The Day You Learn to Love Yourself

This article has been submitted by Neer Varshney for the CLATGyan Blog Post Writing Competition. If you think this article is a good read, ‘Like’ this article on Facebook (the button is at the bottom of this piece) or post a comment using the ‘comments’ section below.

Standing on the gigantic Titanic, stalking the new moon, a shimmering crescent in the dark sky, I can feel an idyllic sensation in my ears, of the softness of the cool breeze blowing at the sea. It is darker than usual, and there are lesser stars in the sky.
The moon looks familiar; it reminds me of something, a smile, a rabbit-y smile to be precise. A broad smile on a cute shiny face, with the front two teeth displaying their optimum glory. And when those lips show more sign of life by speaking in the gentlest tone imaginable, they dispel my senses to another world.

It has always surprised me how we vacillate from a thing to another in our dreams, but who is to say. The brain (or whosoever owns the department of dreams) decided to remind me that I have to write CLAT in less than a week, and this was not at all an encouraging thought. I don’t know what finally influenced me to take law entrances after banging my head in IITJEE for nearly 3 years, but I am not ready to take them, neither mentally nor theoretically. But I don’t want to get to that story, what’s the point in reiterating a tale that is so common that people don’t even want to hear it anymore.

In the four months I had, I have been able to discover all I wanted to know before opting for law. And if someone apart from me deserves credit for this feat, then that would be a paper-thin fourth year student at NALSAR( and his team) for creating a platform capable enough of guiding the future legal eagles (/crows/owls/ox/monkeys/ okay I was going to stop!).

The moon is visible again but is murky. I am searching for the smile again, but can’t find it; it gives me a feeling of despair, perhaps I don’t deserve that smile, or maybe I was wrong to even fall in love with that smile, probably because this smile belonged to a boy. From ‘watching lesbian porn’ to ‘Google-ing how to turn straight’, nothing had seemed to work.

Perhaps I should die. I didn’t get good marks in boards, I am not going to make it to any of the top college, and I am not normal, I am gay. Standing on the highest and a lonely floor of a fort in Delhi, doing all the reasoning to conclude if I deserve to live or not, all I could do in the end was to cry the loudest. I couldn’t jump, I don’t think so if it was my mother’s love which held me back, but the hope, the hope that everything will be fine, one day. That day, one thing was decided, if life is difficult either way, why not be brave and live the way I like rather than to succumb from others’ perception of what I should be.

In a country of traditions, it is a challenge to be different. Though it is folly to expect ‘LGBT’ (it is not the first time you’re coming across this word, isn’t it?)  rights from a country, who fails to give the same rights to its women, but still change needs to come, and I shall give my contribution towards it.

It is tough to understand, how someone’s choice of spending life with a person of the same sex seems more disgusting and ‘needed to be abolished’ than the entire ruckus that exists in our society. It is difficult to understand why this country is turning into a motley group of homophobes, for the old it is a matter of blasphemy and for the young, bullying. And it is even more difficult to understand how we expect everyone else than us to be perfect, rather than not accepting them for what they are!

It is a pity that we, who brag about how great and accomplished we are, fails to give right and justice to our own people. We, who curse British for enslaving us, have enslaved ourselves with our religion and culture.

The breeze is blowing again; it took away with it the dark clouds, the clouds of hopelessness and of fear. After losing every hope, so many times, life still seems to be binding, and only for one person, who I need not name, who loves me the most. And I know you’re never going to stop loving me, no matter what I do, but still the fear of letting you down creeps back in. I await a day, when I tell you this, and you’ll tell me how okay you are with me, even then.

Today, the full moon is spreading its charm, and while I am stalking this moon, I know that I am not making it to any of the elite colleges I wanted to, I know I am not going to have the person I am so much attracted to. But today, I have hope, hope enough that everything, though may not be as I wanted it to be, will be revived.