Unspoken rules waiting to be questioned!
It’s Complicated: Lit Up & The Writing Cooperative Contest
He had a dignified look when he heard those words, “We knew this from the beginning. Please don’t look shaken like this.”
It felt like the floor shattered and time stood still. They were never meant to be. Why did they cross paths? Why did they go on this whirlwind romance? Why were they getting their hopes high when the law was passed? “It shouldn’t be this hard, we are in the twenty-first century,” he kept repeating while he heard those words that ticked him off the most, “Listen, T, you aren’t making the compelling case you think you are making.”
Like always, T being the troubled guy he is, was in utter dismay about the situation while Su sipped on his coffee introspecting on his mom’s definition of liberal parents. T & Su were complete opposites and yes, like in all near-perfect love stories — opposites attracted in their case too.
They were roommates in college. Su had a girlfriend who would sneak into their hostel in the middle of the night. He was the trustworthy roomie who looked out for his friend, while the couple would ‘discuss’ about their future plans inside the room.
It was one of those nights when she stormed out saying it was over. Su cried his heart out. T ran to comfort his friend, and in comfort, they found each other. Closeted within the confines of a society that was still in denial about the existence of such human connections, they found sanctuary in one and another. It was an outpouring of emotion, exchanging stories of their firsts, their realisations, and their anonymous online profiles. They spoke through the night and when the sun rose, they knew it was a relationship that’d last a lifetime.
In a city whose weather was unforgiving and the anti-romance brigade worked overtime, they roamed around without a care. They shared tender coconuts on the beach sands, watched numerous sunrises while they spent the nights on abandoned boats, swam shirtless in the ocean, held hands and leaned on each other and not a soul questioned them. All around them, moral policing was rampant, parents were called in for questioning and some even had their degrees stripped off. But no one doubted them. They were invisible in the sea of couples around them and that was their freedom.
In the four years of college, they vowed to never visit each other’s homes for fear of being found out. They refrained from talking about each other to their folks. They took up jobs in the same company but were unfortunately posted in different cities. It was three years after their graduation that they received the news they had been praying for all their lives.
India legalised same-sex marriage. Their joy knew no bounds and they both travelled to celebrate it in Madras, the city that put them together. They discussed how to break it to their parents. Su’s parents were beach house folks from the South who religiously read The Hindu and golfed during the weekends. T’s were both well-known lawyers who celebrated the audacity of the younger generation. It was meant to be hard but then this reaction was different. Like all love stories go, their entire life had led them to this moment.
“It’s complicated.”
Su called T and asked to meet up in the usual coffee place. T prepared for the worst. He knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince the folks. They had both prepared on how to tackle the situation. But when their eyes met, T realised there was something else, something that both of them never thought about.
T was in shock when he first heard those words, and he could hear Su repeat the same thing, like a song on loop, “It isn’t you Thimmanan. It’s just who you are. My parents are cool but their level of liberalism allows them to accept me as a gay man, but they cannot accept me stooping down to marry someone from a lower caste. There are some things that are hardcoded in their DNA and they just can’t seem to imagine sharing a house with a Dalit. I’m really sorry, I ran out of options to argue and that’s why I called you,” said Subramaniam.
As India embraced same-sex relationships, it still finds it hard to accept inter-caste marriages. It wasn’t illegal. It was the tacit rule across the country. Caste is in the blood of the people and as the debate around hormones paved the way, blood remained the same. It was a reason for Thimmanan to fight for an old identity, one that he had buried ages ago.
Flash fiction submission for the theme ‘It’s Complicated.’
