The attackers kept shouting that LGBT+ is Western culture and they won’t allow this to happen in their Assam.

I come from a family that enjoys and indulges in arts and dance. When I was a kid, my father enrolled me in Kathak classes. I received training in fine arts and music and became a trained Kathak dancer. When I hit puberty, it became apparent that I was effeminate. Everyone would associate my gestures and postures with dancing and used to say, “Bada hokar theek ho jaayega.”

Thankfully, I was not the only queer person in my school; there was a group of six to eight people who were all effeminate like me. We used to indulge in things that boys our age would not do, which even included ogling or crushing on boys. We didn’t know any terminology around gay, lesbian, or bisexual. But we were comfortable with the fact that we liked boys. Another thing that bonded us was our common love for dance and music.

While my school provided a platform to express our art, it wasn’t a safe space for queers. Students who were good at studies mingled only with those who were like them. Being good in academics acted in my favor, though. Teachers were fine with me dancing as long as I scored well in exams. However, others in my group who were not academically strong were constantly judged for their interest in dancing and singing. Not all teachers were supportive, though. A male teacher in my school appeared to be always angry with me, and even for the smallest of matters, he found reasons to punish and humiliate me in front of everyone. He was so offended by my body language that he despised my presence. To get rid of me, he always made me stand outside the class as a punishment.

To avoid the harassment, whenever his class was about to start, I would stand outside the room. One day, I am not sure why, he brought a cane to hit me. Around this time, a female teacher intervened and questioned him on his behavior and even raised the issue of punishing a studious kid like me. He got furious and blamed her, saying she did not realize the damage dance and music were doing to boys. He said that our parents needed to be informed about how we were becoming girls because teachers like her allowed boys to dance like girls. Luckily, because of the argument between the two, I was spared from getting hit that day. I sometimes wonder why female teachers in our school were supportive of queer people but the male teachers were just perennially bitter toward us. By Class 8, we realized that we were not included as we were considered a different ‘category’ than the rest of the classmates. We were all bullied for being different. Some toxic batchmates harassed us physically and mentally. Because of this, our queer group started hanging out together most of the time—whether it was for tuitions or dance rehearsals.

I was always sure that I was not straight and that there were others in the world who were like me and it was absolutely normal. Reading up gave me a good amount of exposure to help me understand and accept my reality. While growing up, once when I was in Kolkata in 2009, I saw the Pride March. It gave me exciting jitters and I was overwhelmed to see people with whom I could relate. At the same time, I was scared and thought that I would have to do something to change my fate so I could live my reality like the queer people in the Pride March. While I knew I was queer, the tough conversation with my family on coming out never happened. But I was clear that I was not going to marry a girl, unlike most of my queer friends who gave into the family pressure of marriage.

In 2013, when I moved to Guwahati, I met a big community of gays there—they were all closeted, though. They wouldn’t even support others who wanted to come out despite being such a large community. Around this time, the SC recriminalized homosexuality by overruling the Delhi HC judgment. I saw some posts on Facebook from Guwahati University and TISS condemning the SC judgment. We decided to join them and asked people to come for support—barely 10 people showed up in Guwahati. During this event, I was scared to come out in public, and out of that fear, every time I saw someone with a camera, I hid myself.

But I gathered the courage, and after this, we organized a Pride March in Northeast in Guwahati in February 2014 and that’s when I came out. But I got backlash as only 4-5 queer faces became visible and we were again isolated by the community and others. It’s been 10 years of living in freedom now. A day before the Pride March, I told my parents that this was all a part of University and Ph.D. work. They didn’t pay much attention to this. Though they would read in newspapers how I was actively participating in the LGBTQ+ community, no one ever questioned me on such matters. While we were preparing for the Pride March, some misinformation spread on Facebook and the media published negative banter around it. Fortunately, people from the HIV Office offered us their center to conduct our preparatory meetings. The unfortunate part was when we reached there, some locals attacked us. They damaged the property but we managed to escape. The attackers kept shouting that LGBT+ is Western culture and they won’t allow this to happen in their Assam. They even attacked us during the Pride March. With all the hatred doing the rounds, people would ridicule me on Facebook and that’s when I changed my name to Chao. Since then, Chao has become my adopted name and later my identity. (Chao is a way to address people in the same manner as Mr./Shri/Shrimati, etc. in a specific community in Assam)

Two years back, I met my partner. As an activist, I offer counseling to the people in the community. During one such session, I met him. We connected on Facebook and he suggested we meet up. The idea was not to date at that time. As I had come out of a long-distance relationship, I wasn’t in a hurry to get into another. I have always liked meeting people to build the community and with the same intention, I met him. Gradually, things worked out between us and we are together now. I am not sure of the future because his family is extremely conservative and he can’t even think of coming out. I do believe that everyone deserves to come out of the closet at some point in their lives. In his family, people have an idea that he hangs out with a guy—the guy who is out and loud-gay! Both of us are welcome in each other’s families. My parents know that he is my partner but at his house, it is different. While his family tried to create some barriers for him, I feel that maybe by now, they are somewhat used to the idea of me. I don’t know what the future looks like or where we will be, but at present, I am committed.

In 2017, when I moved to Tripura to work as a Central Government Office employee, I realized that Tripura did not have any LGBT+ community. As an academician, people around me know that I have been an active speaker on matters of gender, sex, and equality. Post-COVID, in 2021, news broke out in Tripura when four transwomen were harassed, stripped naked, and asked to show their genitals to prove they were transwomen by the Tripura Police. The next day after this horrible incident, I received a call from a few Guwahati-based activists. They asked me to do something to help them. I remembered I knew a transwoman who could help us. But she wasn’t into activism and just wanted to live a normal life. We reached out to each other. We then went to the police station and filed an FIR against the police. We held a press conference against the press because they were the ones who caused this. Initially, the police mistreated us. I even reached out to various LGBT+ organizations and asked them to issue notices on this grave matter. In a few days, the police issued an apology statement.

To our shock, they said they were unaware of the NALSA judgment. That’s when a few of us from the community decided to organize an awareness workshop for them. The three of us then went on to found an organization in Tripura known as Swabhimaan. It is a proud moment that it’s working as a registered organization. We started as the Tripura LGBTQI+ Collective, and we started connecting with more people (teachers, counselors, and lawyers working on the NALSA judgment) to gather support. Tripura had its second Pride March in Agartala this year.

In August, we conducted a sexual health awareness workshop and launched ourselves as Swabhimaan. Currently, I am contributing as the Vice President of the organization. People from the community know each other in Tripura and this has brought in some drastic changes in terms of acceptance for the people. Educational institutions are also taking considerable steps towards sensitization such as introducing Gender Cells and LGBTQ+ Cells and hosting awareness campaigns. But I also believe that people who do not want to educate themselves on such matters will continue to remain unaware, despite any campaigns we conduct.

Honestly, even when people bullied me and called me gay, I could barely understand what they were saying. However, if anyone called me ‘homo,’ I used to feel awful. Once during my graduation, someone laughed at me and said, “You are gay.” I checked its meaning in a dictionary as there was no internet back then. I found the meaning of the word ‘gay’ as ‘happy.’ I thought there is no shame in being happy. Then some more people called me ‘gay,’ and that’s how I got to know what they were intending to say and learned about the term in my third year of graduation. Kids nowadays know what LGBTQIA+ means and they do not refer to their classmates by derogatory terms. Times have changed for the better.

I grew up in a remote area in the northeast part of the country, in Silchar. The town I grew up in is geographically marginalized—no proper roads or connectivity to the city of Guwahati. From a small-town boy to becoming the co-founder of three organizations at the age of 34—XUKIA (the first queer organization of Assam), SAGE - The Barak Queer Collective, and Swabhimaan (Tripura LGBTQIA+ Collective), the first queer rights organization in Tripura—I have come a long way to accept my sexuality and promote the community.