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LGBT and crime: Behind dark rooms

There was a time when there was a real lack of queer spaces. Forget discrimination outside the community, there was this keenness to find your comfort zone within the community itself.

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There was a time when there was a real lack of queer spaces. Forget discrimination outside the community, there was this keenness to find your comfort zone within the community itself.

We had chat sites that were flooded with gay men — most faceless. People were scared to venture out on a same-sex date. It was then, that faceless people found solace in chatting with other faceless people all over the cyberspace. The social stigma, loneliness coupled with no legal standing for a gay person made the LGBT an easy prey for extortionists.

Let me share this incident that occurred to a friend, in first person, to protect his identity.
I remember having chatted with this guy who said he was in his mid 20s. This was a time that I was also just stepping into my 20s. At that age, there was this “want” in me to understand my sexuality, like there was I’m sure, for many my age then.

This guy had a good picture of his put up on yahoo chat. And since he had a picture, I shared mine too. We chatted for a day and quick was he to pop the question — “When are we meeting?” I picked up my best tee, became all ‘jhintak’ — with powder laali and ecstasy — ‘it was a date… it was a date!’ We decided to meet outside Andheri Station. I stood there, decked with a pulsating heart.

I reached 10 minutes before time. Exactly at 6pm my hero came into the picture. He and I chatted outside the station. He said he stayed close by and we could meet at his place for coffee. I readily agreed. We hopped into a rickshaw and reached a junction where we got down. It was lonely. But nothing to feel scared about. But I had a feeling that something was wrong. My hero suddenly said “Nikaal, jo bhi paisa hai nikaal”.

I was petrified. I tried screaming and revolting. From nowhere, 2 men — ‘mooched mustandas’ emerged. I was stripped and stripped of all cash. I was left all alone in the lane, with my heart-sinking and feeling insane. I walked all up to Andheri, took a train back to my home. Living now, was becoming a challenge. I would wake up to nightmares of being robbed and molested by strangers. I would always live in the fear of being followed by someone. I didn’t muster the courage to believe anyone. I made a choice, to leave the city. For good.

Looking at the above incident do you think I could have informed the police? Well, there was no law that protected homosexuals then. The concept of ‘male rape’ would have been dubbed as comic fiction. Section 377 criminalized ‘unnatural sex’. What was unnatural about it? That was ill defined. We are a nation that procreates. Our numbers prove that. And so, it is easy to presume that ‘sex for procreation is natural sex’, whereas in reality, sex is natural, whether for procreation or recreation.

Years and years of rigorous efforts by the Naz Foundation and focused activism by other NGOs has led to the decriminalization of homosexuality by the High Court in Delhi which in lay terms states that sexually what consenting adults do in their private space is their business, keep law out of it.

This high court judgment is being contested in the Supreme Court. Speaking as a gay man, I would say to those contesting it that the issue here is not about being ‘natural and unnatural’, it is not about being ‘Indian and western’, it is not about being ‘shameless and unreligious’, the real issue is about ‘being’. Being what we are, and if not accepting — just ‘letting us be’.

Harish Iyer is a communication professional who wears his heart on his sleeve

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