The year was 2005. To be precise, the June of 2005. First day of high school; the time every child looks forward to because now you feel you are old enough that you are allowed to write with a pen, instead of a pencil. As I was waiting in line to get inside, the new, scrawny, bespectacled child, a huge guy (at least he looked huge at the time) walked up to me with his friend, and pushed me to the floor. “Hatt na dedh footiye (Get out of the way, shorty)”, the seventh grader bellowed as he walked past, not caring whether I was hurt, or the fact that he had just broken my spectacles. I spent the entire day squinting hopelessly at the blackboard, and when I had to answer my parents about the broken glasses, I lied saying that I had tripped during gym class. I knew that if I had told them the real deal, my mother, like any other over-protective Indian mother, would have made a scene in school the next day. That was not how I wanted to start my new school. That was my first mistake. Becoming the victim.
Small incidents similar to this followed me throughout the next two years, and then came the 7th grade, and with it came the dreaded sex education class. The girls too had a class but we weren't allowed to discuss with them what we were taught. And whatever was in the syllabus I don't remember any of the teacher actually teaching it, we just had a reading class where one of the students will read the lesson and others will listen. We weren't allowed to ask questions. But, like every sex education class, some cheeky asshole asked the obviously expected question- “What is homosexuality”? The teacher turned a blind eye to the sniggers of the surrounding boys that were obvious signals of the fact that all of them knew what it meant, but just wanted to have some fun. And that was the time when I first noticed a couple of boys pointing at me, and sniggering, and that took on like wild fire. From the next day, I was no longer my name. I was the gay boy, or the chakka (eunuch) or the bayla (a term coined so endearingly by our Indian society for any boy who does not play sport or follow in the footsteps of what an ideal man is supposed to be doing; literally translated, it means effeminate).
For a lot of time, I didn’t understand what had suddenly happened. Previously, all the bullying incidents were not directed at me, they never had been. The pushing and pulling and brushing away used to happen with nearly everybody and it was accepted as part of high school life. Then what had I done, in that one hour of sex education, that suddenly, all these attacks were directed towards me? I hadn’t tried to flirt with a guy. Ever. I wasn’t even gay for that matter. Then how did this suddenly come up? Why was I particularly being targeted?
Another problem that non-single children face is the fact of having their older sibling in the same school. I too faced the same problem, my sister was a couple of years older than me and was in the 9th grade when I was in the 7th. Her friends, while never being friends with me, had always been cordial, treating me like the younger sibling of their friend. As the abuses spread, even their attitude towards me changed. Previously, I had been the tag along younger brother, and suddenly I was the gay boy who they did not want to talk to, because, in India, gay-ness baat karne se phelta hai, homosexuality spreads by touch. Who could I complain to? The teachers didn’t really care to reprimand the bullies. Even if they did, how many would they? By this time people across 3 classes, each with 3 divisions were using the same words to address me. To my parents? So that they would come to college, shout at the few bullies they could find (or I would point out) and then have a more miserable life for myself the next day on? To my sister, to tell her to stop her friends from doing it? Oh, c’mon, we all know how we are in adolescence!
Anything I said, would be turned against me. Everyone wanted my mother’s brownie recipe and wanted to eat it whenever I used to get it in my lunch box, but when if I said that I had made the brownies, everyone’s reaction would be the same- ‘You are like a woman only. You will love making cakes as it is’, and then they would pick up a piece and walk away.
The problem got so out of hand, that my old friends started staying away from me. I became the lonely boy in the class. Initially I tried so hard, way too desperately to be friends with them. Tried to be a part of conversations they would be having, but they would walk away. One time, I was so desperate to retain my friends, that when I found out that they had made plans for a movie without telling me, I secretly found out their seat numbers, and booked a ticket, only for me which was right next to their seats, just to try and ‘be a part of the group’ again. When none of these tactics worked out, I suffered in silence. I did not say anything as they teased me across the classroom rows, sometimes subtly when teachers were around, most of the times brazenly. I walked with my head down, hoping that no one would notice me and they wouldn’t hurl an abuse across the corridor.
Respite came in about 9th grade, when I did make a few friends. They, surprisingly stuck with me for the rest of the years and even do so now. But did they really? I confessed to them, in a game, a couple of years back about how the period in my life was hell, and I suffered from a lot of stress and depression, and to battle it, I ate a lot. And I mean a lot. I put on about 30 kilos in that time just by eating. The only response that these ‘friends’ of mine had for this was a slow clap and a sarcastic ‘Wow!’ and saying that this wasn’t a ‘juicy’ enough confession for a game. Brushed aside. Disregarded. Just like every time I was called effeminate then, my feelings and emotions were brushed aside like garbage. These ‘friends’ of mine are still my friends, but they could never be someone who I would confide with. Showing emotional vulnerability, is somehow a sign of being weak, a sign of being less of a man in this society. I am sure, that in lieu of ‘13 Reasons Why’ depression is handled in a much different way by the youth. It apparently wasn’t so a couple of years back. This was shown by the disregard my friends had shown to my emotional vulnerability. They are still some of my closest friends and I can share my joys with them, but, I would, knowingly and in all my senses, never ever share my sorrows with them, knowing their attitude and the narrow-minded belief system that they have.
Recently, I shared an article I read on Facebook about how a guy coped up with bullying by fitting in with the jock crowd. This post got multiple likes and shares. A surprising thing for me was, the guy who was my best friend turned bully in school, messaged me privately on Facebook, saying how reading the post had opened his eyes to the trauma that I must have gone through and apologised to me. I told him, that far from the fact that he had bullied me the worse, what had hurt me more was that he had been my best friend and overnight he had turned against me. He had no answer to this apart from saying that ‘someone’ had started a rumour that I was gay and he had been afraid to be associated with me. I mean, REALLY?! Wouldn’t it have just been easier to confirm with me once? He ruined a 5-year long friendship based on a false rumour that WASN’T EVEN ABOUT HIM! Anyways, he apologised (sounding quite genuine) and said that we could try being friends again. In the hopes of regaining my best friend I agreed, and guess what? Radio silence from that side, ever since. Some genuine apology, huh!
Is that all that humanity has come down to? A simple thing such as an apology also has to be selfish, to clear the conscious of the person who was guilty of it in the first place. Have people lost the basic human feeling of empathizing? Or is it still too ‘homosexual’ to feel bad for your own behavior, understand how and what the person had to undergo and just plain apologize.
I had so many people that told me that everyone faces this kind of bullying. You shouldn’t let it affect you after all these years. That they had been bullied in the past and had forgiven and forgotten the crimes these people committed against them. But, how do you expect everyone to be of the same thought process and the same principles? You may have been forgiving, but I openly admit that I am not that big a person to let go of such things so easily. Whatever may be said, we are shaped by our experiences. The experiences we have in our schools play an important role in it, because it is your teachers and your friends who interact with you the most, even more than your family at that time. What happens does affect you. I do not use this as an excuse to explain away some of my irrational decisions, but a large part of your personality, your self-confidence and, most importantly, your self-respect, are affected by these. The bullies boosted their personalities by stepping on the bullied, and the bullied lost a little of their own every day, by being stepped on by them.
That is why I title this article as a love story. Because after all, what is love, but a, exchange of ideas, words and emotions that shape your personality, for better or for worse? Quoting Shahrukh Khan from his TED Talk: ‘The future you, has to be the you that loves. Otherwise it will cease to flourish. It will perish in its own self-absorption. So, you may build your powers to build walls to keep people outside, or you may use it to break barriers and welcome them in. You may use your faith to make people afraid, and terrify them into submission, or you can use it to give courage to people so that they may rise to their greatest heights’.
So here I am, breaking down the barriers to people who may have wronged me in the past. This is my love story, with my bullies.
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