My name is Naina and I’m 24. I am currently settled well and work as an assistant restaurant manager in a 5-star chain. And I’m a totally out lesbian.
My experience has been an interesting one. I remember the first time I realized I was curious about kissing girls. I was 16, and I had this weird fixation. I mean maybe it was that Katy Perry song “I Kissed A Girl”, but even though loads of people heard it, apparently my thought was unnatural.
I thought I was just curious at that point of time. I’ve never had boys approach me in school for any kind of romantic relationship. I actually also felt very comfortable with women, with the exception of a few men. At that point I think I believed it was a romantic interest.
What kind of helped me was the 377 high court decision in 2009. I opened up to my school friends about wanting to date a woman. They thought I was joking before one of them actually approached me for a romantic relationship. I was curious and excited because this was the first time it seemed like the most normal romantic relationship I had. The one with men, didnt have this spark.
My mom kinda caught me with my girlfriend at 16, and told me that it was just a phase and how it was normal to experiment. Somehow, being in a cool household where I could talk to my mother about anything didn’t help. So when my girlfriend and I broke up, she created a huge mess. And though my mother was very supportive, she told me how I wasn’t a lesbian.
I think I knew right then that I liked women a lot. I gave my 12th exam and started an online relationship with a girl 6000 miles away, she was in amsterdam.
I think I really opened up a lot in college, and most of my friends there were warm to the idea of who I am. Of course there were a few people who were phobic, but I would say I think I was scary enough for them not to say it to my face.
It strained my relationship with my mom the most, she tells me of how she dreamt of making me her princess.
Soon after that I got introduced to the queer community thanks to a friend I made on a dating app. I attended parties and I finally felt like I belonged somewhere.
I have been in relationships with people inside the delhi lesbian community and it comes with its positives and negatives. The positive being that I get to be with the person I love, the negative being the fact that the law doesn’t support us.
I have seen long term couples breaking up, only because they can easily. There is a lot of ambiguity in the community. The hard fact is that people do walk away saying “We aren’t married, are we?”.
I was in a relationship with a woman a few years older to me, since I was very new to the community I had this naive idea that people don’t cheat and it’s similar to hetero-normative relationships. We were living together and sort of did start building things, however it was easy for her to break it off and move on without really giving it another shot or trying to make it work.
Hetero-normative culture is apparently a bad thing, and restricts freedom, according to some people I’ve come to know over the years.
I’ve seen this as a pattern in almost the whole community, especially in people who have been more established into the community.
However I do believe the world is changing and we are becoming more sensitive as people and soon we will have a solution to this problem as well
It is important to maintain contacts in the community. It is a very small community and we have to support each other, especially when our parents and friends don’t understand what we are.
I have received this support quite a bit when my ex and I broke up. My parents were sort of happy about it because they thought it would scare me straight (ha! see what I did there?). I had people I could talk to about this, and did not feel alone. I even made some great friends along the way who help me take better decisions. I do hope we keep building on this sense of togetherness we all have.