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ShareForget that roster of hallowed names that could turn your hair grey with reverence. That list of the world's greatest scientists, artists, musicians, writers and inventors -- each gay to the gills. Google 'gay and famous' and they'll come tumbling out of cyberspace. Names you grew up studying in school. The same school where to be gay was akin to being a mass murderer or a psychopath -- because no one bothered to make the connect between dead brilliant gay people and the lonely boy with plucked eyebrows, who sat in the corner of the geography class.
But I don't seek out the company of gay people because they are brilliant (on a shifting scale of reverse prejudice, I could be accused of discrimination), I seek them out because of this simple conundrum: are they nicer, more sensitive, self actualised and interesting because they're gay, or they're gay so they're nicer, more sensitive, self actualised and interesting?
What I'm trying to figure out is this: have years of prejudice, abuse, discrimination and cruel jokes made my friends the sterling, compassionate and creative people they are? Or do these qualities come along with the gay gene?
The jury's out on that one. Meanwhile, I celebrate my gay friends like each is a rare jewel handed to me to hold up and admire. My male friend who runs an NGO, who I can sit with at Worli sea face in the rain, remembering our favourite lines of verse; my female friend who knows the name of every flower on the planet, who I can go on a long drive with -- and who can change the tyre if push comes to shove; the gay couples
I know who embody the best of what committed adult relationships are about: not a legal document but a genuine respect for each other; and even my bi-sexual friends, considered the pariahs of both communities, ("am I gay or straight, stray or great?" as Vikram Seth immortalised their dilemma), who embody the fiercest refusal to be pigeonholed, that I have known.
I celebrate my gay friends for their unpredictability, their refusal to be gender stereotyped and their embodiment of traditional male/female qualities in their personalities. (In comparison heterosexuals with their oh-so-predictable man-woman games, their marital woes and their failing libido seem so white bread.)
So I celebrate my gay friends knowing well, how fragile are the brave smiles they flash: they may shine at the parties, but most go back to discriminatory workplaces, disapproving families and hostile building societies.
I celebrate my gay friends knowing full well that they have no social securities and that the injustices heaped against them are so high, that one wonders where they get their joie-de vivre at all.
I celebrate my gay friends because it has never, (not even once) occurred to me that how one consenting adult chooses to express his or her love for another, should be any body else's business.
I guess I celebrate my gay best friends the same way that I celebrate Parsis (they have to be saved! Preserved! The world needs Parsis!)
So you can understand why I am doing hoops ever since Union health minister A Ramadoss campaigned for the removal of the draconian, archaic, anti-choice Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises homosexuality. And in his support, I call upon every one who is gay or supports the cause of gay people, to give up smoking -- another of Ramadoss' concerns.
Wouldn't that be a great way to say 'thank you very much sir'?
Email: s_malavika@dnaindia.net
