it to my dad till she thought that it was the right time.
I told her that if I meet a trustworthy person who asks me, then I shall give a thought to revealing my identity.

That's it... That's my coming out story! 
So, alls well that ends well I guess! It's one step ahead in the explorer's quest... The next step is even more exciting, and it involves a venust lady and courting and blushing and the works! :)

Anwesha the Explorer solemnly declares that she is smitten ;) Nay madly in love with...
This is already too long a blogpost, so my fair reader, you shall have to await my next blogpost :)

What doth ye desire?

SILENCE…

The one phenomenon that assures peace.
You can silence things, you can silence animals and you can silence people. Whether you do it through coercion or force, it does not really matter.

What matters is, “Can you silence yourself?”

The very few times I have been able to attain just that, I have been at peace, almost like a trance... like as if absolutely nothing could affect me. 

 

Today was one of those exceptional times that I could achieve that serenity. In that frame of mind, a singular question resonated in my mind...
All of us at some point in our lives question the raison d'être. The causes usually vary from family and friends, career goals, vengeance, many a times it’s just for the love of life and discovery of the new.
All these reasons create a desire, a strong sense of wanting, that ties us firmly to life as we know it.
So we live on…

For someone who has little or no care for those things, the question in my mind repeats itself. Why life? what doth ye desire?
It resonates in me, like the echo of bells even after they have stopped ringing. It unsettles my mind and I sense it flinch.

Desires… I seem to have run out of those.
When I see a lone bird across the sweltering skies, the blades of grass decorated with the summer’s dew, a doggy wagging its tail at me even when it knows that all I can afford is a pat or a rub, it gladdens my heart. There are several things that are capable of making my mind smile, be content, and rejoice in those little joys that fill my existence with warmth and hope.

But these are not what humans define as desires, desires are those that lead you on, desperately… keep you going even in the toughest of times and fill you with the hope and the fantasy of achievement even before you have partially accomplished your task to fulfill a desire.

Yes, I do have my share of family and friends and they do care for me. I had a set of goals for myself—to get into a good college, to excel in at least one extra-curricular activity, to graduate with distinction, to become a journalist and then an editor. I have scored successfully on each of these tasks.  I have also been in love, once in my life… it was beautiful indeed! I have shared my life with the person I thought I could not live without, and yet here I am pretty complete even without her. And no, I am not bitter towards love or for that matter the very person I loved. It seems pretty much like been there done that sort of a thing. Yet, I shall not say that I have done all that one may in a lifetime. However existence does not excite me.
I do care for my loved ones, and my work. But that desire, I feel is not strong enough to keep me tethered to life.

And again I come back to the same question— what doth ye desire?

I visited my granny yesterday; she asked me what I wanted as a birthday gift. I replied, ‘nothing’. She continued, “I have received that answer from many, and yet I know that in the heart of their hearts, most desire something and a few desire someone. Yet, I find you actually meaning what you speak and this I understand through my years of experience.”
She went on to add, “You seem to care for nothing you own, like life would be just the same without those things, and even with people the emotion is repeated. You care for them in your own little ways that sometimes even go unnoticed.
What exactly appeals to you? Why do you behave like a bairaagi (hermit)?—
What doth ye desire?”

Hmm… and there again I come to my central idea, my difficulty with existence which questions my very raison d'être.

And now I am unable to silence myself.
One word describes me best—the one word that has been ruling my life since the time that my realisations exist—STOIC. 

I wanna write..

Among the many things that I have been told to follow as a rule to help discipline my life, I find that to date many have been disregarded absolutely and sacrificed on the altar of modernity while, such which could not have been done away with completely have been modified to suit convienience after having been declared as obsolete.


I find myself thus under substantial conflict whether I should therefore, proceed to follow on or, upturn all civilities inorder to establish my own little niche.


Over the past many months I have allowed my blogspace to suffer in the absolute absence of any going ons in its author's life, but I intend in the near future to abstain from any more of such practices. 


To redeem myself from the ongoing conflict, I shall presently be making a few important announcements. 
It brings me great pleasure to declare that in the near past I have achieved (by the grace of god and the efforts of many around me) circumstances that will definitely provide any individual of my standing, much to rejoice about.

• I have started my journey in the field of publishing, at present I write for the business-to-business publication industry. It has taken me some time and a lot of patience, along with a great number of blessings and goodwill I am sure, to have reached my current position. (I'm told that it is quite difficult for freshers to be allowed a position in business writing, let alone editing.)
  
  
• I passed my second semester of MA in Mass communication and journalism with distinction (81% in the first sem and 83% in the second sem to be precise). I still ask my mum to take a week off during my exams, tagging along with her to the exam hall. She awaits my return after the exam in the waiting room  at the exam hall. Am worrying bout the next sem. I have turned in my assignments with some difficulty, the studying is yet to begin.
  
  
• I have learnt to express myself, finally! This achievement which may sound like the least of things is nevertheless most important to me. My expressions will now dictate the terms of my life, or rather help me live life on my own terms. It feels really good.. I have finally come out to two of my family members, my sis and my mum, in that order precisely. More about that in my next post.
  

P.S. I've so far been elusive, superstitious even.
        I wanna live now, spread the horizons a nick wider,
         I wanna write now and be like this, be myself forever.