Ekti Gopon Jibon একটি গোপন জীবন (One Secret Life)

One man’s struggle with finding love while Section 377 criminalized homosexuality in India.

Context Staff
Sep 6, 2018 · 9 min read
Illustration Courtesy: Srutika Sabu

The summer after college, I received an opportunity to live and work in rural India. As a Bangladeshi American, I had only visited Bangladesh for a handful of short visits and had never been to India. With only a cursory knowledge of Bengali popular culture and basic language proficiency, I was doe-eyed and completely naïve about life outside America. The South Asian elders in my community warned me against going, vividly elaborating how my naive Western self would die from traveler’s diarrhea or being kidnapped and murdered, and everything else in between. This sense of impending doom only fueled my excitement, and soon I found myself prepared to make my landing in Kolkata, West Bengal.

As I took my train ride to rural Bengal, to the land of Fakirs and Bauls, my mind kept wandering towards one thing only: could a gay man like myself find love here?

My experiences are unique to rural West Bengal, and bear little resemblance to the experiences that people in larger cities like Delhi and Mumbai have. Kolkata, the nearest metropolitan area to me, had clubs that are safe spaces for queer communities, an annual Pride parade, and people who, although not without their own set of hardships, lead openly gay lives. 200 km away in my corner of rural Bengal however, the reality was much more different. The socially conservative norms that reign supreme in any rural area of South Asia were alive and well here, particularly upheld by gay men who were afraid of their truths being revealed by any deviance from normalcy. There was no room for self-expression, let alone room for existing outside of a heteronormative definition of society that directly impacted every facet of every person’s life. All in all, quite similar to the dating scene I’d left behind in Utah, where the majority of gay men I’d met were locked into a complicated relationship with the Mormon church. Like all societies however, the truth lay far away from the veneered appearance of perfect nuclear families carrying on the patriarchal traditions of the past.

Illustration Courtesy: Srutika Sabu

I gradually began to find other people like myself, looking for some respite from the shackles of heterosexuality.

This was a well-developed marketplace with established moderators, divided into different closed Facebook groups for different districts across West Bengal. It was a community where people helped one another connect physically, without developing lasting emotional relationships. Behind the anonymous profile pictures of Durga Ma, Kali Ma, and the occasional flowers and Bollywood actor headshots lay a wealth of gay men informed about their sexuality almost entirely through the short clips of pornography they could store on 8GB sd cards. Not unlike my experiences back home in America, it was quite difficult to find someone looking for any sort of connection outside of immediate sexual relief. There were a handful of vigilantes masquerading around the group quoting stories of Radha and Krishna, pleading the shameless fornicators to have some shame and stop whoring themselves out. One of them even messaged me privately, asking me if I could moderate the group to set an example for how gays in the West have shame, and do not share vulgar pictures with pointedly scandalous intentions. I thought about the barrage of geriatric dick pics that used to flood my phone back home, begging me to perform acts so deviant even Freud would have raised an eyebrow in horror, and politely declined the offer. I swallowed my disappointment that I’d found the Bengali version of the very dating dynamics I’d been trying to escape all along, and continued passing my time talking mindlessly to a few blank profiles about basic pleasantries.

Sometimes those pleasantries would spiral out of control. I remember staring at my computer shocked. A profile picture of Kali Ma’s bright red tongue sticking out from her jet black face shouted at me, “What are your preferences? I know ten people in your city and I’m sure we can set something up for you.” When I politely declined to share my phone number and preferences, he became quite offended, as if I’d been wasting his time all along. “Does your dick not work? Send me a picture. Let me see what you are hiding — there must be something wrong with you if you are behaving this way.” Before I got too embroiled in this conversation, which somehow ended up manifesting on the comments section of some Deepika Padukone meme, my vigilante comrade in celibacy messaged me and told me to block the man immediately. “He’s our local Ambani and owns every jewelry store in town. You don’t want to get involved with him — if he gets upset with you he’ll send political goons after you and one day you’ll just ‘disappear’.”

I soon learned how to maneuver my way through these profiles. I developed proficiency in detecting whether someone was messaging me from a village or a town, whether they were a potential predator, whether they reduced religious identity to a sexual preference, and so much more. I also learned to play cool when my reluctance to engage in meaningless sex was met with confusion. And with time, I began to meet some remarkable people who despite remaining anonymous, ended up becoming my closest friends I made while living in West Bengal. The Facebook group had created a remarkable safe space for all of us who were too afraid be ourselves in person. Whether because we were ashamed at the sound of our voices or the shapes of our bodies, or whether we were reluctant to engage with the people around us for fear of being considered weird and too different for our own good, many of these insecurities seemed to vanish. Partially due to anonymity, but partially because we knew that the person hiding behind the blank profile shared much more in common with us than the people around us ever would.

Several months later, I had earned the trust of my new friends, and began to meet with them offline. Eating paan at the bus stand, going on motorcycle rides at night to enjoy the cool breeze, sitting in my drawing room and debating which schools of Rabindra Sangeet were the best. And it dawned on me that outside of these treasured few experiences, I had no idea what non-heteronormativity in Bengal looks like. I was still learning to navigate basic gender norms. Best friends holding hands, sitting on each other’s laps and cuddling during a long train ride, intimacy of proportions that the American in me only identified with romance and unwanted public displays of affection. I had no frame of reference by which I could distinguish this from visible homosexuality. In America, it would be second nature for me to differentiate between two men who are just friends with each other, and two men who are in a romantic relationship. Perhaps that’s what they call ‘gaydar,’ and maybe it is culturally specific.

But with a cultural hegemony so insistent on avoiding non-heteronormative visibility, there was no room to reflect on what this community might look like, let alone flourish. There was a pressure, rather, to suppress and hide.

The idea of transferring our society from online to in-person was laughable. In the wake of new conversations about repealing Section 377, I think about this often. Even if the code were repealed, how could individuals yearning to live outside of the patriarchy find a way to exist openly when even a daydream about freedom led to fears of social ostracization? I couldn’t even sit on my veranda waiting for my friends to come over without stirring up suspicion in the neighboring basti. So many people around me simply had no idea what non-heteronormatively looked like, but we were still terrified of getting caught and being exposed. Outside of vague references to the erotic temples of Bhubaneshwar, or a silly reference to the plot of Dostana, there was no accessible and honest portrayal of anyone living outside of the patriarchy.

I thought about the many online photography series about homosexuality in India. A man travels to a Kolkata akhara and photographs a homoerotic space with no comment on the subjects themselves. A photographer shares ten photos of gay and lesbian couples, all striking and remarkable in their own ways. All within strictly private locations inside of a flat or somewhere else safe. All romanticizing some form of substance abuse or self-harm. Sometimes in color, sometimes artfully in black and white. Exhibitionist individuals, stopping their lives for a quick snapshot before returning back to obscurity and secrecy, knowing that the audience for this artistic fetish would never intersect with their daily lives. These projects would never reach the areas from which they were shot, would likely never have an impact on people who could benefit from them.

It’s been almost two years since I returned from India, and I’m still in contact with my friends there. One has dedicated his life to Iskcon mandir to avoid marriage. Another one swallowed his pride and married a woman of his family’s choice to avoid scandal and now lives a double life behind his family’s back. I hope that as activism to repeal Section 377 gains momentum, the passion for love and acceptance spreads outside of urban centers. The amazing gay community in rural Bengal who made me feel like one of their own deserve to freely and openly live their best lives.


In a historic ruling by the Supreme Court of India, on 6/09/2018, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was repealed, decriminalizing homosexual sex between two consenting adults.

All illustrations courtesy: Srutika Sabu

thecontextmag

The Context is an independently-run student magazine that provides a platform for ideas, discussions, and dialogue on Art, Culture and Politics. Interested in contributing? Email us at: contact.thecontext@gmail.com

Context Staff

Written by

The Context is an independently-run student magazine that provides a platform for ideas, discussions, and dialogue on Art, Culture, and Politics.

thecontextmag

The Context is an independently-run student magazine that provides a platform for ideas, discussions, and dialogue on Art, Culture and Politics. Interested in contributing? Email us at: contact.thecontext@gmail.com

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