When I hit my 20s, like all responsible Malayali parents, one question that my mother asked all the astrologers she visited was about when I would get married. Their answers were all uncannily similar, as they would glimpse at me, look into my horoscope, and then reply with a poker face–“It will get very late.”
I was an extremely disturbed and depressed person in those years, struggling with gender dysphoria, unable to come to terms with my identity, confused and clueless about what the future held for me. So, the astrologers’ predictions meant hardly anything to me as marriage was the least of my problems—or so I thought.
With friends and relatives, who were of my age, getting married and starting families of their own, there was a subtle pressure building up in my subconscious mind. I began wondering if I would ever find a companion, let alone a wife.
When I started transitioning, my life fell into place. I was constantly surprised to discover who I was. My character, my personality, my views on life itself changed, and so did my feeling of incompleteness without a companion. I realised that when you start loving yourself, you do not seek validation from anyone else—you are completely on your own. For the first time in my life, I was meeting and making friends as my true self without having to hide the slightest thought in my mind.
This newfound freedom and experience of meeting people from the queer community gifted me what I longed for my entire life–best friends and a chosen family.
It was at a National Seminar on LGBT+ Discourses, organized by Queerala in 2016, that I received my first opportunity to speak on a panel on the ‘Invisibility of Transmen’ in India. This event was special not only because it marked the beginning of my journey in LGBT+ advocacy, but it was here that I met my life partner and bonded with a lot of queer friends who were destined to be integral in my life.
Last year, when I proposed marriage to my partner and she said yes, we had no inkling about how we wanted the wedding to be. She was not keen on a heteronormative Hindu wedding ceremony but simply wanted to register the wedding and have a small reception for close friends and immediate family. I agreed with her but had an unsettling feeling in my heart.
I’d organized my sisters’ weddings and have attended so many weddings, wishing that one day I would have this experience. Being queer or not shouldn’t invalidate that. Why should I give it up because LGBT+ people have this pressure to create their own spaces different from the mainstream? Why should we leave wedding ceremonies and its festivities to cisgender heteronormative spaces only?
I wanted my wedding to be simple and traditional, a celebration of queer love and reclamation of practices that have long been dominated by cisgender people.
More than anything, I knew that my wedding would give hope to a lot of trans people who have the same dreams as mine—who live in despair wondering whether they would ever have a partner, a wedding, and a family. That convinced my partner and we decided to customize the ceremony to suit our personal beliefs.
What made our wedding more special was that it gave an opportunity for our queer friends and family to lead the festivities. From organizing a Haldi and Mehendi Function to multiple wedding receptions, our chosen family and friends from the LGBT+ community-led all the celebrations whereas my biological family gracefully took the back seat.
They were in awe of the love and support we were showered with and told me they have never witnessed such strong bonds between people who have come together owing to their experiences and become a family. Perhaps, that was the first time, I witnessed envy from non-queer people of queer lives and our unspoken fellowship.