What is being gay? How do gay men live? How do they perform sexual acts? Is that even natural? These were some of the many questions that started crossing my mind when I came out to myself.

Yes—as a proud homosexual man today—I truly believe that before coming out to others, one needs to come out to oneself and say that it is okay to be gay.

Ever since my childhood days, I was a very feminine person. When my brother used to tie his laces to go out and play volleyball, I used to tie my Barbie doll’s hair. As a child, this activity made me extremely happy—although my relatives found it obnoxious at times—and my parents, especially my mother, never judged me for asking her to buy me a new doll.

Our shopkeeper understood my preferences so well that the moment we entered his shop, he used to display his latest collection of dolls. I had only female friends throughout my childhood, and there have been times when their mother(s) used to judge me because they took me for a heterosexual male person who, when playing with their daughters, was being “touchy-feely.”

But every good thing in life has a timeline, and mine reached a brisk end when I entered adolescence. My parents wanted me to change my school for a quality education. At first, the school was a breath of fresh air, but soon enough, the air became downright toxic.

Because I was never given a reality check before I came to this school, I had no idea how I was supposed to adjust to the prevalent norms. I was told that the way I walk, sit, talk and gesticulate, is unnatural and similar to that of eunuchs. Soon, one of the boys I became friends with started calling me “kinnar”.  The hostile nature of society made me hate the term eunuch. Although there’s a lot of difference between eunuchs and transgender people, due to lack of exposure, the difference was blurred, and along with it, my thoughts as well.

As soon as I started realising that I like boys, I started hating myself more and more. My mind was blanking out most of the time and I was looking for answers. Soon, a time came when the phenomenon of the Internet came up, and one fine day, I actually looked up the term ‘gay.’

I recall my heart beating—hard, fast, and loud—like the drums playing during Ganesh Visarjan. Right after I typed in the term, the screen displayed hundreds of pictures of shirtless gay men, and somehow—I liked them. But in my mind, I was still grappling with the question as to how could it happen to me? I thought I was the only one, and some posts, also proclaimed that it was a disease. So naturally, I then searched for the cure.

Hundreds of websites I visited showed me cures and all them in such bombastic fashion that I believed them. Stop looking at men, stop watching gay porn, see a counsellor, get electrocuted: these were some of the cures listed on various websites. After a few days, I was laughing while reading them—and that was the moment I came to terms with my sexuality. In a flash, I became comfortable with me liking boys, looking at them, and dreaming about them.

Soon, I started behaving more like myself, and that didn’t go down well with some of the boys in my class. One day when I was walking towards the school bus, two boys came from the back and started groping me. This was happening in the middle of the school ground. Nobody looked, and they continued. I didn’t know how to react and whom to reach out to. Instantly, my body became numb and so did I.

This became an everyday routine; there were times when I used to look for different routes to reach the bus, but I was unlucky most of the time and those two boys used to end up finding me. Again they would try to grope, touch my crotch, tousle my hair, remove my tie and left me feeling violated.

I never spoke about these incidents to my parents. I should have. I never complained about those boys. I should have. This made a long-lasting dent in my confidence and after a point, led me to depression. Because most teenagers stop listening to their parents during their teenage years, I did too, but my reason was very different—I didn’t know how to tell them about the things happening to me at school.

The day before the commencement of the final exams, I remember I was sitting and one of my classmates came and said “I will make him suck my cock,” and laughter erupted as if he had announced some achievement. He held my hand and started pulling it towards his crotch. I cried so much that his entire crotch became wet, but those were my tears, while everyone thought that he had reached orgasm and made fun of it.

After this incident, I started loathing school. I started failing and somehow that became a saving grace. Although I scored high in other subjects, I failed in maths and the school denied my promotion to Class X.

By this time I was so numb and sad that I wasn’t aware of the reality that my obstinate behaviour had been bothering my parents. They tried to send me to a new school but I refused. I told them I would like to be homeschooled. Although they didn’t like the idea, today I feel that they knew something was wrong with me, and that it had to do with school. But it’s a generalised reality that Indian parents don’t talk about these things with their children, so they never really outright asked me what was wrong.

During my tenure as a home-schooled student, I started educating myself while studying general subjects. I became familiar with pop culture shows like Modern Family, wherein two gay men adopt, adore, and look after an Asian daughter. I started aspiring for such possibilities and it made me feel good.

My college life was drastically different. I was never bullied for being me, except the one time when someone said, “I will commit suicide if you are gay because I hugged you.” I was shocked and started “acting straight” in front of my friends. I wouldn’t have done this if the law and society supported me. But this way I could avoid difficult situations, so I continued. However, in the second year of college, I thought I should stop it, and gradually came out to two of my friends, and later, to my brother and my cousins.

All of them supported me and I feel now that they always had an idea of what was going on. But when the Supreme Court overturned the 2009 judgment of the Delhi High Court, like many others, my idea too, of living a free life as a homosexual man, was shattered.

When I was doing my post-graduation at my new college, I met a lot of liberal and conservative people. They were people from some of the most eminent institutions, yet, in their minds, there was some form of homophobia. I felt that it was lack of exposure on their part. However, I never sympathised with them.

I remember one time somebody told me that they identified me as the ‘gay one’ in their conversation. I realised how important my identity is to them—more than it is to me. As much as I found it ludicrous, it made me aware of how even some liberal people could make a big deal about somebody being gay.

Today, those same people are congratulating each other because of the SC judgment of decriminalising consensual acts between two adults of the same gender. I abhor the fact that they are acting liberal. But as John Lennon concluded in the song ‘Imagine’: “I hope someday you’ll join us/ And the world will live as one.”