When I was in my 11th
standard, I used to study far away from home in Vijayawada and unlike my school
days, neither my elder brother nor any of my cousins would travel with me to the hostel after each term holidays. Probably that was the time when my knowledge
of the world (lokagnanam as my dad
calls it) was shaping without the intervention from my family. I started
becoming independent. But my dad didn't trust me. He
was afraid of giving me the college fee and personal expenses. He believed I
might lose the money bag on the way in the train or someone might cheat me and
take away the money. Those were the days without any online transfer. And the
bank was in a town so far off from my village that no one would use its services.
So he had no choice but to give a big amount to me in cash. It was then when he
came up with this idea that I should carry the money by splitting it, part of
it in my trousers, part in the luggage bag and part in my wallet. His point
was that, even if I lost some, rest would act as a cushion temporarily.
Cushion. It is such a nice word. I
feel so comfortable on hearing this word. May be there are better words to
explain this concept, such as support, back-up, help etc., But none of them would make
me feel as comfortable as Cushion. Now when I look back, I always had
cushions, in one form or the other. Probably I was fortunate, unlike many others.
When I start to think about it more, I can see that
my parents were one of the biggest cushions of my life till I grew up. My dad
had always told me, ‘Son, never worry about failing an exam, never look at it
as a prestige issue to fail a class and discontinue studies. Worst case, I
will make sure you have some or the other work in our village to lead a life”.
These words were so powerful that I never ever had exam fears. Probably that
was one of the reasons I always topped every exam. Had my dad not showed that
support, had he not been that cushion of my life, things might have turned out
different. I studied well, crossed mile stones one by one and got into
engineering in one of the well known colleges.
Those were the days of my final year of engineering at Madras. Being a Telugu student, it was expected by everyone that I should go to US. That was the
minimum expectation from an engineering student from the parents, family and
society, in those times. Personally I had no clue whether I wanted to study
further, whether I wanted to settle in US or India. All I knew was, I may not
be able to show my face back in my town if I didn't go to US. So I had two
projects in my final year. Project A, the technical project to be completed
for the degree and Project B, was to go to USA after Bachelor studies, for what ever reasons.
I worked hard for both these
projects. I did whatever I could. I got the best grade in Project A, but I
failed in Project B. How come? Reason was Osama Bin Laden. What? Really? Yes, I
am not kidding. Post 2001 attacks, US Government’s funding for all US
universities reduced so much that many of us didn't get scholarships. Many of
my friends went ahead to US without a scholarship, in the hope of finding a
part time job to pay the university fees. Some struggled and survived there.
Some couldn't and came back after losing money. I didn't go. Because I needed a
cushion to take that risk and I didn't have one. My father wasn't rich enough
to support me if I didn't get a job there. So I chose to stay back.
I don’t regret not going to US.
Life had offered me much more than what I had imagined I would get if I
had gone there. No, I don’t mean ‘money’ by ‘much more’. I had taken up a job
in Bangalore. I started learning to face the society with a smile, for breaking
their social norm of going to USA. Yes,
I did answer in every function I attended, every chat that I had with friends,
every time I faced my relatives, why is it OK for me to be in India. It was tough
but I had to do it.
But I also started to think from
these experiences what it means to not have financial cushions in life. How
can we expect an unprivileged child to leave his/her work and join school
when there is no cushion for hunger of their family? How can we expect rural
people to compete in studies and get into high paying professions, when there
is no cushion for their daily living? I thought and thought but didn't know
what to do. I was a small guy in a big system. What could I do alone? All I
could do to satisfy myself was to sponsor some technical education and
accommodation fees to couple of my school and other childhood friends, so that
there were able to get jobs here and abroad and could repay my money back.
Probably I wouldn't have felt that satisfaction in anything else but being the
financial cushion for them.
In the meanwhile, Bangalore
treated me very well for first few years of my career. I got good roommates,
good friends, nice job, good company, all was well. But I didn't know that
there were many more things to face in life. I knew, I was “different” from my childhood;
but there was something that hit me very hard when I was 26, the fact that “I
will remain different”. Yes, I am gay, I was gay and I will remain gay, no
matter how much I act straight, no matter how many conversion therapies I
undergo, no matter which yoga, meditation or ayurvedic medicine I take, no matter how many poojas that I do, no matter how much I lie to myself, I was gonna be
gay, remain gay. From the core of my heart, I could only, only and only like
men and never ever women. I could fake love, I could fake sex, I could
fake being a good husband, I could fake being a good son but I could never ever
be truthful, neither to myself nor to others, It would only be fake. It hit me very
hard, really really hard. I cried. I cried and I cried for days. I had many sleepless
nights. I wept in office rest rooms. I wept during the bike rides. I wept
everywhere, every time I got reminded that the time has come for me to choose
between a fake but stable life versus a truthful one but one full of thorns.
Unfortunately I didn't have
cushions to fall back to. There was no family support to handle this. There were no friends. I didn't know of other people like me. For the first time in life, I was
unprepared. There was no one to understand me and advise me. But I had to do
something. I had to step out of my comfort zone and do something about it. I
needed help badly. And I decided to seek help. If I didn't seek help then, I
would have probably not been writing this article now. Like many whom I know now, I
would have either taken away my life, without the world knowing why I died, or
would have chosen a life in which I would continue to live a double life and
weep every night out of guilt and helplessness. Fortunately I didn't do either.
I grabbed the cushions that I got in the form of counselling and support
groups. I survived. Yes I survived. Not only that I survived, I realized there are many more people out there who badly
need cushions of life and I started to become one for many of them.
Well, the story doesn't end
there. Although now that I chose a truthful life over a fake one, my natural
instinct of being risk averse didn't allow me to be peaceful. I got into a
relationship but within a few years, life gave another hard shock: dreams
turned around, things changed, the bonding of love ceased to exist, the meaning
of a relationship seemed out of context, I had to walk out of it. I became alone,
all alone, once again. Fortunately I had the shoulders of my friends to quickly fall back to, as cushions.
But I thought to myself, how
would it be different if I were straight, married and gone through a divorce? How
would it be different, if I had lost my wife? How would it be
different, if I would have been abandoned by my children at old age? How
would it be different, if I were a straight woman, who lost her husband leaving
behind a couple of kids and society raising eyebrows on the talk of a re-marriage?
How would be it be different if I were a woman with a useless drunkard husband? How would it be different in all such cases? What are the cushions
available to all such people? Where would they fall back to? May be society is
the cushion for them. May be their siblings are cushions for them. May be they
would remain so strong that they would themselves be cushions for them. May be a
professional counselling becomes a cushion for them. Or simply they die without
having any cushions, struggling with life again and again, scolding their fate,
angry with the God they believe in, portraying themselves to be victims of life
and others to be villains. Does that really help? Don’t know. To each their
own.
So at the end of the day, it might just be a choice whether to recognize that we need a cushion, look for it, grab
it and fall back, or whether to curse oneself, one’s past, fate, God or others
and continue to live a life without actually having any fulfillment.
