An evil mom and Mum-bai

On Sunday, everyone in the Facebook world changed their display pictures to match the flavour of the day — Mother’s Day. Everyone on social media oozed so much sweetness that an observer may have died of diabetes. The LGBT duniya was no less.

Amidst the saccharine filled timelines, there were some lonely voices missing in action. I received an email from one such voice from a suburb in Mumbai. This person had been thrown out of his house in Rajasthan after a series of events that began with the family discovering a bunch of nude male pictures on his laptop. Following this, the family arranged for a spy to check on him, his phone was tapped, his friends were questioned and he was questioned if he spent extra time in the bathroom. His private life had ended. This boy’s house was ruled by his mother. His father had little or no voice in the family. She hired goons to beat up her son and his male companion when she got wind that he was on a date. The goons beat him up so badly, he had to be hospitalised. He then fled his city for Mumbai where he could live a life of his choice. His mother chased him down here too but by then he’d built a supportive ecosystem in the city with police, friends and activists.

As one can imagine, this 25-year-old was repulsed by the Mother’s Day posts on social media. He called me up in a state of anger and angst. My usual words of comfort to someone who has non-supportive parents couldn’t be used here.

In a world that venerates mothers and women in general, it becomes difficult to break the silence. It took this boy a year of conversations with good samaritans, friends, neighbours, colleagues, train-friends, hotel wallah, richshaw drivers, the friendly neighbourhood police, basically ‘everything Mumbai’ to come out of his painful past, embrace himself and ensure that his life limps back to normalcy.

Mumbai stood like a shield to protect and comfort him. No one can replace a mother, however, Mumbaikars gave him a reason to state “Mumbai adopted me, when I was orphaned”. Of all the people he thanks, he first thanks his old Sangu Bai, his domestic help who would give him a head massage and make him poha when he was low. Sometimes, life can get taxing and we may not acknowledge the kind of people who quickly wear the parent’s hat. Didn’t the city play mom?

Generalisations are wrong, including this one — but if you look at it as an alternate reality I’d ask — is mother only by birth? Mumbai tuzhi aai nahi kaa?

(Activist Harish Iyer shares his entertaining adventures through Mumbai’s landscape)

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