Written by Samarth Singh Chandel
To those who remember me from school, I was an image of bubbly optimism. Strutting down the green floored corridors of our school, the energy and confidence of my march betrayed the burden carried in my mind. Strutting down across corridors, or slumping through the school grounds, or perhaps just sitting in the class: one thing would always remain a fixture. We all know it as the ‘gaze’. The gaze is like the embodiment of a person who always has their eyes fixed on you; a spectre who merely looks at you constantly, and does nothing else. Yet, its presence is a constant source of anxiety. At times, the gaze simply recedes into the background of your consciousness. But so many times, it struts around you, completely warping you into its hold, paralysing you into a stifling, viscous snare.
Being queer is a difficult experience, to put it mildly. And in those critical years of your childhood and then adolescence, you spend a significant chunk of your time in school - those temples of education that relish in telling queer kids how unwelcomed they are in a society that only accepts heteronormativity as the norm. As queer children, we go through alienation and othering - a process in which teachers and fellow classmates have a huge role to play. On one hand, our identities and experiences are completely obliterated from whatever we study at school. Queer children never get to see our ideas, outlooks and life experiences portrayed anywhere. Queer love and relationships are never represented or celebrated. I remember this one paragraph about the representation of homoerotic love in Sufism in my 11th-grade textbook, and my teacher promptly got that cancelled from our syllabus.
As a result, thousands of children belonging to the LGBTQIA+ end up growing up thinking of themselves as unwanted abnormalities. Our journey of self-realisation begins perhaps when we reach the very threshold of adulthood, but by then we are plagued by the bullying and harassment we have faced since the time we can remember. Being queer is to have a life delayed, it means overcoming insurmountable mental health issues to come to a place where we can learn to love and accept ourselves, for the world around hasn't given us much of it.
I was fortunate to never have been brutally bullied or physically harassed for being different, but that has been a function of my privilege. Nevertheless, almost a day never passed when the point about me being ‘different’ was not brought to my face. The verbal harassment dropped in from time to time, usually in the form of overconfident straight boys seeking to score a few popularity points at the expense of my sexuality. Then, there were the more casual jokes that were flung on me, sometimes from people whom I considered to be my friends. The class would laugh, pass it over as a light joke, but they never saw how much toll it took on my self-esteem and happiness. In particular, occasions such as games period, sports day or cultural events like dances would emerge as nightmarish experiences for me, as the gaze would intensify on such communal events. My participation would again invite sniggers and derisive jokes about my effeminate character. Even before I could lay my hand on a tennis racket or basketball, I was labelled as being naturally unfit at sports, of course, the root cause being my ‘ladki-types’, ‘softie’ character. I was considered good at only certain specific things, like art, poetry, craftwork, oratory; you know, those things that our society normally associates with women as opposed to supposedly more aggressive, physically oriented activities like sports that are seen as the domain of boys.
Being queer is to wake up each morning and go to bed each night constantly fighting off the gaze. It manifests itself in different forms, from simple glares, derisive snickers to outright humiliation by your peers. And then the gaze would leave you for some time, so you can hurt for a few moments, perhaps shed a few tears. But then one day, you revolt against the cruel bullying of that gaze. Your mind rises in indignation, signalling that it’s time to stand up for yourself. The world would not change so easily. But if the people around me cannot give me the space that I deserve as a unique individual, then I have to build that space with my own hands. And that is the story that needs to be remembered. This brings me back to the opening sentence of this essay. My bubbly confidence was then an act of self-assertion, each time I chose to mend my wounds, love myself and smile on the face of my gaze, it was a veritable act of war. The gaze chose to reduce me to rubble, but damn would I let that happen to myself. Hence, I chose to create my own love and happiness, even if the world could not be a source of endless joy.
Being queer is to wake up each morning and go to bed each night constantly fighting off the gaze. It manifests itself in different forms, from simple glares, derisive snickers to outright humiliation by your peers. And then the gaze would leave you for some time, so you can hurt for a few moments, perhaps shed a few tears. But then one day, you revolt against the cruel bullying of that gaze. Your mind rises in indignation, signalling that it’s time to stand up for yourself. The world would not change so easily. But if the people around me cannot give me the space that I deserve as a unique individual, then I have to build that space with my own hands. And that is the story that needs to be remembered. This brings me back to the opening sentence of this essay. My bubbly confidence was then an act of self-assertion, each time I chose to mend my wounds, love myself and smile on the face of my gaze, it was a veritable act of war. The gaze chose to reduce me to rubble, but damn would I let that happen to myself. Hence, I chose to create my own love and happiness, even if the world could not be a source of endless joy.
Samarth Singh Chandel
Samarth is a history student studying at Hansraj College, Delhi University who loves to read, write, draw, eat and watch movies. If the term 'hot mess' had a mugshot then that would be Samarth.
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