25. Sarthak Paul

It would be unfair to blame it all on Aisha.

  She wasn't the only reason why rumours about her bothered me so much, and why I wanted to hide from it all. I had always been a bright student. Students who score great marks without even trying? I was one of them—hated, envied, idolized. Maths, physics, chemistry, even Hindi and Sanskrit, give me a question and I would solve it. It was a lucky break for the entire family when I aced the entrance examination to one of the toughest boarding schools in India. The scholarship covered everything and would save us thousands of rupees a year which we could use to pay off the loans Dad had taken. My parents were beaming for weeks after the result.

  'Stupid scholarship,' Aisha used to say as she clung to my leg, begging me not to leave.

  It took us five times the duration we thought it would for us to pack my stuff into three suitcases. Every night when we used to sleep, Aisha sneaked out and unpacked the suitcases and hid my clothes and books around the house. She would have this look on her face, this cute weasel look, as if to say she didn't know who did it, and that maybe it was a sign from God telling me not to go. I hated to have to leave her behind. But I was a young boy and I wanted to experience life in a boarding school as well. I had heard that they had great boxing coaches and an unbeaten soccer team. That's something that really excited me.

  'I will miss you,' Aisha had hugged me and cried on the day I was supposed to leave. She hung on to me for her dear life. I would have changed my mind but the fees had been paid by the scholarship trust and I had to go. Leaving my little sister behind made me sick in the stomach.

  The first few days in the boarding school was horrendous, I would cut classes and fake illnesses so I could call Aisha and we would talk for hours; whatever little money I had would be spent on long STD calls. If I could have, I would have gone back in a heartbeat and never let go of my sister's hand ever again. She was the love of my life.

  Slowly, the homesickness wore off and I started to enjoy my time at the boarding school. It was everything a young boy could have hoped for. I was good at sports, great at academics and the teachers loved me, already forecasting my rise to the Head Boy position when the right time came. And then slowly everything came down like a house of cards.

  I was thirteen when I realized I liked boys. There I said it. I can already sense the derision in your eyes, the coldness that's creeping up on you, the sense of hatred and disgust taking over whatever else you know about me. It doesn't matter if I was a good son or a good brother or a good student, it just matters that I am gay.

  I tried denying it at first, forced myself to talk to girls, objectifying them, hoping I would feel something for them, thinking it was just a phase everyone goes through in their life. No. I am gay, gay for life and there was no escaping that.

  I started to hate myself. Sooner or later, I knew it was all going to blow up in my face. I was a disgrace, an anomaly, something to be mocked and stereotyped and laughed at in Sajid Khan movies. Luckily for me, I wasn't feminine. Funny, how people make fun of men who are effeminate. Aren't their mothers feminine? Aren't the girls who laugh at feminine gay men themselves feminine? And who the fuck decides what's feminine and masculine? And look at me, I'm tagging all gay men as feminine even though a lot of them aren't.

  My grades started to drop, I started being sick a lot, like physically sick, like my body was revolting, as if it was disgusted by how my brain worked. Every night I would sleep wishing the next morning would be different, that I would be like everyone else, but nothing changed. I wanted to eat all the time but I couldn't keep it down and would throw up. Knowing myself better made me nauseous and sick and hateful and vile.

  It took me months to accept it. I knew things would never quite be easy for me for the rest of my life. We evolve but do it rather slowly. I was sure homosexuality wouldn't be a part of our culture during my lifetime, which I often hoped would be short.

  But things turned for the better again. On the boxing team was another boy. Big. Strong. And quite popular. Karan and I struck up a friendship and even though I never told him about my 'condition', it seemed he knew. Weeks later, I broke down in his arms and told him who I was or what I was or whatever and he said it was okay. He said it was okay! And then, in the changing room of our boxing gym, he had kissed me. That was not the only place we would kiss in. Post that, we started hanging out quite often in dark corridors, deserted changing rooms, and shower cubicles. But soon enough, the jig was up.

  Someone started a rumour about the two of us, and it was vicious. It was the half-truth anyway. Karan was the popular one and he controlled the narrative of the rumour. He told people I had begged him to allow me to suck his dick and he had conceded after weeks of trying, that too, just to see how it felt. Which was as big a lie as saying I was straight. People bought it hook, line and sinker, and from then on began the daily crucifixion of Sarthak Paul, the gay boy who begs people to fuck in his mouth. My classmates revelled in my misery.

  What followed sometimes seemed worse than death. The students of my class literally would chase me across corridors, laughing, pointing fingers, mocking me; they would draw me (or what they thought looked like me) on the classroom boards with a dick in my mouth, and for two months it looked like nothing else happened in the school. I was hit, slapped, punched, kicked, humiliated, spat on. I was flashed dicks in the dorm rooms, made to parade naked in the locker room and asked to shag in front of the entire class in the hostel.

  Nothing happened to that boy, Karan. Because, of course, he was the man in the lie. I was the one on my knees, supposedly begging. I was the woman in the relationship that never existed, and aren't the women always the ones who are at the butt end of everything. If they fuck when they want to they are sluts, if they don't they are prudes. But why was it happening to me? I was a man. And to think of it, all the abuses hurled at me were misogynistic. But the girls stood watching and even laughed and called me a pussy.

  I started spending days on the roof of the faculty building, legs dangling over the edge, thinking of jumping off and ending it all. What had I done? It wasn't my fault. If it were up to me, I would be the straightest person in all of history. I would be Ghengis Khan and father a billion children. If there was an active God and if this were against religion why would he create me? What did I do in my mother's womb that pissed him off so much that he made me gay? And what do people think? We are so attracted to a certain gender that we pick a life full of relentless hatred? Does our attraction, or choice, mean so much? Of course not! Because it's not a choice. It's not in our hands. We don't fight for our right to be attracted to the person of the same sex, we fight for our right to exist.

  Soon enough I started to think of ways I could die. The only thing that kept me alive was the face my sister, Aisha, how she could cry and bawl at seeing my face crushed against the pavement.

  I even wrote an impassioned suicide note. I hoped to God I was the only fourteen-year-old who had to do that because he was made a certain way. And I addressed it to Aisha. My scholarship was rescinded because of my low marks. I survived the year somehow and came back home to join our old school.

  I had never been so happy to see Aisha. In the one year I had been away, she had grown into a wonderful woman, while I had been told by my peers that I was no longer a man.

  But then the rumours about Aisha started, and I had to step away from her. I would have fought the world for her but I was tried and defeated. I had no strength left. I had done my fighting. I couldn't take it any more; no matter how much I loved her, I had to step away. I was done being humiliated and laughed at. Call me a coward but I wouldn't have survived it.

  I would have jumped off the roof.