The Delhi High Court order on legalizing Gay and Lesbian conjugal rights shall go down as a landmark judgment in India. This changes the way LAW has been looking at these special people. Well, they don’t like to be called as special people; they want themselves to be called “normal” people. In Psychology we have learnt that a sane person among a group of insane people is known as an “abnormal”. So homosexuality being “abnormal” has to be accepted. Abnormal because the same sex “normally” do not attract.
Most of us are very much aware of this phenomenon and have been always looking at it with much criticism or at least has generated curious interests in us over the years. My wife was of the opinion that the Delhi High Court verdict was not good and that it is a bad influence on the society.
I couldn’t answer her immediately before I analysed it myself. As we experience it ourselves, we are normally attracted towards the opposite sex. So if someone has to be attracted to the same sex, imagine what would be going on in his or her minds. It would be a torture. It would be around puberty that they would realize that they are not like their peers. It would be so confusing for them. As if they are wearing an outfit of those cartoon characters in Disney world acting to be a Mickey Mouse or Goofy or Donald Duck. These people have to “Act” like the sexuality of the person they were Born as. They would not come out of their cocoon so easily because of the social stigma. They are forcefully married off. They turn their marriages into disaster.
I distinctly remember a guy during my college days who behaved like a girl. The way he Talked, walked etc., and we used to make fun of him. I think men still couldn’t hide much of their anxiety but a girl definitely had to act girlish even if she had a lesbian tendency.
I used to run this restaurant in Mumbai way back in 1996 at the Fort area. It was a small shack with a huge vacant space in front. There was this gang of kannada speaking Hijras who used to frequent my restaurant every Saturday evening. They used to come to my place every Saturday evening to take rest and have a cup of tea and water after a grueling day of clapping and begging. The inquisitiveness in us always led us to have a long conversation with them. They were like any of us emotionally. They were very well behaved and talked so normally that we started respecting them like any other customer of ours.
We used to ask them a range of questions from raunchy ones like, whether they had a penis, or how did they get those breasts to questions about their family etc., They used to tactfully avoid questions relating to their physicality. But when we talk about their Families, they used to get very emotional. Most of them would have left their homes voluntarily as they thought themselves as misfits in their society. Some of them were brought to Mumbai by their families themselves. There were times some of them would cry remembering their near and dear ones. They missed their villages; they missed their parents, relatives, friends, brothers and sisters. Most of them kept contact with their families back home. Some of them used to send money every month to their families and they used to make me write the Postal Orders. Very few of them did travel to their native places. It was an experience beyond explanation. Few of the older Hijras acted so motherly.
But end of the day they would agree on one point, that is they are not what they are out of choice but, it was the God’s wish that they were born so. That’s exactly my point and the answer to my wife’s question. It is not someone’s choice. So if you see homosexuals openly in your society that definitely doesn’t influence the general society. It’s not like smoking or drinking where the other person is influenced and would like to try it. Having sex with the same gender would repulse most of us. I wouldn’t go to bed with John Abraham for a million dollars… err… for a million dollars.....;-)
Anyways, I think it is time we accepted this tweaked up species among us and gave them their rightful place. All our religious leaders need to understand this. Homosexuality is definitely abnormal but not a disease, which can be cured with some yogasana or herbal medicine. It has been there in the human society since ages and it is well documented.
Come on, they were born that way not out of choice. Given a choice they would be what they are born as.
