But I wasn't yet ready to tell my parents, and since the decision of a life partner is something really important and complex, I must have made something up like "I didn't feel a connection". As expected, my parents had done their homework - good family, educated girl, very beautiful too - but one look at her and I thought to myself, I don't want to cheat her and myself. I wanted to tell them everything then and there and cancel that upcoming meeting, but that could have been very shocking and stressful for them. Little did I know that my parents would not give in so easily when I came home on leave from a posting, my parents had arranged a meeting with a young woman and her family.
It broke my heart as it probably broke theirs. I further said, don't ask me why because I can't tell you. So I wrote them a long, emotional letter saying that I had decided that I didn't want to get married and that it was my life and so, my decision. I loved the army, but I was beginning to feel that I would not be accepted for who I was.Ī little later, when my parents pressured me to get married, I decided I would not be dishonest and lead a double life out of fear of society or relatives. Besides, if I had told anyone 'officially' in the army, I could very well have been discharged dishonourably, kicked out. Or at least that's what most people thought back then. After all, as far as most of the world is concerned, someone who is gay is basically a freak, a weirdo, someone fundamentally flawed.
However, I felt that this had to be my 'big secret' and there was no way I could tell anyone.
However, by my late 20s, after months of drinking and wondering and questioning why I was different and crying myself to sleep over it, I finally came to terms with myself and accepted myself for who I was. I struggled really badly to accept myself - and the hyper-straight world of the army only made it that much more difficult for me. By my mid-20s, when those feelings started slowly resurfacing, I started understanding that I was gay. That is probably why I went through my late teens and early 20s without feeling anything close to what can be called romantic attraction or love during my years at the National Defence Academy (NDA) and Indian Military Academy (IMA). The physical violence was not brutal - far from it - but it most likely drove home a message - a wrong message - but one that gay kids the world over learn from such incidents of bullying: that what I was feeling was 'wrong', 'bad' or 'sick', and if I continued to heed those feelings, it could provoke much worse violence - and so it was best to 'conform'. He surrounded me with some of his close friends and pushed me to the ground, holding me by the neck, while uttering some expletives and probably, that was the end of it. He probably noticed me looking at him and decided to 'teach me a lesson' in the only manner young boys know. When I was about 15, I was drawn to this rather cute-looking boy in class. One of the first things most people ask when someone comes out to them is "When did you first know?" Through my teenage years in high school, I just knew I was a little different.