Read the Whole Story Part-III

Continued from "Read the Whole Story Part-II"

At this moment, there are about 200 nations in the world. And after years and years of Queer revolutions, and fights for equal rights, after years of Pride marches, and protest rallies, after years of Harvey Milk, and Johanna Siguroardottir, the number of nations where those with alternative sexual identities have rights at par with all other citizens is 9. 9 out of 200. If one happens to fall in love with someone of one’s own gender, there are only 9 out of 200 nations where one would not be put behind bars or be hanged until death. These are merely legal statistics. Socially, rapes, corrective rapes, gang-rapes, and even lynching, mutilation and murder are not uncommon all over the world for people who are not straight. Yemen, to Nicaragua to Aligarh, India. These cases are pretty common. Take, for instance, the case of Serigne Mbaye from Senegal. His children could not find him a place in any of the local cemeteries because there were rumours abound about his being gay. Or David Kato, a gay rights activist in Uganda, who was beaten to death with a hammer shortly after he won a court-case against a newspaper that had outed him, and ran headlines saying ‘Hang Them’. Or  Elephant Man from Jamaica, who proudly composes songs with lyrics such as ‘When you hear a lesbian getting raped/ It’s not our fault… Two women in bed/That’s two sodomites who should be dead’. The less said about corrective rapes against lesbians, the better. Sometimes, even elders of the family- brothers, uncles, and even fathers rape a little girl, only to beat the ‘masculinity’ out of her. Their logic? ‘A little taste of manliness will show them what they really want’.

For how much longer, do we have to keep holding forth the same old arguments about how the homeland of Lord Macaulay- who made Article 377 a part of the Indian Penal Code in 1860 - England, made homosexuality legal as far back as 1967 ? For how much longer do we have to keep pointing out the instances of homosexuality in our ancient Indian civilizations, clearly depicted on the walls of Khajuraho and Konark temples, and keep reiterating to everyone that homosexuality is not a Western Import? For how much longer do we have to keep arguing that homosexuality, has infact, been observed in over 1500 animal species, and well documented in over 500 (and homophobia documented in only one)? Till when do we have to keep telling people that the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973, and the WHO, in 1990? Till when do we have to keep mentioning the names of the geniuses all through history, that were in fact, attracted to people of the same sex( as more and more famous people keep joining their ranks, and keep coming out every year?)



What Sapna probably did not realize,(or even if she did, probably she did not want to reconcile with the realization) is that expressions of endless love, and being lauded for the same- just the way they show it in the movies, and they sing about it in those innumerable songs, is probably meant only for those who can learn to love within the diktats and the boundaries defined by society, only for those lucky people, who can fall in love with people of the opposite gender( but the same caste/gotra etc etc).
(Translated from the article titled 'Ebong Bewaarish' from the 18th November, 2012 edition of Robibashoriyo, written by Debolina)

To Read the Previous stories Click here: Part-1 and Part-2
                                                                   

Read the Whole Story Part-II

Continued from "Read the whole story or Don't read at all"
Sapna’s parents were just another couple of parents in any village in India. Poor, hard-working, with poverty weighing down on their everyday existence, their body language reeking of insecurities and desperation. However, when I sat in the room with her parents talking about their daughter, their voices wet with tears, Sapna’s mother narrating to me, how her daughter would shoulder the responsibility of earning in the family, and how she had no other recreation or relaxation apart from taking a walk by the riverside in the early hours of dusk, I did not know that at the very same instant, Sapna-Sucheta’s bodies lay in the morgue, growing colder, and colder- with every passing hour. Until I received the facts from the local police, I did not realize that when Sapna’s father spoke of how his daughter would teach young kids, and how much she loved her family, his daughter’s corpse lay unclaimed, rejected. Two deceased lovers, their love growing cold in the freezing temperature of the morgue. And no one to lay claim on them.

We, human beings, make a life out of laying claims. This habit turns into addiction. We lay claims on people, land, property, relationships, love, money, insurance- everything. We go around marking territories, earmarking belongings, saying ''And this is mine. '' Sometimes, we even go as far as DNA testing to lay claim on decomposing, unrecognizable corpses.  But do we ever think of it thus? - ''This body of mine, this metaphysical form encasing my soul that all of my friends and family love, this very mass of protoplasm – just because I spoke or behaved differently, or did not subscribe to the same notion of love that had been etched by certain people eons ago – a notion which has been highlighted over and over again in front of me by millions of other people, just because I loved a little differently from those millions in the crowd, just because I fell in love with a girl, despite being a woman myself – and some people picked up that same body of mine, and threw it into a cold, cold morgue room, from where no one came to rescue me - not my father, not my mother, not my brother or sister or friends. Nobody. I lay rejected, unwanted. And my crime? I  had loved. It is not possible for me to accurately measure just about how much of the neglect came from societal pressures, and how much came from my family choosing to turn their faces away.''

The topic of Sapna and Sucheta’s deaths is such a taboo, people speak about it so warily, as if speaking about it openly would cause the outbreak of a horrible, contagious disease to ensue. Such a taboo, that even the emotions of the mother of the deceased would not betray any regret, or lamenting of the fact that her child lay lifeless in a cold room far, far away from her, waiting for her pyre to be lit by the family she so dearly loved. And in this story, we are not speaking of Uganda, with its Kill The Gays Bill, we are not speaking of Iran and Iraq where homosexuals are executed in wide daylight. We are talking about West Bengal, about India. We are speaking of a village, which has created headlines for its revolutionary, socialist stature. We are speaking of Nandigram. Sexual revolutions, it would seem, are yet to percolate into places even as dynamic and revolutionary as ones such as these.

Continued On "Read the Whole Story Part-III" 

Read The Whole Story or Don't Read At All

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''People around us will never accept our love for each other, and I shall never be able to live without her. God will never forgive those responsible for our deaths. Brother, if we die together, then cremate us together; let us stay together in death at the least. And if we (manage to) survive this, then we shall go someplace far, far away, and shall never return to trouble you guys…''

This was the first suicide letter I was ever seeing from so close. A letter, so carefully written, in impeccable grammar, the Bangla words resembling Art on the foolscap papers they had been etched upon. The sheets had been meticulously numbered…1,2,3… a total of six. The letter had been very ironically titled ‘The Story Of My Life’

''She loves me a lot/And so do I/ I Love her more than my own life/And I don’t know why.’ This little couplet was followed by a more detailed account of events leading up to their final destination. ‘….She had been married off forcefully, into a home of torture, where her husband beat her up regularly. And in my locality, people would make fun of me, of my nature, ridicule me endlessly everyday. They would even taunt my family for the way I was. Death seems an easier way out, than to have to deal with such ridicule everyday. In my family, everyone loves me a lot. I don’t want them to have to deal with this loss. Brother, take care of Mom-Dad, don’t let them feel any pain or sorrow, look after Sis… And please don’t stay angry with me. I hold nothing against you all…'' broken sentences from a broken heart, exuding heartache and melancholy, against the backdrop of a perfectly still dusk, in which my camera was panning into this Swan-song of a lost girl called Sapna, who, ironically, could not live her dreams.

I had gone to Nandigram to cover a story. About Sapna Mandal and Sucheta Mandal- The story of a couple’s suicide. With insecticide. Their bodies were found, in the early hours of dawn, beside the field at a far edge of their village, in which the local annual Veer Hanuman festival was taking place. Sapna, 23, used to tutor little kids at her own home. Sucheta was barely 19. She had been married off recently. When the two of them were found dead, each had her hands locked in the other’s. Both of them had the same dupatta wrapped around their waists. Sapna was found wearing her brother’s shirt, and jeans, and Sucheta was in a red salwar-kameez. The village-folk said – ''They lay together, so calmly, so beautifully, if one saw them, one would have no idea that they had poisoned themselves to death. They just lay there, staring into each other’s eyes so peacefully…'' It took me a while to realize that the same people that now spoke of the two girls with so much affection, had once called for a meeting of the people in the village, asking for appropriate punishment to be meted out to the two girls. The girls’ behavior, according to them, had been so uncouth, so unacceptable, that the elders of the village had ordered that the two girls be completely banned from meeting each other, and be married off, as soon as possible.

Continued on "Read the Whole Story Part-II"