I don’t know if you can see me from wherever you are. Wherever it is, I hope you get to read this. You have made a difference in so many people’s lives. So bloody many. You have books, films, documentaries, monuments, and organisations created for you. For your undying legacy.
And yet in the case of most of the people whose lives you touched, very few know the real you. Hell, I am not sure if anyone truly knew or knows the real you. But whatever little the world and I know of you, we truly admire. I don’t think you will ever stop being loved.
So I am going to talk about what it is that makes you special to me. Why is it that I consider you my primary role model.
I knew you existed for the longest time, but it was in 2009 when my school’s musical, based on your work with Queen, utterly butchered one of your greatest works. I was drawn to the music you made with Queen. Simultaneously, I was drawn to you. I couldn’t put my finger on it at that time, but the truth is that you are the biggest queer icon who has influenced me.
It was all of you. The unabashed overbite (that you said you didn’t want to get fixed in the fear that it would mess with your singing), the outrageous costumes that made you a symbol for androgyny and everything camp, and the frank yet rare interviews you had with press throughout your life.
Your music is one of the things that saved my life at the time. It made me realise that I could let go of the life I was leading at the same time and adopt one that I actually wanted to live. Your persona made me realise that the possibility of being loved, no matter how ‘weird’ or ‘odd’ the world thought you were, existed. And to add to that, you taught me that anybody who didn’t love you could simply fuck off.
Over the last year or so, people have been talking about how you are portrayed in Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic about you and your journey with Queen. Now, Rami Malek, the person who played you, has won the Oscar for it. Can you imagine it? An actor winning what is considered the highest honour in cinema, all for portraying you. I mean, people haven’t even won it for portraying Elvis, Ike and Tina, or Johnny Cash. It was all for you.
Truth be told, I wasn’t terribly impressed by the biopic. They got a lot of things wrong about your life and your history with Queen. I was sceptical of it last year itself, when I said that the biopic wouldn’t measure up to the other ways in which people have shared your story. Your closest friends, your family (your mother was utterly adorable, by the way) your bandmates, your managers, your collaborators, and your fans have all done you great justice (for the most part) by presenting you in the same way that you presented yourself.
But I welcomed it then and I welcome it now. I see it as a gateway for people who know nothing about you to fall in love with you (and maybe hate you a bit, because the film showed quite a few alleged instances where you were an asshole) and then discovered the better side of you; the real you.
The funniest thing about my admiration for you, to me at least, is the fact your life ended way before mine even began. You lived vicariously and happily and created a legacy for yourself even before my parents decided that they should procreate. And yet, I feel like as though as I know you a great deal. Not just because of your surviving associates, but because of what I saw of you in interviews, behind the scenes when recording and messing around during video shoots.
I saw your drive in making the people you cared about most happy in whatever way you possibly could. I saw your passion to create art, not just music, when you decided to perform with the Royal Ballet and especially with Montserrat Caballé, who I feel brought out something deep within you, waiting to come out. A true creative surge. I saw your deliberate yet careful confidence about how you shared stories from your life. One thing I do wonder about, however, is how proud you were to be Indian. You did change your birth name to Frederick Mercury and rarely mentioned in interviews that you were Indian.
By citizenship, you weren’t Indian. I think that you seemed exotically ambiguous enough to your fans in the ’70s and ’80s that it didn’t really occur to them that you could possibly be Indian. But you and me, Freddie, at the heart of it, we are both Indian and hella confused about our heritage at the same time. You studied in a rigid Catholic school in India during your formative years and were surrounded by Indian people. I studied in an Indian school outside India and was surrounded by Indians and people of other ethnicities. Over time, our stories reversed. You spent most of your adult life in a nation where Indians were quite a minority and I came back to the mothership. And the most relatable of it all? Both our parents had dwindling faith at certain points about what we would make of ourselves.
I think if I was alive back then, I would have tried to become friends with you. I don’t know if I would have succeeded, though. You, on the other hand, would have killed it even if you were alive now and built your legacy during this time. You would have been celebrated for being a person of colour influencing millions and being queer too while you were at it. Superwoman beat you to the punch for this century. Not for life, though. At the core of it, you are, in fact, the first queer personality of South Asian descent in the fucking world.
You saved me. You saved from myself, my low self-esteem, my inability to find things about myself worth being proud of, and the (sometimes) lack of people who understood me. But you understood me, without being there in person, through the way you were. You made me realise that I am queer and that I can be the best version of myself because of it and despite it. You even made me a better actor, even though you weren’t one yourself (not professionally, anyway).
If you hadn’t left this world because of a horrid virus that shouldn’t exist, I feel like you would have been campaigning for the rights of people who are HIV+and LGBTQ+. You’d be standing next to people like Magic Johnson for photographs and Lady Gaga while she clutched at her countless awards. You’d still be dressing outrageously and beautifully and abolishing the rampant ageism in the entertainment world. You would have your trademark moustache, except I am not sure what colour it would be. You would not just be pushing boundaries, you would be blowing them to smithereens before people even realised what the fuck was happening.
Most importantly, I know you’d still be making music. Music ran in your veins like blood. You created some of your best works just before you died. And you’d be happy to know that your wish has been fulfilled: you have never been boring. To me or to any of the people who love you. That word doesn’t exist for you, Mr. Farrokh Bulsara. The words that do exist for you are genius, visionary, and trendsetter. And you’d better believe it.
Note: This is a series about my mental health journey and how specific experiences led to my diagnosis of clinical depression and anxiety. For the full context, please read Part 1, the letter to my bullies and Part 2 if you haven’t already.
Hi, my beautiful swagalicious ladies.
You know I’d put this. Classic Lavvy.
How you all doin’? Good. Sitting down all comfy? Damn, I feel like I am starting my own stand-up comedy special on Netflix. Truth is, my friendship with all of you has been a barrel of laughs. A wondrous barrel of laughs, with tons of memories, tears, and up-and-down communicating along the way.
I mean, I have been friends with all you for at least a decade, across continents, countries and cities! YS, we’ve been friends for 20 bloody years, bro! In the truest sense, you are my oldest friend. And we live in the same damn country now for three years and I only called you a few days ago. I haven’t even spoken to JD in ages. Bugger.
I have been a truly shit-for-nuts friend for three years. Or maybe more. I don’t know. I remember I told you all about NS and how I thought he was the one I was going to marry. And we did, two years after that. It felt so good telling you all that. And meaning it.
I know what the letter to my bullies must have sounded like. It is filled with all the unimaginable vitriol building up inside me for 15 years! But the truth is, I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you guys. I don’t mean to upset you all, but if I didn’t love you all the way I did and still do, you may have seen my cremation. Or burial under a tree to help it grow, if it went my way.
I know I feel too good (almost always though) living my life now and you all deserve credit for being around me, back when I was a teenager, to see that I could live this current life. A one I love, despite its painful hardships at times.
This letter is going to be full of love. You each get separate sections. And whatever I say about you, what you consider bad or good about yourself, I say with all the love in the world. I know, acknowledge, accept, and love your flaws (as you do mine) and I also know that I wouldn’t be doing you or myself justice (as a non-fiction writer) not to represent you in the truest way I can.
Each of my relationships with you have varying degrees of closeness. But hopefully, we’ll all get to the point in our lives when we know almost everything about each other. The past parts and moments of our lives that we are yet to discover; I know there’s a lot. And I know I may not be able to cover every little detail. But I hope it truly encapsulates my journey with each of you.
That being said, I’d better fucking hear that you teared up while reading this, you magnificent bitches!
YS, you’re up first. I first met you when we were in the same school bus in First Grade. I practically grew up on and off with you through Sharjah, Dubai, and now India!
I remember the adorable six-year-old games we used to play with AK and HP and have those silly boys are yucky-girls are awesome fights with them. We’ve been to each other’s birthday parties over the years, met each other’s families and known them personally for years, our parents are friends, and I have even slept over at your place! Remember when we sat and watched Child’s Play with PL and SM back in 2011? You guys didn’t find it that scary, LOL.
But the one thing I had never known about, until recently, was the fight a bunch of you had with DS, who was bitching about me. Even 3S didn’t bother defending me at any point, but you all did. I wish I’d known about it. But now that I do, I know exactly why I am still friends with you all.
Even through college, we kept meeting. Going to a secret spot in your car and sinning on a plant dried and wrapped in thin rolls, talking about our love lives, and just shooting the shit. We even managed to rope in my college friend SK and you two hit it off as well! Again, you were the first person to meet my college friends. And you and PV even showed up to see me being awarded that Rolling Stone internship. That’s something I’ll never forget.
You know, you told me on that phone call that I appeared to be the happiest person among all of us while we were growing up. Without realising it, I was doing what the late Robin Williams spoke of, “I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.”
I saw you marry the best person in the world for you a few years after that and my heart was filled with so much love. Now, we are a couple of Marrieds yacking away about how marriage is awesome and frustrating all at the same time. 1997 singletons Bridget Jones, Jude and Shazzer would NOT be proud of us. I love you so much and I wish I could see you more often. I will be speaking to you more often for sure.
YA, I remember we first got to know each other in 5G1. You lived a few streets away from me in Sharjah (in A&A+M’s building, no less), and my mom saw you as the ideal clever girl her daughter could be friends with.
Even though you were a swotty nerd (I really did! Stupid 10-year-old me.), I loved the confidence you exuded. Your undying willingness to help someone in need, no matter who they were, warmed my heart (you let me photocopy your notes, I think). I knew I would be friends with you for a while now.
And 17 years later, I still am! But there was a five-year-gap in between (because I went off to G and you stayed in G1, when I dropped Hindi for French) and we parted in a somewhat silent yet acknowledging kind of way. But we snapped back together like magnets when you were also in G, listening to Mrs. Sathyan drone on about something or the other.
You came bouncing back into my life, along with your confidence and your willingness to help (and YS in tow, because you two are the couple I thought you’d become if you hadn’t met RS and KD), to become friends with me again. Long-lost lovers, like a true Bollywood love triangle losing and finding each other again (I’m thinking SRK, Kajol and Rani in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Too much?).
Remember the yacht party we had for your 20th birthday? Your parents were awesome enough to let us have alcohol and we all got so wasted and started complaining about how crap our love lives were. I will never forget that time in our lives.
We’ve seen each other through it all now. Two colleges for each of us, a change in our majors (or I think you finally finding your major?), moving countries, finding the love of our lives, and finally marrying them!
You know, your confidence struck me deep within my subconscious and I wasn’t brave back then, not like I am now. In some ways, you had a bit to do with it. I know we live in different continents, but let’s try to talk more! I know I will.
PV. Good ol’ Peeves. Let’s get it out of the way. You were my first non-celeb woman crush. You made me realise that I wasn’t straight, for crying out loud. One of the best things I realised about myself!
You are a bit like Peeves, really. Full of adorable mischief and chaos, with a bit of annoyance thrown in (I mean that with all the love in the world). I think that’s what attracted me to you. I still love that about you, in the most platonic way possible, even back then.
I certainly remember not liking you at first. We were made to sit together back in the 8th Grade, and the fights we had! Eep. The stupidest ones, really. I think I could have hurled something at you, if I had that tendency. But ‘from hate comes love’, said by some random philosopher I won’t bother Googling, and we eventually grew to become friends.
I remember your birthday parties. They were epic and horrifying (I remember declaring my love to AS for the nth time at one of these parties and hanging around RSV with the secret; not my finest hour, pardonez-moi) at the same time. The Diwali parties too, where I think our parents got to know each other and my dad used to tease Mickey. Your mom calling you Chikki (right?) and having conversations just with me. Your dad acknowledging me while sitting in front of the television, with his phone in hand. Us having tuitions together for French, Maths, and Accounts. You borrowing books from me to read (and taking ages to return them) because I was such a voracious reader. Our relentless gossipy phone calls (because landline to landline in Dubai was free back then; is it still?). You standing up for me with bitches with too much of a tendency for being loudmouths, whether I was there or not. You and NT both warning me that 3S was not a good friend and being right about it. You’ve done quite a bit.
We’ve had crazy spats too, even as friends. We were like Jess and Jules in Bend It Like Beckham (really; we’ve liked the same guy at one point!). And people (by that, I mean me) thought we could become a couple. Seriously. The similarities are spooky.
I’ve seen you through HT, VBN, HT again, RM, HT once bloody again, PJ, U, and A. You’ve seen me through AS a whole bunch of times over and fucking over (the most useless time of mine; liking AS), my dad’s subordinate, SS1, NM, RM, SSB, KS, SR, and now NS. Our love lives are goddamn crazy. But it’s been fun sharing them with you.
We now live in the same city. Let’s meet more, bitch.
NT, you were my first friend when I moved from Sharjah to Dubai. You still live three buildings away from my parents (right?) and the truth is that we got off to a slightly wrong start.
I’m glad that didn’t last long though. I can’t forget hanging out at your place for parties and hangouts, snacking on your mom and M’s amazing food, getting to know your parents and extended family, and just becoming a part of each other’s lives. We’ve been on car rides together, going to tuition classes for French in Sharjah the day before many of our exams in school.
I remember the surprise you and PL gave me for my birthday once. You know something? That’s the only surprise party I’ve ever had in life and I treasure it so much. Sitting in your bedroom, gossiping about everything and nothing, making prank calls to the rando boys in our school, I miss all that so much.
I also remember missing you a ton when you got admitted into the hospital for surgery for about two months. I remember visiting you and seeing you in that hospital bed. You were tired, but your cheerfulness was still there.
I have always loved that about you; your zeal for life. You may have had ups and downs throughout, but it certainly never showed. You always kept spirits high, no matter what. I remember seeing your cheerful nature and hoping that one day, I would be able to be happy as that.
We now live in the same country and I haven’t seen you since YS’s wedding! Bad, very bad. You, YS, and JD need to visit Bangalore and stay with me!
PLP (yes, you will be referred to by your full name), my first real memory of you was walking in on you in the girls’ toilet by mistake when we were in primary school. Really. And, this one is a kicker, one of the funniest things we share in common is the fact that our dads have the same first names!
What bloody lovely memories, LMAO. YA is right; my memories of school are way too good. Great catch, YA!
I think I really became friends with you in the 7th Grade, when you first told me you liked JA. He has been your life’s biggest influence and the truth is that your relationship is one of the best relationships I have seen in my life. You have seen each other through parents’ approval/disapproval, sneaking around at certain points, doing long-distance, moving across continents and cities for the other person, living together, marrying each other and many other things that I may never know of. I remember that time when we went to Dandiya and JA was there and my parents saw you two kissing and telling me about afterwards in a disgusted tone and hoping I wasn’t doing that too (yes, they were THOSE parents). And I constantly would remind my parents that you two are a real couple and care about each other. I am so glad I was proven right. You are so lucky to have found that love so young and to grow from it into the wonderful person you are today.
You exude goodness, through and through. I haven’t known you otherwise. I am certainly no picnic; I was a douche to you, YS and a couple others when I was dating RM. But I can’t say you’ve ever been that way with me. I grew up around you for a fair bit, us getting to know each other’s families over the years and you moving from Satwa to 3S’s building in Bur Dubai.
Our families got to know each other, starting meeting socially, the whole shebang. Despite changing streams in Grade 11, it brought us closer, thanks to the gang. I may not have spoken to you much, but I know I did a lot when we all went out. Those great times at the bowling alley in Deira City Centre and the outing at JBR, the time we had that epic sleepover with booze when we were 19 and gabbing on out about our love lives, the number of quotes we would put into The Quote Book even after school was done (ermahgerd, The Quote Book finally came up; I think that was truly my first ever unpublished novella. I still have it, BTW.)!
We may not have spoken much in the last two years almost, and I unceremoniously ditched you at your wedding at the last minute (I still hate that), but the truth is that you haven’t. Actually, none of you have (despite going MIA for a while). You all still love me despite it. Why the fuck do you think I am writing this at all?
SM, you really are the person who has held us together. With the group, with planning outings; you have been an integral member through and through, more so than any of us.
I don’t even think I can say anything bad about you, SM. Like PL, you exude such goodness (or maybe I haven’t fought with you yet). I swear, I saw this in you the first time you entered the class way back in 6th Grade. Within the first few days of knowing you, I knew you were going to be my friend. But I definitely couldn’t predict the extend to which you would impact my life.
You are also a silent force of nature. You may speak only when it is utterly necessary, but what you say definitely has power. Furthermore, when you are talking away constantly with us, it’s something I live for. Rather, I think it’s something we all live for.
I may have known you since 2003, but the truth is that our friendship found its true ground in 11G. And I am so grateful to have gotten to know you through school and college. I saw you go out into the world to college for the first time and when you came back, your ‘glow-up’ was one of the best things I’d ever seen. I had never been more proud of anyone blossoming in their life than I was of you. It also inspired me to explore and become the person I was meant to be once I finally had the opportunity to leave home.
The truth is that, SM, you and I both come from conservative-ish Malayali families. That’s why I feel a stronger connect with you in this regard. We have both lived under the shadows of our parents throughout our childhoods and we ended up having to discover who we really are without their help or interference.
SM, you deserve all the success and happiness in the world. I know you are destined to do the most fantastic things you could possibly dream of. For now, I know you’re living the best life you possibly can.
JD, you are one of the most unlikely friends I have ever had in school. When you first joined G1, I just saw you as ‘that girl from abroad’. I never liked you or disliked you. You just…existed.
That would all change when you became a part of G. We lived close to each other, we went to tuition classes together, and we sat close to each other in class. It was hard not to become friends with you. I found out how adorable, unintentionally hilarious, and generally sweet you were (and still are).
I feel like our relationship became even closer with you going away to college in Pune. I remember that WhatsApp and BlackBerrys were a huge deal back then (because they had just launched) and you happened to have both. I was struggling with my first college being really shitty and trying to get over RM. You were there to talk me through it, with WhatsApp and even Skype calls when you had the time.
You shared with me about how college was going on for you and the struggles that you were facing with your roommate, your friends, and their boyfriends (remember AV?). I remember the times when it would really bring you down and we would just comfort each other. I will never forget those times.
When you came back after first year, I told you (and everybody else here) that I hated what I was studying. In a few months, you all, in stages, helped me get over RM and even gave me the courage to tell my parents that I wanted to study journalism.
Even now, you contribute significantly to my life. Your school classmate from Indonesia, RA, is my closest friend ever! I’m hoping you come down to Bangalore soon, because you know I will show you the best time of your life!
Come soon, JD! Drag YS and bring her along too. I’m counting on both of you.
GN. I am going to start off with the hugest apology I can possibly muster. The last three years haven’t been easy for me, but that is no excuse for the fact that I haven’t told you about what is going on.
I can’t do it here, in public. I’m not even sure if I can message you after so long. Truth is, GN, you’re the hardest person I’ve ever had to figure out in the group. I still haven’t been able to do that. I don’t even know what you truly think of me, which is probably why I can’t write as much as I’d like to about you.
However, there is one thing I know, you are a good friend. You always have been. I just haven’t reciprocated.
Like almost everybody here, I got to know you when we were all grouped together in G. Frankly, you scared me a little, because even at that age, you weren’t afraid or embarrassed of who you were and still are. You wore your personality loud and proud. At the same time, I know you have quite a few secrets that very few people are privy to. Or some to which none are privy at all.
Like YA, you were one of the people who indirectly encouraged me to live my life without worrying about what anyone else thought. You also were, and will always be, one of the few people to call me out on my shit as it is. I am grateful for that and for the fact that you exist.
I do hope we can talk after you read this. I hope you would be proud of the person I am today and I certainly hope you don’t hate me.
AM, ours is probably the strangest relationship ever. When you first joined school, I just couldn’t stand you (and I’m guessing it was reciprocal)! Initially, I assumed you were one of those ‘Choueifat snobs’ and I just didn’t want anything to do with you.
But all that changed! We started bonding, thanks to JH, about the sacred list of hot boys (like Alex Pettyfer; he’s still so fine BTW!), filling up the quote book with the most random shit, you teasing me about having a crush on Kunal Khemu (I don’t anymore; thank fuck); I’m glad I shed that stupid adolescent hate and got to know the real you.
One thing you do deserve is a great amount of thanks (along with AN and PV), for defending me on the JJ status (and probably even defending me in real life when I wasn’t around). I am also sorry that I put my foot in my mouth and mentioned hookers near my place to your dad that one time when he was dropping us off back home. If he does remember me, tell him I said, “Sorry, Uncle! I was a stupid kid back then.”
I know we haven’t spoken in years and I have no idea what has happened in your life for the last seven years, but I hope you get to see this! Thank for exceeding my expectations.
Over the years, all of you believed in me and you still do. You make me realise that I wasn’t alone and I wish I’d communicated with you all more than I did, throughout our friendships. I may be non-binary (and queer) now, but you all deserve the credit for bringing out the girl and the woman in me.
I am sorry I haven’t been as much in touch as a friend should have been. Fuck different countries and continents. You all changed my life at a very young age and you deserve medals for that. I love you all.
Note: This is a series about my mental health journey and how specific experiences led to my diagnosis of clinical depression and anxiety. For the full context, please read Part 1 and the letter to my bullies if you haven’t already.
Part 2: Am I going to look ugly forever?
Left: Me in 2008; Right: Me in 2017
In the last two stories you have read, you have gotten a clear idea of my formative years, before I turned 18 years old. The collection of those less-than-pleasant experiences definitely took their toll on a lot of things that impacted my personality. My self-esteem took a hit that was the equivalent of laying it down on a race track and running over it repeatedly. It is no exaggeration to state outright that I was a mess.
It goes all the way back to when I was five years old. As a young ‘un, my parents obviously had the responsibility of determining my appearance. Since we lived in a desert country and I spent a lot of my time outdoors in school, they thought it was best to have me sport what Indians refer to as a ‘boy cut’.
It wasn’t the best idea, given the school I went to. The girls in my class would tease me for not having long hair like they do and the boys would not want to be friends with me because they saw me as a girl. Completely harmless in retrospect, to be honest with you. But considering I did want to fit in with my peers, I kept goading my parents to let me grow my hair. When I told them that it was because I was being teased, they said what every Indian parent would say:
“You should just learn how to ignore these things, kanna. We also went through the same things when we were your age.”
Given the knowledge I possess now, I cannot fault them entirely for responding in that way. The truth is that being raised in the ’70s in middle-class households in Bombay, and going to schools with a state-run syllabus, did not afford them the luxury of standing up for themselves or even having their parents defend them. However, if I was the parent today, I would certainly march on over to that school and give those students, not to mention the teachers supervising them, a piece of my mind and to remind them that teasing a student for their appearance was and never will be acceptable.
I decided to follow my parents’ advice. But it wouldn’t help me one bit when I hit that dreaded time in every teen’s life: puberty.
My relationship with puberty was quite like the fucked up relationship between Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood referenced in Raiders of the Lost Ark(except there was no pedophilia involved). It was like puberty was telling me, “You knew what you were doing when you decided to develop a vagina in utero.”
Armpit and leg hair, pimples, breasts, love handles and fat in places I didn’t want, a frizzy and curly hairdo, periods; they all decided to come at me in a frightfully short span of time. I started seeing the evidence of all appear in my closet, bathroom, and my mother’s involvement; Nair hair removal cream, wax strips, trips to the beauty parlour, mud masks, shopping for skin-coloured sports bras, and bundles of sanitary napkins. It’s like I had been given a kit to eliminate all of the ugly that puberty had flung my way.
I remember my first-ever period. I was 11 years old; already a fair bit confused by life in general. My mother simply told me that this happens to girls at my age, with no why or how or what to expect. Do not enter the prayer room and don’t touch your grandmother when it happens, I remember her telling me.
I also distinctly remembered crying when I saw a long thread of congealed blood coming out of me. It made me worry about my school uniform for sports, which included a bright white skirt. What in the world would happen if I started leaking out of my pad? While I was incredibly lucky to have dodged that bullet, I still always felt dirty every time it came around.
The pimples were the worst of it all. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I had a crowd of pus dominating my face and being the ignorant teen I was, I thought picking them would make them go away. My biggest folly. It left clearly visible scars and black spots that my mother would lament over constantly. Whenever she had time, a new mask was applied to my face to see if any change would take effect. My father, from whom I inherited my skin’s urge to break out, would try to reassure that I was beautiful (and fail miserably). They both spent inordinate amounts of money on skin treatments and dermatological appointments which didn’t help in the least bit. And if my face wasn’t enough, the acne extended to my back, crowding mostly around my shoulders and below my neck. Wearing anything to show off the back was completely out of the question, not just because my mother wouldn’t let me wear it. When it came time for my junior and senior proms in Grades 11 and 12, I purposely chose dresses that wouldn’t show off my back or too much of my hammy legs. I was so afraid to wear a saree for my high school farewell that I asked the parlour lady to wax my back (no, the hair on my back wasn’t very noticeable, but who knew what sort of comments I would have to endure).
Luckily, after I turned 18, the pimples faded away, like a spirit or a ghost in a horror movie that was appeased after a sacrifice; the sacrifice of my self-esteem.
Even the hair on my head wasn’t spared by my insecurities. Having curly hair meant that I almost always looked like Monica Geller, when she lands in Barbados. I always thought that a cut and blow dry would be the permanent solution to my problems, but washing my hair would crush my dreams over and over again. My mother flat-out refused to pay for a straightener or even a straightening treatment. To this day, I can’t say for sure whether she saved me from my teenage demands or made me hate my hair and my appearance as a result. It was much later in life that I realised that sporting short hair, like I’d done as a five-year-old, was what I truly felt comfortable doing. The irony presents itself, really.
Not being able to mentally fit into your body is one thing. Not being able to do it when you’re queer and non-binary (and haven’t even realised it) is a whole other battle in itself.
I remember discussing sexuality with 3S and another girl who was once a friend. I reticently asked them what they would think if I was bisexual and they scoffed at me as though I had a screw loose. I never brought it up with them in school after that. It felt too dangerous to reveal to anybody that I was anything but straight.
And so, until 2011, I suffered from body dysmorphia and the inability to accept that I liked more than just boys. I silently had crushes on certain girls I met in school and certain actresses I saw in films and TV shows. I recall getting incredibly aroused, and then shell-shocked, when I saw Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body, emerging out of the lake butt-naked and even sharing a steamy kiss and body fondling with Amanda Seyfried. It felt wrong whenever I was in school, but it felt so right when I would watch it secretly without my parents ever knowing.
How does being queer and non-binary relate to self-esteem, you ask? You feel wrong in the body you were born with and blame yourself for not being able to change it. You feel ashamed to say a word to anybody you know, whether it is your friends or your family. You feel scared that you inadvertently blurt out something that may change people’s gaze of you into a homophobic one. And until you get out of that environment and meet queer people, you never truly feel safe.
I didn’t even feel safe after 2011, once I had discovered my sexuality. I lived in a country where being anything other than heterosexual was an outright crime, punishable by imprisonment and possible deportation. I kept this information closely guarded to people I was close to, never once letting my parents even get a hint of the fact that their only child is queer and non-binary.
It was only when I left home in 2014 that I felt some semblance of regaining my long-lost self esteem. I was in a new place; a place where people were more accepting and more interested in getting to know me. I knew that it was the place where I could come out freely and dress exactly the way I wanted to, without the interference of my parents or the care of what people may think of me.
I became more confident, more brazen even. People attracted to me would offer me drinks, tell me that they found me sexy, and even take me home with them. If I were to describe it in the words of Jhumpa Lahiri, I would use the words she did to describe the new life of the character of Moushumi Mazoomdar in The Namesake, when she moves to Paris:
She gave herself openly, completely, not caring about the consequences. She was exactly the same person, looked and behaved the same way, and yet suddenly, in that new city, she was transformed into the kind of girl she had once envied, had believed she would never become.
But rebirthing your self-esteem completely comes from one thing alone: accepting yourself for who you are. And that took time. I had to tell and convince myself over and over again that the remnants of my acne scars didn’t matter, that my tummy fat and love handles didn’t matter, the hair on my arms, legs and pits definitely didn’t matter. Being in a stable relationship now for three years has helped see that in its entirety, but I’d like to think I have also owned up fully to who I am, of my own accord and efforts.
Loving yourself is a journey. Embracing your unique weird-as-it-as identity is a journey. If I can do it, people can and should. In the words of the great Christina Aguilera, “you are beautiful in every single way.”
Note: This is a series about my mental health journey and how specific experiences led to my diagnosis of clinical depression and anxiety. More parts will be coming shortly.
Part 1: Childhood, home and school.
I have struggled with mental health issues for the last fourteen years. However, it took 12 years to diagnose, during a hastily scheduled therapy session in the small cube-shaped office of a psychiatrist in Bengaluru. She immediately diagnosed me as having anxiety and clinical depression.
Over the last two years, I have juggled a precarious combination of therapy and medication. However, I am not alone in my lifelong war with my brain. My life partner and my closest friends have each been diagnosed with mental health issues; novelty badges handed out to commemorate the disorders that plague them in every facet of their lives.
Mental health in India is becoming more and more talked about and written about than ever before. And yet, despite all the attention being drawn to it, a significant percentage of the population believe it doesn’t exist. Why? Because they can’t see physical proof of it, like a fever-inducing cold, a spate of stitches on a deep cut, or a broken bone wrapped up neatly in a cast.
Which is why I want to talk about it, from my perspective. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me; it’s my way of telling my story. I am doing it because I believe mental health needs the attention it deserves.
Before I start this series, I would like to clarify a few things. I am not a mental health professional, nor am I an investigative reporter attempting to do a shocking exposé with fancy numbers and percentages and other people’s harrowing accounts. This will comprise aspects of my journey, coupled with experiences people I trust have gone through (revealed with their consent, of course). It’s going to be angry, biased, and full of Charlie Brooker-esque metaphors. It is also completely true.
While I have been toying with the idea of talking about this for a long while now, it was my friend’s article in The Wire about her mental health struggle that sowed the seed for its need. SB, I can’t thank you enough for that and I applaud for being brave to talk about it.
And NS, you are my rock. The only person who has truly understood the twisted workings of my brain and has lived through the roughest of times to speak of them.
Sir Thomas Browne gave us the most modern and known version of the phrase ‘charity begins at home’. If you’re the only, first-generation, spawn of over-achieving Indian immigrant parents (or a middle-class Indian kid, really) and if school was your second home (quoted directly from my first-grade Arab social studies textbook), that phrase would be ‘brainfuckery begins at home’. At least, it was for me.
Having the combined expectations of the two people who gave birth to you weighs down on you like a son of a bitch, especially when you have the horrible luck of repeatedly letting them down. As novices who had just fallen off the back of the parenting truck in the promise land of oil and gold, they believed that their child deserved the best education she could get. This meant the most expensive Indian school in said land (so as to stay true to their roots) with the most intellectually challenging curriculum conceivable. What this curriculum truly is, however, is a marathon to see which special child can cram the most amount of universally unnecessary education, vomit it out onto an answer sheet, and score meaningless grades. I am, obviously, talking about the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) and the Indian School Certificate (ISC). Buying toilet paper with my hard-earning money has been a more proud endeavour for me than being tossed those two marksheets.
Nothing ever felt right, at home or at school (for some details of the experience in school, this piece of mine will elaborate; I won’t be repeating them here). I failed classes repeatedly and got sent by most of my teachers to the supervisor’s office. They, in turn, would call my parents to remind them that I would never do anything useful with my life.
Because, you see, the school I attended is no ordinary school. It is a school for privileged over-achievers whose parents can afford to educate them in places like Stanford, Yale, and Cornell. Every child that goes through their school needs to be nothing but the best, in order for them to make something of themselves in the real world. And if you didn’t fit into this definition, you might as well resign yourself to becoming a loser and being reminded of it every single day. You would become nothing, not unless you pulled up your socks, worked hard, and helped this school maintain the fact that they were producing junior Hawkings and Curies, Ambanis and Sandbergs.
In the last five years of my schooling, my parents felt that spending all my non-school time studying and attending tuition classes would be the best and only way through which I would pull through with a respectable score and get into college. My friends and their friends’ children, not to mention their relatives’ children, were all doing well academically. Why couldn’t I?
The truth was that, subconsciously, I already knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to write. I wanted to act. I couldn’t do either of those things because, A. the school’s academics focused on anything but that, and B. all the extracurricular activities, like drama and debate and press club, were off-limits to me, thanks to teachers who picked their favourite students (some of whom were quite undeserving) to helm said activities.
I remained stuck in an infinite loop of bad grades, lectures from my parents demanding promises that I would do better next time, never-ending tuition classes that sucked the life of me, staring at a textbook endlessly for hours without being able to assimilate anything, getting anxious every time I had to start writing on an answer sheet, and looking dejected as my teachers would toss my cross-filled exam papers back to me (while most of the people around me would be rejoicing and figuring out who scored the highest grades).
To this day, I shiver every time I see the results of a test. I shiver when I have to step into a one-on-one meeting with someone. I feel triggered by the slightest amount of criticism, even if it is said constructively.
What about friends, then? Yes, I did have a group of people in school one would call friends. But I kept my sorrows about my grades and my bullying to myself; simply immersing myself in the fact that there were people who liked me for who I was.
All those lectures from my parents and trips to the supervisor’s office had made me ashamed to ever reveal that I was not a good student. I lied to them about my grades out of the constant fear that they would stop being friends with me (something my parents tried to convince me of). They cared, but barely enough to notice that I was struggling, probably because they had their own personal demons to battle.
Of course, there was one person for whom doing well in school was not a problem. The person I once called my best friend. She and I grew up together; our families knew each other socially before we had even started school. However, it took me a massive amount of adulting and reflection to realise that she was not my best friend. She was nothing like a friend is supposed to be. You can call her 3S.
Socially in school, 3S was the target of bullies just like me. Unlike me, though, these bullies didn’t seem to faze her. One thing that she had, and probably continues to have, is her academics. She consistently remained among the top ten students of the class and secured admission to a fantastic school. What I later realised, much to my disbelief, is that our entire friendship was a competition for her. She knew she was better than me at the stuff that seemed to matter at the time and she never missed a chance to remind of it. My parents would cry over what they had done to deserve a kid who couldn’t be as great as her ‘best friend’.
Much after we graduated and I was in journalism school, I came out to her. When I told her that I liked another female friend of mine while we were in school, I remember her asking me, “Why couldn’t you like me?”
When I relayed my sexual experiences to her, she borderline slut-shamed me, without ever really saying the words out loud.
I don’t speak to her anymore. And I don’t intend to, because that toxic relationship made me doubt my self-worth for years. It still does sometimes, in my dreams.
My life at home is what one would call unusual. My formative years were dominated by my maternal grandmother, because both my parents worked long hours.
My degrading academics was the main point of contention in our family. Each failed attempt at picking my grades back up would prompt my parents to either take away something I already had or not give me something I truly wanted and needed. It was the reason I could not attend a lot of parties and outings with friends, attend a drama course that could have kickstarted numerous opportunities, use the Internet for two years, switch to another school to explore more options, or leave the country for my bachelors degree education.
My relationship with my grandmother was no picnic either. We constantly fought about whether I was studying or not, the food I ate, and the little money I spent on outings with friends. Despite this, we have managed to find a balance, probably because we don’t spend a great deal of time together anymore. Even so, she was there when not a lot of people were.
My parents are a different story. I continue to fear them, deep down, and loathe to talk to them about my life. Telling them about anything life-altering and positive for me barely ever comes with a tone of joy and support in return. I feared them when I first told them about my life partner, I fear them whenever I tell them that I have quit a job, and I fear to tell that I may need financial support at times. It is a crippling fear, fueled by all the anxiety in my bones.
For now, I feel like this encapsulates it. There will be more. There is always more.
The Lava Cake Diaries 