freedom from

freedom from love,heartbreak, emotions, feelings, valentines day, cards, candy, having a crush, songs, poetry, pain, holding hands, walks in the park, sharing a soda, champagne & strawberry, lovers, boyfriends, sex, sexy legs, ryan, thoughts about him, missing him, waiting, wanting to have that one kiss, feeling stupid, feeling obsessive, feeling unwanted, darkness, despair, elation, ecstasy, confusion, felling fucked up, bitch called life

Does that count as ...coming out?

I've been meaning to write a post about this for the past few weeks but never got to do it .... So here it is .........


Well, about two and a half weeks ago, while my cousins were over me and my bro had taken them to watch a movie. Well, the movie was horrible, and by the time we came out of the theater, we were quite hungry. However, it was a bit late in the night. So we decided to eat in one of the joints around the theater. So while my suggestions for TGIF and a sushi bar were ruled out my brother saw this new place which had opened up, and which served, what else but Indian food. So we went in their restaurant. Well, it was empty but we could hear music from their nightclub. Since we were with my cousins, my brother went in to see. He came out within a few seconds and told us that we are going someplace else. I was surprised and asked him what's wrong. He didn't say anything but until we were downstairs. So, after being question so much by the others mu brother spilled the beans. He said that there were Gay people dancing in there. I was like WHAT? He said yeah, there were Gay people in there. So I said why did you run out? He said that there were Gay people. I said let's go back there. He said we'll go someplace else.
Then I launched into a speech about homosexuality and homophobia and stuff. So my bro asks me, "Are you Gay?", I answered (quite unconvincingly, I might add) "Are you crazy?". He then said "You are so gay!!". I just smiled weakly. I said I just don't like your phobic attitude and then my cousins changed the subject and we headed to have some Chinese.

So now, as you might ask, why didn't I confirm my brother's suspicion there and then? Well the reason was that my cousins were there with me. And they are the biggest gossip mongers I have ever seen. And they are quite homophobic. And that was not the place. I wanted to tell him one on one.

Having said that, I think on some level my brother knows. Why I say that is because when I saw into his eyes, it was like he knew. Also, a few years ago, when I was in college, he was using my computer and come across a video of naked guys. No it wasn't porn. And some pictures. So he asked me if I was gay and I said I am building a gay website and getting paid for it. There was no website. So, he kind of knows. Plus he hasn't seen me talk about a girlfriend in a long time. And a few months ago, he asked me if I was a virgin and I said something like not been to fourth base with a woman. Something like that. So he HAS to know on some level.

It's not that I don't want him to know. I want everyone I know to know. I don't bother about the consequences. Well, at least sometimes. And I will tell him when it is time. Like when I told my mom. When I had that gut feeling. So when I have that, I will tell him.

But, to my credit, I did NOT get all defensive. I just smiled like a jackass. So here it is, am almost pseudo, coming out.

Well I did something ...

It may sound stupid to some people, but I did do something after posting all that. I sent an email to the tonight show. Not a hate mail, but I did show my displeasure at using gay as an adjective and as a punchline. And I know that this will not affect them, and things will continue as they are, but I will keep going after them.

If anyone's interested, the email is tonightshowfeedback@nbcuni.com .

Remember, no hate mail, just a normal expression of your view. Just a start. It's time for a real change. I usually don't bother so much about anyone else but me, but this is bigger than me. This is bigger than all of us. I have read many people talk about acceptance. Many people write about how they need to be heard; many people write about how we need to become model citizens and break the stereotype. Well it is time to do something about it. Spread the word. Talk to people about it. Make yourself heard. I know it's very cliche and very easy to say things, but change begins with one person. We need to get the message out there. Like it or not, alone or not, I am still going to do something. It's time to walk the walk.

It's time to be heard

I know I blog about a lot of frivolous stuff sometimes and it's hard to imagine someone like me thinking about someone else but today I read something that really infuriated me.

I know I am late in getting to know this, but I just read today about the murder of 15 y.o. Lawrence King because he was gay. Larry, as Lawrence was fondly called, asked a boy to be his valentine, and the boy, so horrified at being asked out by someone of the same sex, shot Larry.

In this day and age, a 15 y.o. boy was shot because he was Gay. Somewhere, somehow there was a message sent to the kid that liking someone of the same sex is so horrible, is so bad, is so miserable, that the person has to be shot.

What gets to me more is that the apathy of the mainstream media in ignoring this.

I read an article by Tanene Allison in the Fog City Journal, about how apathetic the attitude of all the media outlets was.:

Youth groups across the country began holding marches in King’s honor. Details of his death was spread virally on youth-dominated, Facebook. Queer media outlets bubbled over with coverage of the story. The mainstream media remained silent.

Only now, two weeks after King’s murder, is the mainstream media providing coverage of the story. All of those who did not cover the story when it was, well, news, are now covering how it was a story no one else covered either.

The New York Times took four days before running an AP snippet on the murder, and eleven days before they wrote their first story.

MTV News, a leader in coverage of youth issues, ran its first story on King nine days after the murder.

Also, she quotes Anderson Copper's blog who does ask some valid questions:

Tonight… we are focusing on a story that hasn’t received the attention it deserves…According to many accounts, he had been bullied repeatedly, and some parents have even claimed students knew of threats to Lawrence’s life. At this point it doesn’t seem clear how much school officials knew of the bullying, but a full investigation needs to be done. If this had been an African-American student bullied by a teenage skinhead, would it have received more attention?

“Would school officials have taken it more seriously if it had been a Christian campus leader attacked by another student because of his/her religious beliefs? I don’t have the answers to those questions, but I do think they are worth asking.

However, as another writer Dipyan Gupta from the Huffington Post notes, the story was completely cut from the Podcast of the show:

Cooper says that his show is going to be looking into the facts surrounding King's murder, and bring on board Dr. Charles Sophy, the medical director of the LA County Department of Children and Family Services. Wonderful! That sounds interesting. I immediately rushed to CNN's site and downloaded a podcast of last night's show. The clip included routine coverage of the impending elections, a section on Ralph Nader, North Korea, and a 4 year-old who sings the Beatles. But Lawrence King and the tragic, confusing circumstances surrounding his death were conspicuously absent.

Now, I realize that when one cuts an hour-long show down to 24 minutes and 27 seconds, some sacrifices must be made. As a former trainee correspondent at CNN's Indian Broadcasting Network (CNN IBN) in New Delhi, I am well aware of the effort that goes into making sure that every show is a balance of serious and feel-good stories. But honestly, excluding this murder from your podcast while giving ample room to a kid singing in his underwear (not to mention the never ending banter between Cooper and Erica Hill)? This, after having just blogged about how the story has been ignored by the press? That's a terrible lapse of judgment.

What really gets to me is that it's 2008 and people think it's okay not to report gay issues and or delay or in signify their coverage. The message that the parents, the religious right and the media is sending out is that if someone gets killed just for being gay, just for being true to yourself, just for attempting to be happy and if they get shot, it's not such a bad thing.

Ellen DeGeneres also said a few things on her show:


I understand what she means that when she says that being gay is the punchline for many monologues. In fact Jay Leno does a lot of jokes daily in which being gay is the punchline. For many mainstream artists whether they are rappers , comedians being gay is a punchline or a way to dis someone.
I usually do not mind such jokes cause I dismiss them and they don't bother me but when I think about it in context, it really does play a part. When we say it's okay to laugh at someone because of their orientation, it's a bad message we are sending out to a little gay kid in living in a small town surrounded by homophobic people, who is afraid to come out. This is one of the reasons that it takes time for gay people to accept themselves. I remember being at that age and feeling so guilty and so depressed. Now I know that was stupid. But how do we get through to the little kids who are going through the same thing that we did. We need to tell them that it's OK to be yourself, that it's more than OK to try to be happy.

I don't know what I can do but I really am going to do something. I personally do not care whether I get the acceptance of anyone or not. I am fine with who I am, what I want to be and am ready to accept the consequences.

Can we do something?

Yes, we can. We can do a lot of things. We as a community can boycott shows which make being gay a punchline, we can boycott products which they promote. I know it can be insignificant most of the time, but we even one person does something, it goes a long way. I know I'm sounding really idealistic right now, but I will follow through on this. There are a lot of problems in everybody's life. I have suffered in my teens because I was gay. If I can even help one kid live his teen years without the pain, without the anguish, it would be the best thing I could ever do.

To show your support for Lawrence King you can visit http://www.rememberinglawrence.org .

The age old question .....

And we talk about love. Can we describe it? Dow we know what it means? This whole concept of love. What does it mean exactly. That you want to love someone, hold them close, talk to them, spend each moment of the day with them?

Isn't it mostly superficial? Kind of a facade? We see someone, sparks fly and then we start by saying we have feelings for them which turns into liking them and ultimately we say that we love them. On most occasions we don't act on it. We keep "loving" them but the other person has no idea. The other person has no means to know that each of their actions will be dissected, mulled over and make us arrive at a conclusion. Most of the time, it is left unsaid. We can't act on it for a million reasons. It can be that they may be with someone, or we may presume that they don't have these feelings or they are not right for you etc. etc. Then we start convincing ourselves to get "over" them. We say "Okay, this is not going to happen. That person will not return your love. So get over it. Stop loving them. They are not right for you".

So do we get over them? Does our feeling that were originally there just vanish. Just disappear? Or do we bottle our feelings and keep them in a little compartment in our head and try to find the next target of our unreturned love?

We make up excuses, proses to convince ourselves. We tell ourselves that true love is sacrifice. We tell ourselves that we should be happy for them as long as they are happy. We tell ourselves that if you truly love something, set it free, if it comes back to you it was meant for you if it doesn't then it wasn't meant for you anyway. Really? If it wasn't meant for me, why did I like it in the first go.

We tell ourselves that we are better off without them. We convince ourselves that we don't love them anymore. Then suddenly, out of the blue, they speak to us. Like a whisper in the ear. Then everything comes rushing back. All the emotions. All the feelings. Everything we had kept bottled up. And then we start again .... You're better of without them we tell ourselves, there are many other fish in the sea we remind ourselves. But we lose all that when they talk to us or we see them. Suddenly, they are all we can think about. They spoke to us. They thought about us. The whole dissection process begins again.

And then after a few moments have passed, .......... they are not right for you ........

The missed kiss chronicles Part 1

Trust me to have a dramatic name for almost every post. Over the recent past I have noticed that gay kisses are being censored on Indian television. They used to be shown earlier but somehow, they are censored nowadays. Now, I am no activist, nor do I usually do this on my blog, but just to make a point, here are a few gay kisses that were censored on Indian television. Now, these are the only ones I could find yet, thus this is part 1.

Brothers & Sisters:








Desperate Housewives:





Broken Hearts Club:



Dawson's Creek:


You can't stop us from watching them people. We're here, we're queer, get used to it.

The fallen angel

And there stood Zubin, on the balcony outside his room, reflecting on his world. He saw his family, his house, his surroundings. Everything was glowing. Good vibes were emanating from everything and everyone. There was celebration on everyone’s mind. After all, it was Zubin’s 25^th birthday.

However, no one knew of the turmoil inside of Zubin. The tsunami inside his mind. If only they knew. Would everything still be the same?

He looked at the entrance to his house. Would his sherpa still salute him everytime he comes home from anywhere? Would the domestic help, Govind, still be grateful to him for helping him save his father’s life? If only they knew.

Would his two pets, still come running to him while wagging their tail, happy to see him?

Would his parents still be proud of him? Would his sister, who once had joked that if that was true, she would get sleepless nights, love him like she did for the past twenty five years? If only they knew. Would his two nephews, playing with each other right now, who he loves like his own children, still love and respect him and come to him with their childish demands? If only they knew.

Would his own brother, older, the one who with whom he always stood by through thick and thin, with whom he always acted as the elder, mature one, still help him shop, take care of all his responsibilities, make fun of him, fight for him with the parents? If only they knew.

Would his friends, with whom he shared his first drink, his first smoke, his first joint, the aborted attempt to bed a stripper, still come to him with their problems? If only they knew.

Then Zubin saw his team members from his office, waving at him, who look up to him in every crisis, personal or professional? Would they still respect him in the same way? Would they still talk about him with the same reverence that they do now? Would they still be in awe of him? If only they knew.

Does he stand to lose everything he worked for, everyone he loves, thought Zubin. He didn’t know the answer. There was nothing, nothing he could do about it. He was born this way. He had been fighting this for so long. He had to be true to himself now. He owed it to himself. If this was what fate had in store for him, then so be it. If only they knew.

He had a trillion questions. Would he have to leave his home? Would he have to leave the city so that his parents don’t have to feel ashamed in front of their friends? Would his sister be telling her nephews that they can’t speak to their beloved Zubin Uncle anymore? Would he be nothing more than an object of ridicule at the company he helped build?

He wouldn’t try to answer these questions. Leave them to fate. If only they knew.

If only they knew, that he was gay.

Yes he did not want to marry a beautiful woman and settle down and have those fifteen kids he so often talks about. He would break the promise to his mother of naming his first born after his dad. He would never have his own wife to spoil, as his friends had predicted he would. If only they knew.

He would just always be the fallen angel. Fallen from grace in front of his parents, his siblings, his friends and his co workers.

He’s a freak, they would say, but he would know that isn’t true.

Who would carry on you family name, his dad would ask. I will adopt dad, Zubin would say.

Who would cook for you, his mom would ask. I’d hire a dozen cooks ma, would be Zubin’s response.

Did you ever er…fancy me? , his best friend would ask. No way dude, you’re not my type, Zubin would reply.

But..But you are so normal ….his co-workers would say. All of us are, would be Zubin’s response.

You’re such a girl would be what his brother would say. At least I have the balls to be myself is what Zubin would snap back at him with.

Why Zubin? Why can’t you love a girl? would be the unsaid question on their mind.

He would then turn his back and walk out of the room, walk out of their lives. Forever. Would they miss him? Would they miss his jokes? Would they miss his words, his emotional scrawls on their cards? Would they miss his advice which they always sought when they are stuck with life? Would they miss his way of making you feel that everything is just going to be fine? Would they be ready to sacrifice all that? Just because he was gay?

But he would be fine. God would take care of him. That he knew.