A
crossed telephone line changed Nalin’s life.
It was the early 1980’s, and Nalin, a Gay man living in Delhi, India’s capital city, felt lost and lonely. He knew there were obviously other Gay men around him, but he didn’t know how to find them other than by cruising Connaught Place, the center of Old Delhi. Nalin was reluctant to cruise there, fearful of being pickpocketed, or worse, nabbed by police. Besides, the cruisy areas were all about sex. Nalin wanted some lasting Gay friendships as well.
Then one day his telephone line got crossed, and he struck up a conversation with the stranger on the other end, named Mahijit. The two not only became close friends, but today they are business partners, selling antique textiles in Sunder Nagar Market, one of Delhi’s most fashionable antique spots.
Furthermore, Mahijit introduced Nalin to a network of Gay friends, who primarily socialized through private parties. “This was my link to the Gay world,” says Nalin. “This is what saved me.” Such get-togethers are still the most common way for Gay men to meet in India. Some of the parties are huge, including a famous one on a farm on the outskirts of the city. For a small fee, Gay men in throngs dance all weekend, either paying to stay in the farmhouse or pitching tents on the farm property.
I meet Nalin, Mahijit, and a third friend named Sunil, at a dinner arranged through David Rubin, president of David Tours, a Gay travel company in Corona del Mar, California. Nalin, 45, Mahijit, 59, and Sunil, 55—who asked that their last names not be used—are part of this network. While on my three and a half week trip to India with DavidTours, I met other Gay men, and even a Lesbian, who were not part of Rubin’s circuit. But these three men stuck out as special for one important reason: Despite being part of a generation where homosexuality was unspoken, they managed to resist the daunting social pressure to marry and have children.
While the pressure for Gay men to marry is perhaps a universal one, particularly among the mature generation, it’s hard to over-emphasize the weight of that pressure in a country like India, where the parents are in charge of arranged marriages, where intergenerational families live together under the same roof, and where tradition is so deeply entrenched into daily life that disobeying the wishes of your parents—even if you are an adult yourself—is akin to revolution.
Most other Gay men I met in India who were over 30 years old were married and leading secret Gay lives on the side. Even most of the ones under 30 who were not married worried out loud that they may not be able to avoid such a fate. And yet somehow, these three men managed to buck the odds and find the courage to live their own Gay lives.
Nalin is a calm, quiet man with coal black hair that is graying at the temples. From behind his stylish square glasses, he speaks in a soft, tempered voice. He is the ying to his business partner’s yang: Mahijit is a diminutive but flamboyant man who wears a turban and flashy jewelry. Sunil, an attorney who argues cases before the equivalent of India’s Supreme Court, is confident and broad-shouldered with thick black hair.
As we speak, Nalin continually reminds me that “we are a rare exception, we are not the rule” for Gay men in India. He attributes his ability to avoid marriage directly to the fact that he lives in a different city than the one he grew up in, and he is “out of the reach” of his family. He has told his sister he is Gay, but his mother, even now “wishes me to marry.”
Sunil laughs knowingly at the sentiment, noting that even at his age, “my mother never gives up hope someday I will marry.” Sunil’s parents live in the same building he does, but they have their own apartment, rather than sharing the same living space, as is typical in India. “But we still have our meals together,” he says. ‘We are still tied together.”
In the past, he says, he has had “confrontations of an unimaginable magnitude” with his parents, particularly his mother, over the issue of marriage. He had particular pressure on him to marry since he is the only son, and thus the one who was supposed to produce offspring to carry on his family’s name.
And it didn’t help that he was the only man who remained unmarried that his parents ever knew. “Until recently, there’s been virtually no visibility for Gay people,” he says. “People in my parents generation cannot hardly comprehend what it means.”
“Very, very few Gay men did not succumb to the pressures to get married,” he says. “But I’d see how unhappy my friends who did this were down the line. So I sat back and tried to reflect what my life would be like if I married. I decided it would be intolerable.”
Even today, the overwhelming majority of Gay men in India still end up getting married. But Sunil has hope that things are changing, even if with glacial slowness.
He sees the change and the hope when he goes to the private parties that are the landmark of Indian Gay life. “Today, there are so many more young people coming to the parties, and they are so much more confident than we were at that age. I hope that more of them can escape forced marriages and lead their own lives.”
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It was the early 1980’s, and Nalin, a Gay man living in Delhi, India’s capital city, felt lost and lonely. He knew there were obviously other Gay men around him, but he didn’t know how to find them other than by cruising Connaught Place, the center of Old Delhi. Nalin was reluctant to cruise there, fearful of being pickpocketed, or worse, nabbed by police. Besides, the cruisy areas were all about sex. Nalin wanted some lasting Gay friendships as well.
Then one day his telephone line got crossed, and he struck up a conversation with the stranger on the other end, named Mahijit. The two not only became close friends, but today they are business partners, selling antique textiles in Sunder Nagar Market, one of Delhi’s most fashionable antique spots.
Furthermore, Mahijit introduced Nalin to a network of Gay friends, who primarily socialized through private parties. “This was my link to the Gay world,” says Nalin. “This is what saved me.” Such get-togethers are still the most common way for Gay men to meet in India. Some of the parties are huge, including a famous one on a farm on the outskirts of the city. For a small fee, Gay men in throngs dance all weekend, either paying to stay in the farmhouse or pitching tents on the farm property.
I meet Nalin, Mahijit, and a third friend named Sunil, at a dinner arranged through David Rubin, president of David Tours, a Gay travel company in Corona del Mar, California. Nalin, 45, Mahijit, 59, and Sunil, 55—who asked that their last names not be used—are part of this network. While on my three and a half week trip to India with DavidTours, I met other Gay men, and even a Lesbian, who were not part of Rubin’s circuit. But these three men stuck out as special for one important reason: Despite being part of a generation where homosexuality was unspoken, they managed to resist the daunting social pressure to marry and have children.
While the pressure for Gay men to marry is perhaps a universal one, particularly among the mature generation, it’s hard to over-emphasize the weight of that pressure in a country like India, where the parents are in charge of arranged marriages, where intergenerational families live together under the same roof, and where tradition is so deeply entrenched into daily life that disobeying the wishes of your parents—even if you are an adult yourself—is akin to revolution.
Most other Gay men I met in India who were over 30 years old were married and leading secret Gay lives on the side. Even most of the ones under 30 who were not married worried out loud that they may not be able to avoid such a fate. And yet somehow, these three men managed to buck the odds and find the courage to live their own Gay lives.
Nalin is a calm, quiet man with coal black hair that is graying at the temples. From behind his stylish square glasses, he speaks in a soft, tempered voice. He is the ying to his business partner’s yang: Mahijit is a diminutive but flamboyant man who wears a turban and flashy jewelry. Sunil, an attorney who argues cases before the equivalent of India’s Supreme Court, is confident and broad-shouldered with thick black hair.
As we speak, Nalin continually reminds me that “we are a rare exception, we are not the rule” for Gay men in India. He attributes his ability to avoid marriage directly to the fact that he lives in a different city than the one he grew up in, and he is “out of the reach” of his family. He has told his sister he is Gay, but his mother, even now “wishes me to marry.”
Sunil laughs knowingly at the sentiment, noting that even at his age, “my mother never gives up hope someday I will marry.” Sunil’s parents live in the same building he does, but they have their own apartment, rather than sharing the same living space, as is typical in India. “But we still have our meals together,” he says. ‘We are still tied together.”
In the past, he says, he has had “confrontations of an unimaginable magnitude” with his parents, particularly his mother, over the issue of marriage. He had particular pressure on him to marry since he is the only son, and thus the one who was supposed to produce offspring to carry on his family’s name.
And it didn’t help that he was the only man who remained unmarried that his parents ever knew. “Until recently, there’s been virtually no visibility for Gay people,” he says. “People in my parents generation cannot hardly comprehend what it means.”
“Very, very few Gay men did not succumb to the pressures to get married,” he says. “But I’d see how unhappy my friends who did this were down the line. So I sat back and tried to reflect what my life would be like if I married. I decided it would be intolerable.”
Even today, the overwhelming majority of Gay men in India still end up getting married. But Sunil has hope that things are changing, even if with glacial slowness.
He sees the change and the hope when he goes to the private parties that are the landmark of Indian Gay life. “Today, there are so many more young people coming to the parties, and they are so much more confident than we were at that age. I hope that more of them can escape forced marriages and lead their own lives.”
Care to comment? Send a letter to the editor
