QUESTION:
”What are the living conditions for homosexuals in India. Socially, culturally and politically?”
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ANSWER:
The luxury of love
My mind is twisting and turning. I can’t seem to solve the Rubens Cube. It is an Indian version of the game but it shouldn’t be any different from the Rubens Cube I’ve got home in Sweden. But it is. Not only is it extremely hard to twist it around. The colour red, the colour of love seems to be missing. I’ve always taken Red for granted and now my mind is trapped. Where the hell is Love in this country, or more accurately what is it?
I am sitting on the balcony up at Carlton’s Hotel. I am looking right in to the brothel on the other side of the street. Women in their night gowns are hanging out from their French balconies. They are looking curious over to where I am sitting.
I glaze down on the streets instead. Men. Lots of men every where. There are a couple of female beggars down there but besides from them there it’s just men. Men in India are working, talking, breathing with other men. Women on the other hand are working, talking, breathing with other women. They hardly ever meet.
Raju P, the front desk guy at Carlton’s comes to wipe of the table. I ask him about his family and when he starts telling me about his life it suddenly hit me. Love the way I know it, is a luxury in this country. Raju is telling me that he got married a couple of years ago after his parents had picked out a good girl for him. He now has two small children but he meet them only three weeks a year, during the summertime. He can’t afford meeting them more often. His wife and kids are living far away from Mumbai and like any other working man in India he always works a minimum of twelve hours a day. He tells me that it is hard, but as he put it ; “Love ‘s for rich people”.
It strikes me that there is a fundamental difference in the way money changes the game of love. In Sweden we have money enough to buy us time. Time that we can spend in many different ways. We have time to be with our family, time to meet new people, time to be in many different relationships, time to have sex. We often talk about how a good relationship is all about investing time. But what if you can’t afford time?
Life in India can not be compared with life in Sweden, nor can love. It is like comparing bananas with apples. It is two different things. For example, in Sweden love and sex comes before marriage, in India love and sex comes after the marriage. It might not seem as such a big deal but in fact it changes everything. For example it makes a question about homosexuality very complex. It is like an Indian friend of mine said “if you are only married you can be how homosexual as you’d like in India”.
I suddenly remember an article I recently read on the Internet. Geeta Kumana a homosexual women suited in Mumbai was being interviewed. In the end of the interview she got a question about what she thought was different being homosexual in Stockholm verces Mumbai. She answered “I don’t think the differences lies in being a homosexual as much as being a woman.”
I hear a familiar sound of attention. Two men holding hands is trying to get my attention. They stare at me and shouts some words in English. I can’t focus any more so I release my thoughts and conclude: Love, the way I know it is a luxury for most people in this country – homosexuals as well as heterosexuals. Answering a question about the living conditions for homosexuals is like solving a Indian version of Rubens Cube with Swedish logic. It just doesn’t work.
