Bombay is Awesome because...

Now when I look back, the signs were so obvious and out there any idiot could’ve figured.  There were so many signs. To think of it, the first time I was attracted to another human being, was a girl. She was a senior in my school and I absolutely adored her. I was eleven. Of course there were many after her but I always dismissed them. The idea of homosexuality and the concept of being a lesbian or a bi was so alien that I could not even imagine these general attractions as being anything more. I was in an all girls’ school so it was kind of understood that such things happen; that in the absence of boys it was absolutely normal for teenagers with raging hormones to be attracted to people around them. It will all come to an end once school ends and I go to college and get to interact with boys other than my cousins. But it didn’t turn out that way. I went to college and no point for guessing that here too the first person that I was attracted to was a girl.

But it still didn’t strike me till the time I was in second year. It was in the second year of my college that I kind of started questioning myself and what these attractions meant. The first kiss and the emotional rollercoaster of a ride that a very pretty girl took me for confirmed my doubt. But I still wasn’t willing to believe myself. The question of telling it to anyone else or coming out did not arise at all.

The mess that became of the first relationship that I had, confirmed the lie id been telling myself – that it was just a phase, that its college and it’s ok to experiment and I hadn’t met the right boy yet.

But I did. I did meet the perfect boy, he was kind and soft-spoken. He had the cutest smile and he was an artist. But most importantly he had the patience span of an owl. Yes, he was beautiful.

Which is why I was a bit taken aback when I sat next to the most beautiful girl in class and I felt an empty hollow sensation in my stomach. I was like ‘wait a minute! This isn’t supposed to be happening. I’ve already met the perfect boy and he’s beautiful and he loves me and I love him so much.’ Then I told myself, ‘there’s nothing wrong in appreciating beauty and if there is a side of me that is attracted to girls, so be it.’ I donno what I was high on when this moment of epiphany occurred.

And I started to think about the entire issue in a very systematic and pragmatic and practical way. I calculated that I was in Bombay for the next nine months, let me just say it out loud. Let me just see how people react to it. Worst case scenario, I’ll be a social outcast; people will probably call me a dyke and bully me. But let me take the risk. If these things do in fact happen with me, I will lose a maximum of seven-eight months. The idea behind it was very simple. Bombay is a new city. It’s a clean slate. It’s a fresh start. Let me say it out aloud once. Let the ‘truth’ be out there and let it be so big that I have no option but to not only face it but most importantly acknowledge it and accept it. I wasn’t expecting anything out of it and I figured that even if things do go wrong, I could always go back inside the closet, move back to Delhi, get married, have kids etc. basically the whole hetero thing. But now I know, there’s no real difference between the two, except that one day if I do find someone unbearingly attractive and fall in love and have that person love me truly and if and if the person happens to be a woman, I would not be able to marry her.

So the very first time I went drinking with my new classmates I did it. I said it out loud ‘I am bi and I have no qualms about accepting it and until recently I was madly in love with a woman.’ The reaction was anything but what I had expected. My friends were totally cool about the whole thing. They were like good for you!!’ I was totally shocked at the way they reacted. The fact that they accepted me with such open arms, made my whole journey of self-acceptance so much easier. I felt like I was breathing for the first time after twenty three years. It was like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt so incredibly light. When you hide such a huge truth about yourself not only from others but even from yourself you are bound to be an unhappy person; you are bound to have issues with yourself. 
The rest as they say is history. Four months after shifting to Bombay I went for my first queer meeting. There has been no looking back since. I helped in the organization and participated actively in the Queer Pride Week and March held from 21^st to 28^th January, 2012.

When I first move to Bombay seven months ago, I had had a lot of expectations out of this city. People say Mumbai is the city of dreams. One either hates Bombay or loves it to its core – right to the crowded locals to the new stench that’s peculiar and different with each passing station. 
I love Bombay because its the city I found myself.                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Because Bombay is Awesome

Yes, I have moved into a new city. I've moved to Bombay/Mumbai. It’s eerie how my life is trajectory is following the person because of whom I started blogging.

I miss Delhi to say the least. I've always held a strong belief that if you survive in Delhi you can survive in any city of the world. But frankly I had grown sick and tired of it in the last couple of months. All of my friends were doing their M.A and I was the only one working. I missed college and everything about it. The dhaba tree, the cafe, bhaiyyanji, rohtasji...I’d made up my mind to move back to Darjeeling if things continued the way they were. Thankfully Bombay happened.

Bombay is...welcoming. It’s loud and its concrete and you’re in the middle of an ocean of people but it’s also quiet and lonely and there's music and life everywhere. Bombay offers independence, anonymity, freedom. It’s the city of dreams and from the first ride in the Local, I have not looked back.

When I felt the sea breeze ruffle my hair the first time,  I knew life was going to be good. And Bombay has not disappointed me. 

This is a small tribute to the spirit of the city that never sleeps and everything it has given me.

 

The view for my friend's flat on the 11th floor.

I do not want to belong anywhere but wish to have a home someday

How does it feel

To be without a home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone

Bob Dylan

The definition and meaning of Home and Belonging vary with different individuals and circumstances. While traditionally it is for most the house they spent their childhood in, for others, they can be miles away from the place of their birth and family, staying alone in a new city, but feel at home even there. What is home but just a place to lay your head under a roof? What is home but just a safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned? What is home but just a place in our minds? I got a chance to debate on this because of a module called Critical Appreciation in my college.

I had heard of Vikram Seth but had never read anything he had written. But I share the eminence of having studied in the same Graduation College as him. I read his poem Homeless recently.

I moved to Mumbai very recently to pursue a diploma in Journalism and Mass Comm. from the Xavier Institute of Communications.

I was born and raised in Darjeeling, a four-district small hilly town in the northern part of West Bengal. Contrary to popular belief, the inhabitants of Darjeeling, though use the misnomer “Nepalese” to identify themselves, are in fact not from Nepal at all. It goes back to the times before the British entry into India. India as a whole, as a concept, as a nation was built only after 1947; even then, only after annexing princely states like Hyderabad, Kashmir, the north-east and most recently, Sikkim. As I identify myself belonging to this community, I too, for a long time used his term. The fact that there is in existence a separate country called Nepal,  whose inhabitants also identify themselves as Nepalese, their counters across the Indian border have been facing discrimination for a long time now based on the origins of their ancestry, and most importantly loyalty.
The truth is thus: the situation is much like that of the Punjabis living in Pakistan, and Muslims in the NWFP region, who after 1947, suddenly found themselves in a new nation, where they were a minority; in a land which until a few moments ago was their own but now someone else’s – a stranger in their own land.

There’s a vital difference between land and country.

I moved to Delhi in 2007 to pursue my graduation in history form St. Stephens College. I lived in the city for four years and faced more discrimination in that period for the way I looked than all of my life put together. I had never felt ‘different’ in Darjeeling. In Delhi, it was ensured that I felt this way at all times. A sense of being uprooted from a place and being tossed aside, in a place where no one wanted me, but a place my heart could never let go frustrated me. I struggled everyday to prove, by speaking in broken Hindi and sounding like a fool, that I too belonged there; that this was my homeland too. Despite the efforts I made, this sense of longing for a place to call my own, where I am accepted for who I am, never left me. I have struggled to possess something that is truly mine and no one else’s. I felt like no amount of effort I made was ever enough.

I think it was around this time that I decided may be I don’t want to belong to any country, and developed a more wholesome and universal view of the world around me. I decided not to belong to anyone. At once, I had severed all ties with all that I thought belonged to me, what I was, what I was brought up to believe was mine and just be part of everything - humanity at large.

This is where Franz Kafka’s short pieces – Home Coming and The Departure – suddenly started making sense to me and in a way, helped me cope with this certain pain and void of loss that I’d been experiencing for so long. I started to view myself as something that needs to go out into the world and not get tied down to ties that do nothing but divide people into categories of race, religion, sex, colour, sexual preferences; just like the master in the departure says “I don’t know, just out of here, just out of here, nothing else, it’s the only way I can reach my goal…out of here that’s my goal.”, I felt the familiar home stifling and suffocating me. It took me time to gain the strength to accept that ‘home’ is not where I belong. I am made to experience the world in its entirety. I can identify with this story because this is exactly how Bombay makes me feel. Bombay has unburdened me of the ties that I ever felt towards any caste or religion or community that I belonged to. I feel liberated and have opened up in my acceptance of everything that my life is, along with everything that comes with it. Until now, everything that I labeled myself as was given to me by default at birth, by my father, but Bombay has helped me recognize and carve my own identity. I feel like myself at last. I am truly happy here and this is where I feel most at home. the severance was so complete that I became aloof from everything that I had trusted was mine; I was forced to disown it; After this, when I went back home too, just like Kafka in home-coming, questions that had never arisen before “do you feel you belong, do you feel at home?” cropped up. Sadly, I heard my heart say “I don’t know, I feel most uncertain.”The disconnect was so strong that like Kafka I came to the sad realization, “what use can I be to them, what do I mean to them, even though I am the son of my father…’

But maybe this sense of joy that I feel after severing ties with the suffocating compartment of identities that I was being forced to live in is just a juvenile phase of rebellion, an insane destructive spree triggered because of the quarter-life crisis, a fight against the fear of turning out to be exactly like my birth expects of me. May be a day will come when I will regret and feel ashamed for having abandoned and disrespected my birth and heritage. But the only reason I can sway this far away, is because I know, that after all this has stopped fascinating me and exciting me, there is a place, where the just sight of it in print warms my heart. I can go back to this place whenever I please; whenever I want, without an ounce of doubt that it will welcome me back with both arms wide open, just as the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son taken from Luke Chapter 15, verses 11-32, in the Bible, accepts his irresponsible and wayward son.

Home is wherever you’re at peace. Five years ago, for me it was the place I was born in. Today, that is not the case. After a few years, what I identify as home today might change altogether.

This module and its chosen theme made me realize that I have become a person who craves for home but does not necessarily belong to anything or anyone. This stems from the basic realization that has come after staying away from home for more than five years and after having undergone the process of self-discovery, and can be best summed by what François Tremblay, (incidentally) a Canadian short track speed skater and five-time Olympic medalist once said “When you belong, it is based on the worst in you – racism, nationalism, hatred of strangers, excluvism. You feel belonging to ‘your country’ based on a contrast with ‘other countries’, you feel belonging to ‘your race’ in contrast to all others, you feel belonging to ‘your religion’ in contrast to ‘all others’.

So, I do not want to belong to anything but wish to have a home someday.

A Poem for my Friend

This one was written on 16th December, 2008. It was written for a very dear friend of mine. This girl stood by my side through so much shit I can’t even mention. People her like keep me grounded. A lot of things have happened since 2008; I have grown up, I have moved cities, I have met new people, but no one can ever take her place. I know, the poem isn't that great but the intent with which it was written, shows. At least that’s what I think ;)

There once was a girl

Who sat down to write

A letter to god

Complaining about her life.

She didn’t know where to start

Cuz to her it seemed

That everyone around her

Were ever so mean.

She spoke to god

In a fit of rage

“You stupid fool,

I hate you more and more every day.”

She was amazed as god spoke to her

Promising her things would be alright

Everything she complained about

He would set it right.

Years went by

And the girl grew up

To forget the chat

And move on Edith her life.

Then one fine day

While she sat down with her pal

It dawned on her slowly

God kept his word after all

Cuz here was a friend

Who had been by her side

Through her tantrums

And through her pain

Even though she had nothing to gain.

She had filled her life

With songs that she sang in her tune

She had been a constant supporter

And asked only love in return.

The grown up girl

Looked up to the sky and smiled

She winked at god

And a silent prayer to him did she confide.

Her friend saw her smiling to the sky

Bet yet said nothing.

She knew she was losing her mind

Yet decided to stick by her side.

Leaving her mental health aside

That Silent Night

It was about eleven in the night and my friends and I were just stepping out of Marine Lines station. After the heady dose of a very political play we had gone to watch, we decided that going Marine Drive would be the best way to relax. Except for a few taxis and a few stray dogs and us, the roads were more or less empty, usual for this part of the town this time of the night. Standing outside the station was a girl. She looked tense and lost and scared. She must not have been a day over eighteen. I could see that she was staring at our group. She’s probably just fascinated I thought. Judging from her clothes, she looked like someone who had just come from a village. But there are almost twelve million people in Bombay. She was just one of them. As we reached closer, I could make out that she was puckering her guts to probably speak to us. Her eyes were a bit moist, as if she is struggling to fight back tears. When we reached near her, she spoke; she said in Hindi, “Can I please borrow your phone? It’s very urgent. I am waiting for someone and he was supposed to be here half an hour ago. He’s still not here. I just want to check if everything is okay with him.” Having stayed in Delhi for more than four years, I am extremely careful as to who I speak with in the roads. What if I gave her my phone and she just ran with it? Looking back, I feel so petty about it. I could see that this girl was genuinely troubled. So I gave her my phone. My friends continued walking at a very slow pace while I stood next to her. The phone call was brief. From what I understood of the conversation, the man who she was waiting for was ten minutes away and would be there soon. When she gave back the phone to me, her entire face had changed. She was beaming. The change from a girl with worry lines on her forehead to this shiny bright face was unnaturally drastic. She thanked me again and again for helping her. I told her it wasn’t a big deal and moved on to catch up with my friends.

After about five minutes or so we heard a gut wrenching scream of a girl somewhere. We all looked around, trying to figure out where the scream was coming from. The roads were empty and we couldn’t see anything but the scream was moving closer and closer. Just then, I saw her. I saw the girl who had borrowed my phone outside the station. Even from a distance I could make out it was her because of the bright yellow kurta that she was wearing. My heart stopped beating for a few seconds, as I saw her emerge from under the shadows of the flyover and run haphazardly on the roads just shouting and screaming for help. We just froze where we were standing. It just seemed to be too unreal to be true. She was crying and her voice was going hoarse from all the shouting. She screamed as she ran. She screamed “Tum jhoothe ho..." "Liar. You are a liar.” “Bachao Bachao”Help! Help! It looked like she was screaming for the walls of the buildings around, for the roads to help her. She obviously had no idea which direction to run to because she just ran around in circles. I had just about managed to register this when I saw two men running after her. They caught up with her and they beat her. I was too dumbfounded to do anything. She managed to escape their hold again and ran. And this time she ran directly towards us. She landed on me and she dug her nails into my forearms just begging to help her. The two men caught up again and dragged her by the hair and pulled her away from me. My mind wasn’t even working. I just didn’t know what to do. We were a group of four girls. How could we possibly fight these two men? One of them was really tall and well built, like a bouncer. The other one was relatively younger but at that moment looked like an animal to me for the savagery that he was carrying out. She kept shouting “Tum jhoothe ho, makkar ho.” You are a liar “Maine tumhare upar bharosa kiya tha" I trusted you.

There was a police jeep standing with some constables chitchatting inside it. They were acting as if there was nothing happening there. I ran to them and shouted at them and told them to rescue the girl. Even then, they came slowly trolling all the way. I could see from the corner of my mind, those men beating that girl. By the time the police stopped the two men; the girl was hurt and bruised everywhere. Quite a small crowd had formed. At this very moment, out of nowhere a fat burly woman in a burkha entered the scene and told the police that the girl in question was in fact her daughter and that she had run away from home and that the two men were her brothers. All this while the girl just kept screaming and repeating, “She is not my mother. I have never seen her before…” each and every person standing in that crowd that night knew exactly what was happening. But nobody, absolutely nobody, including me and my friends did anything to help her. She kept pleading for help and I just stood there doing nothing. I have never felt more incompetent in my life.

The crowd insisted that the matter be taken to the police station. The three people agreed they would do that on the condition that no one from the crowd would accompany them. The police agreed to. So they took her way. They put her in a taxi and took her away.

She kept shouting “Main in logon ko nahi jaanti.” I don’t know these people. She screamed and cried and pleaded. But no one did anything.

When I came back home that night, I wept. I wept because I felt helpless.

I could imagine her that someone had probably duped her, someone had promised her marriage and family and a happy life in the big city. I could imagine how her heart must've broken into a million pieces when she finally realized that her husband had in fact sold her off. 

And I can imagine her now; probably locked up in some hole somewhere, far away from the light, getting beaten and raped into submission every day.

Although India has more than 2500 registered NGOs working for the cause of human trafficking and prostitution, and though the government spends millions each year to stop it, it still goes on.

It’s all in vain.

If You Ask

I'm not exactly a poet but I discovered this long forgotten poem. I'd written when I was maaadly in love with someone in the second year of college. Love does that. It makes a poet out of everyone. Note that the poem is completely and wholly about and for that person so it probably wont even make sense.

This one was written on 5th December, 2008. I have not changed the words or the style. It is just an eighteen-year-old kid in Love. Yes. It was love.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I hope you are happy Poh-Poh.

If You Ask

If you asked me how much I love you,

I'd say:

"I love you so much, that if I

knew how to play the guitar, I'd

sing love songs for you, till I get

hoarse."

If you asked me how much I care,

I'd say:

"I care for you so much that if

you told me to cook for you everyday-

I would."

If you asked me how much...

Then, I'd stop you ask you:

"Can you tell me how much love does the

body hold for its soul?

Can you tell me how much love do the

flowers hold for the sun?

Can you tell me how much love

a caged bird holds for the open...?

At this moment you'd stare at

me with those big starry eyes of yours

that sets my heart in an overdrive...

Imagine books without pages,

Pens without ink,

Clouds without rain.

The corners of your lips are taking a

slight curve now...my hearts melting now.

"I'd stay awake for you all night,

writing poems for you

if you asked me to;

I'd walk a thousand miles for you,

if you asked me to."

The sadist in you, would come up

for air right about this time,

and you'd ask:

"Well, would you give your life for me?"

to which I'd reply "No"

Confusion and anger on your face,

Love and smile on mine.

"No, I wouldn't give my life for you;

because I want to spend my life with you."

Two Words : Monica Dogra

She is like a woman possessed, a goddess; she makes love to music on stage!
Watch this --
My Roots -Shaair + Func