Pack up from drama

Yesterday, Gay Bombay had a super fantastic event that exhibited talents in the queer community. I was dressed as a south Indian maami in one of the plays called “Jeena” that focussed on forced marriages of LGBT persons, inducting them and imprisoning them to a lifetime of heterosexual “lifestyle”.

As the director announces “pack up”, I am busy with a thousand thoughts in my head about forced heterosexuality. In the Indian context, marriage is seen as the goal of any relationship. Many argue that just because there is no “marriage” people assume that these are not real relationships. And they believe that they need to have the stamp of marriage to legitimise the relationship. There is another group of people who believe that homosexual relationships don’t need to get into hetero-normative structures and need to regularly revolt against anything that inches towards making us “one with the crowd” of heterosexuals. We are different and we are distinct in our difference.

We don’t need to be them. But while we get busy with our judgements and points of views, in a parallel world, there are many homosexuals and bisexuals being pushed into heterosexual marriages against their will. In the end, it is the life of the woman that is put in jeopardy. If she is a lesbian or bisexual, she has to marry against her will and is forced to have sex every night against her will faking her heterosexuality. In the case of homosexual men who get trapped in heterosexual marriages, the men try hard to please their lady partner, when they fail, some of them resort to finding faults in the woman and some resort to violence. The victim here is almost always the woman.

The brave men speak up. They pay the price through a big fat alimony bill or with a public announcement causing embarrassment.

Rahul (name changed) from Thane came out to his wife after three years of marriage. He is kind, lovable and the bread-winner of the family. His truth and his wife’s kindness was killing him forcing him to come out. And he did. She was shattered but had no place to go. She continues to live with him today, and puts up a smiling face in front of her husband’s gay friends. The guy here is a kind man, who just didn’t have the guts to confess at the right time. He was judged for it all the time by people in the gay community. However, how do such judgements help the woman? We need to speak to men trapped in heterosexual marriages. Because in helping them we are also helping the women.

And when it comes to lesbians trapped in heterosexual marriages, well, history has always been his story. Kavita (name changed) from Sion and Babita (name changed) from Vikhroli are busy looking after their children, cooking for their husbands, and killing their desires every day. Hope things change. Change Honaarach pahije! For the better.

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

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