This is another very well written column by Bachi Karkaria, who has been a friend and supporter of the movement within the TOI family for a long time now. - Aditya B ----------------------------
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/B_Karkaria_Home_truths_about_homos/articleshow/3535311.cms We aren't called hetero sapiens, are we? Then why this fear, revulsion, suspicion and just plain bloodymindedness over the homosexual? Last week, a celebrity engagement was broken off because, hissed the grapevine, he was gay. Imagine the heartbreak of the lovely woman all mentally mehendied, but now smeared with snigger. But also imagine the plight of the young man trapped between social izzat and supposed sexual orientation. It's naive to demand, "Why the hell didn't he come out with it earlier?" The answer is there for all to hear in the queer notions of immorality and perversion expressed by the government in the Delhi high court. At least, in this case the alleged revelation was made before the event, faced up to, and sensible damage control measures taken. Mubarak ho. Usually, all parties go into paralytic denial. Appearances are maintained, even obligatory offspring<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/B_Karkaria_Home_truths_about_homos/articleshow/3535311.cms#>sired, but privately the gay guy also goes his own sexual way. The woman may suspect, but she swallows the pill quietly. In our skewed perspective, losing a husband to the Other Man is even more humiliating. The scenario plays itself out behind scores of fig leaves, gilded and non. Sometimes the farce collapses, and the informal is formalised. The man takes up residence with his lover; the woman manages as best she can. I'm not sitting in judgement for I have come to realise that homosexual relationships are not just about serial lust, whatever the promiscuous stereotypes of the shadowy world of 'those dirty queers'. I have been stunned and humbled by the depth of the emotional involvement. Believe me, the love<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/B_Karkaria_Home_truths_about_homos/articleshow/3535311.cms#>that dares not speak its name is sometimes far more true than the one that so casually trips off our tongue. The recent celebrity break-up may be a commendable exception, but, i repeat, homosexuality is commoner than we want to believe. For the past eight months, I have been doing an emotional-advice column in Mumbai Mirror and some of its other-city editions. Earlier, I had played Agony Aunt on the Talk Radio of Indiatimes. And in my much longer tenure as a journalist, I have been exposed to the raw wounds of the young - and middle-aged. In all these encounters, same-sex desire has surfaced with jaw-dropping, gob-smacking, smugness-shattering regularity. It is a deeper angst because it has had to remain subterranean - and so has festered. Like AIDS, homosexuality is not a deadly disease. The real killers are the opportunistic infections. In the case of gays, these are social, legal and not restricted to the sleazy cop harassing poor guys doing nothing more criminal that satisfying their basic natural instincts. My awed salaams to the health minister for so bravely throwing his weight against the terrorising Section 377 IPC. Of course, it's not only A Man Thing. The very day that I heard about the rumoured cause of the broken celebrity engagement, I had emailed my next Mirror advice on the very same dilemma. In this case it was the heartfelt cry of a young woman whose long-time lesbian love was being forcibly married off. I had expressed greater concern for the girl who would be trapped in an emotionally and physically mauling relationship. The parental 'face' that it was meant to 'save' would be lost much more when the truth surfaced. I had urged my advice-seeker to make her lover summon the courage to refuse to enter a marriage which would leave no party unscathed. But I also knew that my counsel was useless. Convention is not just a stubborn old crone, it is also congenitally deaf. For how long will all of us be blind? Alec Smart said: "No stains, no blame for Modi government. Should we call it the Nonovati Commission?"
