From polars to cubs, 'Bears' skip the shave

Dinesh Hegde, chortles as he opens the gift from his boyfriend Rahul. "Oh my God! My face fuzz is barely there and you already thought of this!" he exclaims as he opens the combo gift box with oil for the beard, beard wash and moustache-wax stick. Reaching over to grab his partner Rahul in an intimate hug, this resident of suburban Mumbai tells him: "I'm so excited that you're making my first Movember so special."

No that's no typo. Movember (also called No-Shave November by some) is letting about hair grow wild and free and letting cancer patients who lose hair to chemotherapy know it can all come back, thick and fast. It also expresses solidarity with men fighting mental health issues like chronic depression who show less interest in grooming. Hegde, whose father lost his battle to third stage testicular cancer, remembers how he took chemotherapy very badly. "Overnight, his thick luscious hair and moustache began falling off. He took that badly and lost his will to fight," he remembers of the father he lost last January. The BPO employee who otherwise sports a designer goatee got himself shaved clean on Movember 1st. "Now for the next 30 days, I'll let my facial hair grow and use it to talk about men's health to raise awareness. This is my way of remembering my Appa who brought me up after I lost my mom in Class VIII."

What makes the openly gay Hegde's participation in this global solidarity movement special is the fact that he identifies as a "bear." Not to be confused with the omnivorous, thick-furred, large, cute-but-ferocious, wild animal. Here, the term alludes to gay and bisexual men who are/or who want to be in the company of other "bears"—men with facial and/ or body hair.

In distant Borivali, resident Piyush Upadhyay, who also identifies as a bear and has just trimmed his beard to grow it all back, explains: "This term became popular in the gay community after Richard Bulger, and his partner Chris Nelson (1960–2006) founded Bear Magazine in San Francisco, California in 1987. "This was a way of breaking free of the clean-shaven gay man stereotype." Upadhyay says he became aware of the special attention his body hair got at gay pubs and parties while travelling the globe as a part of the merchant navy. "All my life, I had been ragged by my friends and cousins as ichchadhaari bhaloo (a parody on Bollywood's ichchadhaari naagin) but I found what used to earlier make me cringe, became the hot factor in why other men find me attractive. I then became part of a gay group of bears and fell in love with this scene of beer, bikes, tattoos and leather."

Exactly like Hegde who became part of the bear culture while studying in Germany. "I've been wanting to be a part of Movember since, but my Dad wouldn't like me growing a beard. "Yaakappa fakir tarah gadda bittidiya?

(Why've you grown a beard like a mendicant?) My aunts would nag. Now I tell them I'm doing it to remember Dad."

While bemoaning the lack of a visible gay bear scene in India, both Hegde and Upadhyay admit they have been able to duck homophobic curiosity about their single status in conservative India because of being bears.

"Because they see me in chunky rings and bracelets, heavy metal tees riding a Harley Davidson, it doesn't fit in with the Indian stereotype of effeminate gay," Hegde laughs, "While that's good, I find it hard to handle some of the neighbourhood bhabhis who regularly hit on me."

Upadhyay feels encouraging bear culture will help men emerge out of the closet. "While I have nothing against being effeminate, not all gay men are so. Socialised into growing up with looking at effeminate men as 'different', this makes even those comfortable with their sexual proclivity for men fear they'll be seen as less male. Encouraging a bear culture will see more men feeling comfortable coming out and avoiding the trap of a face-saving heterosexual marriage."He points out how a mature bear culture abroad has seen the creation of non-pornographic genres of music, literature and arts. "Bear Bones Books by LGBTQ publisher Lethe Press, which markets fiction, nonfiction and poetry titles written by and for bears comes to mind. And so does Bearapalooza, a traveling bear music festival; BearRadio.net, which streams bear and LGBT music and bear-themed podcasts."

While it may take a while for India to get there, maybe Movember is a good place to begin.