Gay is not a 'happy' word

Gay is not a word that only means ‘happy’. That is how I was introduced to this word. I should say ‘concept’, because it is quite unique on its face value. Or at least I thought so. When I had a fad about chatting on Yahoo, I had accidentally dropped into ‘Gays/Lesbians Room’ one day. A guy accosted me. Instantly I shooed him away stating, “I am not your type.”

“What type I am then? Do you think I am abnormal or lesser human being? What if you had been born like this type which you vehemently declare a no-no type?” I don’t remember what else exactly did he say, but he was full of angst and anguish.

I wasn’t emotionalized by it though. A queer lamenting his life …

Sometime back a lady friend of mine, in an informal conversation, asked me, “How a man can become a gay?” I don’t know why she asked it, but I asked her back, “How a girl can become a lesbian then? I suppose that is the way with males too.” It was a very impertinent answer wrapped in a question, but her reply was very succinct.

“Sexually a female body is more captivating for both males and females. Where the females lacked in gaining strength, they attained in having a softer, cleaner and lovelier body. A man can have an affinity for another man, but for him to neglect a female body and root for a man’s one instead is something totally out of human nature.”

Yeah, it is true. For a man, nothing could be more enticing that a curvaceous and voluptuous female body. Kingdoms have fallen over it. So, for some sections of human beings to be averse to it is a bad propensity on their part.

My belief was severely challenged a few days back, again on account of some in-front-of-eyes happenings. Delhi High Court annulled a law decreeing homosexuality a criminal offence. Hey, was there really any such law? I was surprised and angered too. For all their incomprehensible proclivities, they are not criminals. Also what about the STDs? Who among them will approach a doctor if they have some disease? We are generating or compounding many problems by an irrelevant so-called solution or deterrent. Go for the terrorists or robbers, my law-makers.

Anyway, this leads us to another, in fact the most important, question. Is it a since-birth inclination or a wrongly developed perversion? Nobody knows this yet, even if people can keep debating it. While some can put on table biological experimental reports proving its natal connections, some like Baba Ramdev can preach its curability through Yoga. All these are beside the point though. It is not a crime. Period.

Even if I grew more understanding, even though not fully acceptable, towards gayism, I had doubts about its purpose. I read an article yesterday then. A man proclaiming his love for another one, in pure terms of affection and belongingness. They never had sex, but were riveted towards each other just through a sheer bonding which they couldn’t find anywhere else. For them, sex was unimportant; they just felt happy with each other.

Ah! again I can not comprehend this :) But at least this was a bit of an answer to my friend’s question. May be she too can view it from a different angle now.

The real 'machos'

Like an earnest employee, I was standing in the lift (elevator) waiting for my floor to arrive. Hurried even though I was, the lift had to stop in between. In entered a person with an assumed grandiose gait. Wrist bands on the arms, uplifted shirt-collar, strong perfume, goggles perched inside the front-pocket – I mean everything that you can think of to be associated with a so-called macho. He didn’t dither though to hum a tune in the presence of his superiors. And mind you this was an office premise.

He might have been the subject of my questioning, but in reality, I meet everyday several such machos. Studs driving their cars wildly with songs blaring full sound, philanderers hitting on everything conceivably female, the hunks puffing out with their gauzily dressed girlfriends in front of cinema-halls or discotheques. The grandness of these actions is hard to miss. And I am not complaining; for this is the time and prerogative of them, and more so, who am I to object.

But it confounds me hard when I see everyone copying it. I mean, every boy or girl, with supposedly defined good looks seems to believe that he/she has a right or in fact, duty to act like a stud or a coquette. Starting from even the school days, he will come attired in fancy clothes, flirt with the girls, treat studies as a burden, throw discipline and morals as playable; all the rules to follow to be anointed a macho are already laid down by his predecessors. Beautiful girls on their part have to be trendy, acting as superiorly divine beings, with an anathema towards any less charming person or thing. Their rules too are defined since the time of machoism. And why not? Everywhere for them, it is the macho who wins. In movies, it is the person who lags behind in studies, who comes late, who treats everyone as secondary, is the hero and the prize of all. In ongoing life too, we doff our hats to the one who can brag how he cheated in exam, how he dodged his assignments in office, how he drove wildly to scare the hell out of everyone. In short, anyone who is and acts smart is macho.

But what they don’t realize is the ultimate truth of life: in real life, it is the doers who win. All around me, the successful persons are the ones who have valued life as the house of many flavours. The best persons of my school, college, university, job lives have been the ones who have been good at everything; studies, sports, music, social behaviour and norms, even flirting, and not to mention the ever-needed qualities of honesty, sincerity, integrity, braveness etc They know what is Newton’s second law, are good at playing soccer, can strum a guitar, are courteous to teachers and elders, have a besotting girlfriend, and if needed, can help the friends, fight a war, support a cause, even catch the moon. They are not ostentatious, but possessor of qualities. They are who I call macho.

But who to tell these pretentious ones? They have their own world, aloof from the other pleasurable tenets of life. In order to relish something flitting, they miss on the durable ones. Such are the vagaries of life that everyone understands the truth someday. The machos too will ….