For LGBTQI community, the real struggle has only begun

Three guns and two knives inside a box hang above a 55-inch television set. Around three feet away is a sword that Sonali had bought from her last trip to Sikkim. The other things in Sonali’s and Alka’s bedroom are just regular stuff: books, jewellery, stuffed toys, mobile chargers, pain relief balms, empty liquor bottles, cigarette cartons and a jar of chocolate...a “disappointment” for those who expect to find more “kinky” stuff in a same-sex couple’s room.
Sandip Roy and Bishan Samaddar. (Photo credit: Marc Ohrem-Leclef @marcleclef)
Unfamiliar family
It’s afternoon, and Alka has left for work. At 43, Sonali doesn’t keep too well and has quit hers. The duo had tied the knot on March 18, 2011, at the Lake Kalibari. Since then, they have changed three houses. “Flat owners in residential complexes didn’t want two women staying together. Finally, we decided to rent a flat in a standalone building,” Sonali says.
Ask Sonali about her guns and knives, and she says, “I had this fascination since childhood. They are artefacts that I collect. If a heterosexual person’s fetish for guns and knives isn’t questioned, why should mine raise eyebrows?”
Their neighbours at this Rajarhat flat are non-interfering. Yet, their life remains fraught with challenge. Sonali is still estranged from her elder brother. “Our relationship changed when my parents gifted their property to me. My brother lives in New Jersey. The Section 377 verdict hasn’t mended our relationship,” says Sonali, whose has a tattoo on her arm that reads, “I wanna live fast love hard and die young”.
Alka’s son from her first marriage had shifted out of their house and city for professional reasons. In February this year, he got married.
How does the new bride in the family react to her in-laws? “It was a surprise wedding. We weren’t told. We have never met her,” says Sonali, not hiding the hurt behind kohl-lined eyes.
Alka, who has a tattoo claiming “Too wild to live. Too rare to die”, understands that the fight for acceptance in her son’s extended family has to begin from scratch. “I am hurt but I have accepted my son’s silence. At the end, it’s only us who are there for each other,” says Alka, who has a high-profile job in the hospitality industry. Acceptance from family, they understand, doesn’t come with lifelong warranty.
Outsider at home
Around 25km away, at the other end of the city in Tollygunge, live entertainment professional Neel and her partner. She settled down at her ancestral house 14 years ago. Neel insists “education” often has nothing to do with acceptance. “Our domestic helps have never been judgmental,” she says, cooking dinner for her partner.
Neel
Her pride of possessiveness received a jolt when one day, a relative matter-of-factly told her that her entire property will go to her blood relations once she is no more. “I was shocked. Disowning the contribution of my partner came so easy,” she says, eyes shimmering in anger. “We live with the frustration of not being able to nominate our partners in a life insurance policy and the fear of being disowned from inheriting property. It’s traumatic when two people in love know that the death of one can make the other an outsider.”
No entry
Sree Mukherjee and Suchandra Das had got married in Kolkata on December 24, 2015, before moving to Chennai. Now, the couple is back in Kolkata, having settled down in their Baguiati flat. They had choked up when they had first seen the movie “If These Walls Could Talk 2”. “It was about how a lesbian woman wasn’t permitted inside a hospital room since she wasn’t a family member while her partner died all alone inside. The film is heart-wrenching and I felt helpless wondering why a homosexual person can’t hold on to the memories of her partner and stay in the home they built together,” says Sree.
Fear of exclusion and eviction are their constant companions. “Not being allowed entry to the last rites is common. If something bad happens to me and I don’t have a will that is probated, my partner can be evicted by any of my blood relations,” Suchandra says.
Questions and answers
Sipping Darjeeling tea at a coffee shop in Salt Lake, author Sandip Roy says he is reminded of his life being “circumscribed” in many ways every time he fills up an insurance form. “You can spend 10 years with someone, and it has no meaning legally,” he says. “The level of scrutiny you will be put through when you want to do something jointly is tiring. My boyfriend was getting a credit card done. He was asked if there is a ‘Madam’. When he said no, the person asked if he was still not married,” recalls Sandip. In a culture that has so little regard for privacy, saying that there is a ‘Mister’ and not a ‘Madam’ only invites unwanted questions. “It is annoying that asking for an add-on credit card would have to be an activist step,” says Sandip, who used to edit the world’s oldest LGBT South Asian newsletter called ‘Trikone’ that came out from California.
Violence and threats
Transgender activist Raina Roy has horror stories of being physically abused in 2006. “I was returning from Southern Avenue at night. A group tried to snatch my belongings and then physically assault me. As long as Section 377 was there, nobody even took these complaints seriously,” Raina says.
In a Facebook post, Aniruddha Dutta, assistant professor of gender, women’s and sexuality studies at University of Iowa, had written about how, in February 2014, a trans person in north Bengal was gang-raped by local men who threatened to report her to the authorities because she regularly had “criminal sex”. “While doing fieldwork with transgender, hijra and kothi communities in rural areas of Bengal, I’ve noticed that most people in these places do not know about Section 377. In my experience, the police almost never use it to target LGBT people in rural Bengal, though cops and party goons often threaten transgender sex workers and other visibly gender-variant people for allegedly breaching decency or public order. While the victory over 377 will foster greater socio-legal acceptance, much police atrocity and social violence on LGBT people exists independently of Section 377, which we must continue to address separately,” Aniruddha says.
How do you do (it)?
Stereotyping is a big issue. Gay men are effeminate, lesbians are all tomboys and everyone under the LGBTQI umbrella is promiscuous, is the popular, oft-repeated restrain.
Also, a surprisingly large number of people fail to understand that a sex crime is a sex crime, and that it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. “Many heterosexuals openly say homosexuals will be jumping on to them at any given moment. If all heterosexuals don’t do it, why would we?” asks Alka.
Many have this strange idea that an LGBTQI person’s home is one big “bedroom”, nothing else. “Most are less interested in the beauty of our love stories against all odds. I have never been asked insulting questions, but I know others have faced it. Because of an unequal power dynamics at play, many try to be extra-familiar and pop the ‘how do you do it?’ question. Can they ask this to a heterosexual person?” Neel wonders.
Sandip, too, would feel awkward with such questions but also adds that it’s not “bad”. “Our country has been more ‘homo-ignorant’ than homophobic. Now they are thinking about it and so, all kinds of awkward questions are coming out. That’s not necessarily bad. It’s better than what it was 20 years ago when people thought homosexuality didn’t even exist in India.”
Coming of age
One of the many concerns is about what will happen when a homosexual child comes of age. What makes matters worse is that there are so few examples of gay or lesbian couples who have been in long-term relationships. “I know gay men who are out in the open and considering marriage with women. Sometimes they even tell their spouse that they are bisexual. They fear what will happen when they get old and so need a backup insurance plan. The idea is sexist but it exists in Kolkata,” says Sandip. Some marriages of convenience — where the spouse didn’t know — have also backfired.
Bishan Samaddar, who has been in a relationship with Sandip for more than a decade, understands that a lot of couples want to have families in a “traditional” sense. “I have never had such insecurities. But there are others who do. Unless there is actually marriage equality in terms of adoption and inheritance rights, insecurities will loom large. A lot of them might continue to feel a sense of great incompleteness,” he says.
Lesbians too, says Suchandra, walk that path. “With so much of a social stigma and too many hurdles, many don’t have the courage to keep on fighting. [The decriminalization of] Section 377 can initiate a change but the true difference will happen the day society accepts homosexuality, bisexuality and heterosexuality as truths of life,” she says.
'CAN’T YOU CURE IT?’
A year back, an irate parent went to a psychiatrist’s chamber and confronted him. The doctor’s fault: he was not able to “convert” his gay son to a “normal human being”.
“How did you get your medical registration if you can’t inflict a change in my son,” the man thundered at the psychiatrist. “How are you allowed to practise in Kolkata if you can’t give medicines to cure him?”
Niladri Chatterjee
This was after the boy, a student at an English medium school, was beaten black and blue for being gay. “The parents had threatened to take me to court for not curing their son and then arguing with them. But they didn’t get back to me after that visit,” says psychiatrist Sabyasachi Mitra.
The issue of family prestige has often weighed heavier than emotional attachment in some families. Forced marriages to “cure” homosexuality has been common. “An uncle of a friend of mine had tried to rape her,” recalls psychiatrist Ranjita Biswas. “Knowing she was a lesbian, he had the full support of the family.
There are many examples of people who had broken up with their same-sex partners to be in heterosexual relationships. Is it this, then, that confuses parents and makes them believe that their children can, one day, be “cured”? According to Kalyani University professor Niladri Chatterjee, who teaches a New Gender Studies course, “This ‘confusion’ of parents comes from a basic misunderstanding of gender and sexuality. Gender can be fluid, as can sexuality. I can cite several instances of heterosexual persons getting into homosexual relationships and being perfectly happy that way. We all need to understand that gender and/or sexual categories are not fixed and constant. We accept change in so many categories in our lives. We should not force change when it suits our idea of happiness and prevent it when it doesn’t.” Heterosexuality, Chatterjee insists, doesn’t guarantee happiness. “No sexuality does.”
Sree and Suchandra
"The verdict is only one element. Perhaps more important is how people use the law as a symbol according to their mindsets, as demonstrated by people using ‘377’ as a taunt. I have already noticed memes on Facebook and WhatsApp, saying things like “Is that a male or 377? (chhele na 377?),” said Aniruddha Dutta.
Aniruddha Dutta Assistant ProfessoR, Gender, Women’S and Sexuality Studies, University of IOWA
"When I had gone to hospital with a broken arm, the authorities wasted time deciding whether I ought to be taken to the male or female ward.... Even after the verdict, the number of offensive posts about the LGBTQ community hasn’t gone down," Raina Roy
Transgender activist Raina Roy