“There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.” - Gilbert Parker

As I was running through the chain of emails I felt as if I was standing on a bridge and the water beneath seemed to drift back sour memories of desire, passion and betrayal …

An hour ago we were returning from lunch. The elevator had reached the second floor and someone joined us on our way up. My subordinate and I were busy discussing something and I would have overlooked our new companion had I not been perturbed by the unflinching gaze. I turned towards her and froze… She was looking right into my eyes with the same poise and charm. For a moment I had lost all words except the most hackneyed ones… I asked “How are you?” And she replied in the grimmest of her tone “I got married and I am leaving …   you.” We had reached the 4th floor and my subordinate had to leave for some admin formalities. Should I just walk out with him? I didn’t want to be trapped with her in the 3X2 feet box but it was too late…
She told me that she will soon be leaving for London and had come to bid goodbye to her friends and colleagues. To prevent eye contact I turned my face towards the walls but unfortunately they were paneled with glasses. The reflections of her riveting eyes followed me at every corner. Was she trying to tell me something? Was she expecting an apology from me?
As the elevator reached the 6th floor I rushed out even before the door had opened completely. I turned back to wish her good luck as the door slid close gradually devouring the sight of her unblinking eyes twinkling as brilliantly as the first time when I saw her, still trying hard to convey those words that had failed to escape her mouth forever. I rushed away as far as possible from her, from shame and from guilt…. Click here

If you ever walk into my bedroom of my parent’s house where I have spent all my childhood and teenage years you will come across a life size poster of Aishwarya Rai (Former Miss world turned actor), a photo frame portraying a group of plastic smile laden faces which bear no resemblance whatsoever with the people who live in that house today and last but not the least a closet stuffed with toys….the sole guardians of a once-existent childhood. Even today when I visit my home, I would take them out for a breath of fresh air, clean the puppet’s clothes and cuddle with the soft toys, try operating my electronic puppy and remote controlled Ferrari and even try shooting with a handgun labeled ‘James Bond’

And if you have a closer look, somewhere hidden behind the toys you will see something unexpected; a doll in pink satin gown and embroidered white laces. I still remember that morning when my father had almost packed the doll; it was a birthday gift for his boss’s daughter. I wanted him to leave it behind but he paid no heed. He repeatedly said “You are a man, and men don’t love dolls. Finally I had managed to emotionally blackmail my mom who wittingly saved the doll as a beautiful showpiece for her living room. My dad left the next day with a new one, my brother bullied me for a few days and my mom bargained for better grades in my class… they all forgot about this incident without the slightest anticipation of what was becoming…Click here

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

                                                                             - Old English prayer

I was sitting on my bed trying to have a clearer vision of my digital clock. It was blinking a faint 2:10 AM. Why are the digits appearing so surreal? My eyes were wet and the skin below it felt sticky because the tears had dried up. I was sweating profusely and groping in the dark for water; my throat was choking. I wanted to breathe as if I was being smothered in my sleep by the pillow.

After drinking a bottle of chilled water and splashing some on my face, I stood in the open air of my 6^th floor balcony for a few minutes before I came back to bed only to get the shock of my life! The sheets and the blanket seemed blotched with black ink. I could not decipher anything, may be because it was dark or was I still dreaming? I turned on the lights and came back to bed and froze…

There was blood everywhere… lots of it.           Click here…

“The world is filled with unlikely friendships. How do they begin? With one person desperately in need and the other willing to lend a helping hand. When such kindness is offered we are finally able to see the worth of those we have previously written off. And before we know it, a bond has formed regardless of whether others can understand it. Yes, unlikely friendships startup everyday; no one understands this more than the lonely. In fact, it is what they count on.”          – Desperate Housewives

My class mates played with me because I shared my lunch with them

But would have they if I hadn’t?

My teachers adored me because I did the homework

But would have they if I didn’t?

My friends call me because I party with them every Saturday night

But will they if I don’t?

My helpers take care of me because I pay them

But will they if I can’t?

My subordinate respects me because I guide him

But will he if I give up?

My parents love me because I am their son

But would they if they knew the truth….?

Life is filled with questions, those which can be easily answered and those which we wish we had never asked… And then one day we come across people who answer all our questions with compelling simplicity and change our perception towards life; they shine the light of humility and help us grow into thoughtful, compassionate and better humans.

It’s by benevolence not birth they come into our lives and it is faith not fiction that sustains an intangible bond between us. Click here

“Everyone enjoys the game of ‘make and believe’ now and then. Of course the ways we play can vary greatly. Sometimes we tell ourselves that work won’t interfere with our family life, sometimes we imagine certain relationships to be more meaningful than they really are. Occasionally we put on a show as if to convince ourselves that our secrets aren’t really all that terrible. Yes, the game of make and believe is a simple one. You start by lying to yourself and if you can get to believe those lies… You win”

                                 –        Desperate Housewives

My mom is convinced that I have a girlfriend somewhere hidden in Europe. She thinks that it has to be a man’s passion for a woman and not his dedication to his employer that takes him 10 times a year to his ‘paradise’ with stoicism. I never tried to change her reasoning for obvious reasons. Needless to say she had always proven her wit in every such situation. She knew the day I had skipped school for my secret rendezvous with Ms. Stone in her ever controversial ‘Basic Instinct’. She smelt the evening when I missed my favorite TV series ‘X-files’ and went to bed early despite having prudently chosen odorless vodka. On her last visit, while we were enjoying a cup of tea she advised me not to hide my precious wine bottles at my office desk because it was ‘unethical’.  

The next day as I was carefully replacing them back to where they belonged, she said “Do you know why I never objected to all your mischief and addictions? That’s because you never tried hard to conceal them from me.”

“A man can lie to his mom, his father, his manager and even friends but not himself”. Click here..

“Temptation comes to all of us. Whether or not we succumb depends on our ability to recognize its disguise. Sometimes it arrives in the form of an old flame flickering back to life or a new friend who could end up being so much more or a young child who awakens feelings we didn’t think we had. And we give in to these temptations all the while knowing that coming morning we have to suffer the consequences”        – Desperate Housewives 

We have always been taught the difference between good and evil; that good is sublime, beautiful and white whereas evil is cruel, ugly and black. But as we grow up we realize that life is not mere black & white. Hence the question stands forth, why? Why do we often fail to choose between right and wrong?  I honestly do not have an answer but what I do know is that sometimes, we misinterpret lust to be love, flattery to be respect, trust to be faith and even sex to be love-making. And then there are times when we deliberately choose the evil over good simply because we are addicted to pleasure or just afraid of loosing happiness even before relishing its taste. 

Whatever it might be: a deliberate choice or plain ignorance, an insatiable addiction or temptation in disguise… every night we find ourselves gagged between the good and the evil and the only way to survive this cold war is to experience both and ask ourselves the next morning, whether or not we want the previous night to come back again and never go away. Click here

 “Do you love me because I’m beautiful, or I am beautiful because you love me?”

                                                                       - Oscar Hammerstein

I was a born narcissist. Even today my mom jokes about my childhood days when I would stand hours in front of the mirror admiring myself. Unfortunately with time, this obsession showed no signs of depreciation, thanks to the girls in school, high school, college and in public. Sometimes in an empty bus they would gamble on a dare to walk up and compliment me and ask my name and then somewhere a gorgeous Dutch waitress in a pizza hut would repeatedly smile and await my order overlooking other hot white males dying for a chance.

I often wondered why these girls found me attractive. I wasn’t the most handsome and not even close to being hot. My classmates thought it was the charm of my complexion, my room mate opined that I was more emotional and sensitive than other guys. Even my best friend advised that it was my communication that did the trick.

 He would stand in front of the mirror and thank everyone for their ignorance. After all it wasn’t the girls but their conscience that felt safer in his company… Click here 

“Yes, each new day in suburbia brings with it a new set of lies, the worst that we tell ourselves before we fall asleep. We whisper them in the dark telling ourselves we are happy or that he is happy, that we can change or that he will change his mind. We persuade ourselves that we can live with our sins or that we can live without him. Yes, each night before we fall asleep we lie to ourselves with a desperate hope that coming morning it would all be true.”  

– Desperate Housewives

12:00am: Midnight fantasy

Last night even I lied to myself. I committed that I will forget my past and once again fall in love, that one day I will come out to my parents while holding my lover’s hands and they will love me for whom I choose to love; that some day my fantasy of the perfect honeymoon cruise will come true and we will be parents of a cute little son…someday I will be happy with my one small family. 

6:00 am: From dawn

Today morning when I woke up I was happy. Not just because of the promise I made last night but also because I knew at once it is going to be one of those special days when I can listen to my heart speaking and voice them down on my notebook soon before they are sent to the pages of ma Vie en Rose (My life in Pink). For about an hour I kept wondering on the subject of my new blog and then suddenly I remembered the recent comment from one of my readers who had requested for something different and non-gay. While I pondered on the various potential topics my mobile jerked me up with its distinctive ringtone from Mission impossible. The very thought that it was beaconing me the impossibility of this mission to ‘write a non gay blog’ made me chuckle. As I picked up the call, little did I know that my new non-gay topic was knocking at the door waiting to shatter my midnight dream….

6:00 pm: Till dusk

It is evening; the sun is on its deathbed. And like all other mortals, it has to depart in sweet sorrow, leaving everything behind including my memories of this day…

Right now on my study desk, there stands a silver paneled photo frame featuring a happy middle-aged couple whom I love the most and reflecting the face of a dreamer I have started to hate. And the biggest irony being, this frame was gifted by my ex lover who left me for good but the faces in it are of people who never let me feel lonely even when I am alone…

As I look at the picture, their smile reminds me of a child grasping a man’s index finger with his tiny hands, desperately trying to take his first step, while the woman stands in front cajoling him not to give up. When I look at their eyes, I remember those horrific days when the child would suffer a seizure (at 5 years age) and she would rush to the hospital and plead to God for his quick recovery. Then one day when he grows up she would pray for his success during exams and encourage his naïve dreams with blissful words of unflinching hope and ineffable faith.

7:00 am: A day to condescend

But then today morning the unprecedented happened. The same couple suddenly called him up and insisted that he should get married soon. Probably because they are afraid that he would be left alone in this world after they are gone. And there would be no one to hold his hand when he is old and feeble or rush him to the hospital when he is sick or even pray for his success and share his dreams together. The words hit him with a blow as if someone was squeezing his heart.

The child’s dream had just turned into his worst nightmare…

Soon after the call was over, he could fathom the magnitude of the damage caused. He was less assertive and more rude, least understanding and most uncouth. All this while they had seen and felt proud of a good son but today he is no more than an insouciant ungrateful brat. He felt as if he had betrayed the very source of his life. Were those words of anger justified? Were they wrong or was I right? Was I angry on them for failing to understand me or on myself for not able to tell the truth? As he kept questioning himself he soon realized that being gay was not just about hiding within the façade of shame but also about hurting your beloved while unable to explain the reason for such behavior.

Being gay is about living in a paradise blessed with hope and cursed by betrayal; where every day starts with a new dawn but dies the same death.

And this was how I found my new ‘non gay’ subject for my blog. It is a prayer that hopes for nothing to change and speaks of life neither happy nor ‘gay’.

I call it a Disgraced prayer. Click here

“The best things in life are unseen,

That’s why we close our eyes

                               When we kiss, cry, and dream”            - unknown

In my school days, unlike the other guys, I never spent my allowance on movies, posters or even magazines or comics. Instead I used to buy a single flower every other day and place it on my study desk. Thankfully no one questioned my preference as they do today. Each flower was unique in its color and fragrance. They gave a new feeling to my room. Once they withered in a couple of days I would replace them with a new one; better, brighter and more expensive. One day I decided to look for something less transient. So I asked the florist who had become my friend. “Hey Aniket! I have been buying flowers from you for quite sometime but they all die very soon. Can you show me something that doesn’t?”

He chuckled and replied in his usual subservient tone “Sorry dear, we don’t have flowers that last forever…”Click here

“My candle burns at both its ends;

It will not last the night;

But oh, my foes, and oh, my friends —

It gives a lovely light.” 

                                                                                                – Edna St. Vincent Millay

             I had left my apartment to pay a debt to someone I never owed, of something I never borrowed: something faceless, intangible but priceless. As I walked on the deserted street by the canal, I could sense my pace faster than the breeze but slower than my heart beat. From a place, foreign to me to another equally alien, hoping to meet a stranger at midnight…. the journey seemed never ending and the reason: insidious, as if trying to drag me to the fathomless point of no return. I confirmed to my faceless destiny on the train departure and boarded the same at 23:25 hours.

Everything seemed natural and least intimidating except the fact that my mobile battery had almost died….. Click here

 ”You can close your eyes to things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel“

                                                                                                                     - Unknown   

I had always loved the sea. Not because of the usual fun that people seek at the beaches or in the waters. I love it because it has a stark similarity with our lives. Both of them have lot of secrets buried, secrets that are better lost till eternity, secrets if revealed could bring devastation and decadence, sorrow and shame to an extent that we wish we were never born. It was like any other evening; I had decided to visit my only confidante (the sea) to share my only little secret.

And this is what happened….Click here.

“Hungry not only for bread – but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing - but naked for human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a room of bricks but homeless because of rejection.”

                                                                                                           -  Mother Teresa

A lie against truth, a thorn in a rose plant, a child born to a dead mother; they all have something in common, something they share in every sphere of life – they are at most times misunderstood, disrespected or disgraced. But the irony lies in the fact that they are victims not of their sins but our own perceptions and prejudices.

 The credibility of a truth lies in the fallibility of a lie. Unless one has experienced falsehood it is impossible to judge the truth. And we also fail to realize at times that the secret of our happiness often lies at the kindness of a lie that protects us from the cruelty of a naked truth.

Same is the story of the thorn which is ridiculed by every man who has been pricked while plucking the rose. But what we fail to fathom is that thorns ward off children and intruders only to protect the rose.

Another painful example of misconstrue is the child whose mother had died while giving birth. To loose the very source of life and boundless love at birth is perhaps the worst that could befall to man. Being an orphan is a forfeit but accused of being the cause is a rape of humanity.  

 I always considered myself lucky that I was not one of them. But little did I know, and still only few of them do, that my lucky days were numbered. It was at the age of 16 when a group of friends was talking about sex and sexuality; and someone joked about men loving other men. Every time they referred to such people they winked like transvestites, twisted their palms like girls and even clapped like ‘the eunuchs in the local trains of Calcutta’. At that time words like ‘faggot’ or ‘gay’ were not in vogue. Their imitation and comments hit my chest with a severe blow. I was facing the naked and most unsavory truth of my life, a ghastly revelation that changed it all. I realized that I loved men and it wasn’t normal or acceptable in a society where I lived. For days I ventured into every conceivable way to determine what was happening to me, where did I go wrong and what was needed of me to change. At that time, there was no easy internet access and the only sources of my investigation were a few books on psychology and biology. A few days later I stopped thinking about it. Not that I had accepted my orientation but was too petrified and ashamed to question myself.

 Years went by; I completed my technical education and took up a job. I had a couple of casual encounters with a boy in my college hostel but it was all about momentary fun, lust and jerk off. I even had a short relationship with one of my juniors. We used to spend time together in weekends, visit nearby places and sleep together hugging each other as tightly as we could. However, it ended pretty soon when he claimed that he was seeing a girl. Today he is married to her. Everyone received his marriage invitation except for me…

 While at job I had made a few online friends and had a couple of rendezvous. Soon I developed a notion that being gay was all about making friends, partying, browsing gay porn featuring hot muscled men copulating with tender twinks, chat sessions beginning with the infamous questions like “ur ASL?” followed by “Top or Bottom?” and lastly asking for a drink while expecting your date to read between the lines, lines that demanded sex.

 During these days I met a boy online called Vivan. He was a student, 6 years younger to me and was living with his parents somewhere in the northern India, 1900 kms away from me. It started with seldom chat sessions which soon turned more frequent. Although he was young, there was a certain amount of maturity in him which I never found in men of my age. We became friends and exchanged ideas on career, movies and lastly sexual orientation. He considered me as his inspiration and wanted to follow my career path. We never exchanged pictures because we never had to. We never felt it was necessary. Being there for each other, leaving messages in my inbox querying about my day in office and querying back on his performance in examinations…I soon started to relish a different taste of homosexuality, a taste very few men could appreciate as few as those who can admire the value of a rose with its thorns.

 It had become a daily activity for me to return from office and view my inbox containing unread messages from him. It made me happy. One evening like any other day I came back and opened it. Much to my dismay it read “No new messages”. Those three words seemed to stare at me questioning the longevity of my newly discovered beautiful life. The very feeling that he has forgotten or met someone else made me sick and tired. I felt I had grown 10 years older and was once again alone and unwanted. At times I rebuked myself for being so possessive and insecured and then tried to justify his forgetfulness with various reasons. But as each day passed by, the reasons to hope started to shed …like the golden maple leaves in autumn. It was winter again….

 A month had gone by. It was 18^th Aug 2005, I was in my office. Though I had given up hope my conscience still waited for spring- still one leaf had managed to survive the winters of discontent. As I opened my mailbox, it was there once again; in bold. “You have a new message“. After I finished reading his letter, I ran to the wash room, locked myself in and puked, cried and crouched my palms hard enough to leave finger nail-marks on my skin.  

This is what he wrote. Click here…….