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| Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint |
“What does Valentine’s Day mean to you?”
A blank look for a fleeting moment precedes the answer. “Every day is Valentine’s Day. But on Valentine’s Day, I would go out of my way to do something special. Like, probably plan a surprise or something,” says Kali*.
“Really, you’d do that?” asks Brenda, slightly bemused. Her hair is short, but falls in waves, a lock apiece over each eye. “Your love is lovely. But you suck at giving surprises, my dear,” Brenda laughs. The 30-year-old charmer plays the guitar and bartends occasionally, performing both roles with equal flair in pubs and house parties. By day, she sources clothes for a million-dollar company. There is much to her that can’t be described in a few words. Such as, she loves Kali to death.
Prashant believes he did too. He had been Kali’s boyfriend since college. The arm-twisting, neck-grabbing and suicide threats had been going on forever, yet Kali’s family almost heaved a sigh of relief when she agreed to marry him. Ever since the death of Kali’s father when she was 9, her mother and two elder sisters had formed a tight band of three. There was too much disquiet in Kali (now 30 years old), which they hoped marriage would quell.
Straight-haired, high-cheek-boned Kali’s smile lingers long after she whacks Brenda for being honest.
Love isn’t easy business in a country which defines whom to love and how best to avoid facing possible jail time. There is a section that’s 153 years old, which keeps it straight and narrow, missionary style. Kali and Brenda don’t love straight and narrow.
Their love story has several starting points. It started in a rickshaw ride when Brenda dropped Kali home a few months after Kali’s engagement to Prashant. It started when Brenda looked up sharply on hearing Kali’s voice for the first time at a corporate meeting in office, a few weeks after Kali joined (she was playing Angry Birds, as she is wont to do at such meetings). It started over a plate of poha that Brenda ate each morning waiting for Kali to show up at the seventh-floor canteen. It started when Kali walked away from Prashant, after he pinned her to a wall when she told him she couldn’t marry him. Actually, wait. That’s when it almost ended. Maybe.
Prashant’s parting gift was to tell Kali’s folks about Brenda. Did he know, even before Kali did, that the two loved each other? Or was he just an assh*** who wanted to make matters worse for Kali? Brenda feels the answer to this lies somewhere in the middle. “Prashant had issues, and Kali wanted always to keep the peace. Prashant couldn’t take Kali’s final—and real—rejection, although he always imagined himself unwanted.”
After a pause she adds, “I’ve also dealt with the end of a relationship.” Brenda doesn’t divulge details, but offers broad brushstrokes. It happened a few years ago. It ended abruptly. It came as a shock. It was as if her lover had pulled the plug without so much as a by-your-leave. “It’s not easy. Break-ups, I mean.”
Kali looks on as Brenda gesticulates emphatically. “Prashant and I weren’t Valentines,” says Kali. “In all the 10 years we were together, I never wished to spend time with him.” Brenda may be quick with the repartee, but Kali’s humour is dark and well-honed.
Kali’s family summoned Brenda after Prashant’s disclosure, which included a memorable “Brenda performs hypnosis and Kali is under her power”.
“That was one long rickshaw ride to her home,” Brenda recalls. “I went with a friend. I was scared.” Brenda makes little of the fact that she went in the first place. The way she sees it, she had no choice. The friend was asked to leave, and Brenda was asked a number of questions, including whether she could release their daughter, who clearly was under some sort of spell.
The duo had already decided in the rickshaw ride to work the previous day that they wouldn’t admit to being in a relationship. They’d stick to the “good friends” story. “It’s very important to set the right context when you’re telling your family about something that they may not want to hear,” says Brenda. Prashant had ensured the context was a battlefield. The best that Brenda and Kali could do was prevent further bloodshed.
Brenda, accordingly, asked them what on earth they were talking about. She was seething, but she smiled. Kali’s mother smiled back, hesitantly.
Kali remained silent all through the conversation. She imagined, instead, the following day’s ride to work. She would be prattling away to Brenda in the rickshaw. Brenda would be holding her gently by the waist as they jumped in unison over the city’s potholes. She wasn’t seething, but she didn’t smile. Her mother wailed at her to speak. Kali remained silent.
Over the following days, Brenda and Kali debated over what to do next. Kali’s sister was keen to take her to a counsellor. Kali had just ended a long relationship, and though she said nothing, there was something inexplicable about the way Brenda and Kali occupied the room together. Yes, they were sitting on different sofas, but it felt as though their bodies turned to each other of their own accord.
The visit to the counsellor turned out to be beneficial. The doctor asked Kali’s family to re-examine their notions of happiness. Physical abuse doesn’t make for a happy relationship. The gender of a partner doesn’t make for an unhappy one. Whose side are you on, the counsellor asked Kali’s sister, who requested a private meeting after one of Kali’s sessions. The sister stopped accompanying Kali to his clinic.
In the past year, Kali’s folks haven’t relaxed the curfews they’ve set for her, but they haven’t tightened them either. When Kali spends a night with Brenda and her other queer friends, she tells her folks she’s attending an office party. Kali is a pragmatist. She knows that they know the truth, but she also knows that they don’t want to know it. She doesn’t question this and, one might say, she’s too angry with them to rage against their prejudice. But she doesn’t let it bring her down any more either. It’s not a truce, but it’s the beginning of one. Both parties know they’re walking on eggshells. Still, it’s a status quo they’ve come to accept.
"The duo had already decided in the rickshaw ride to work the previous day that they wouldn't admit to being in a relationship. They’d stick to the ‘good friends’ story"
Brenda and Kali began calling themselves a couple a few days before Valentine’s Day last year. Brenda had hoped to take Kali to a beach in Goa, and offer her a ring. She had even bought a tuxedo for the occasion. That didn't quite pan out as planned, but Brenda has something new up her sleeve this year. Kali tries not to reveal her excitement at the impending surprise, but she can’t stop smiling. All she needs to know is the outline of the plan. If it involves a trip, she needs to start sending out feelers to her folks soon—probably talk about an out-of-town conference that may take place in the second week of February.
They've been through an abusive former partner, hostile family members, a supportive counsellor, gruelling work hours, and several autorickshaw drivers who've been terribly unconcerned about them.
“Sometimes the only place I feel most at home in is the rickshaw,” says Kali.
You’ll find them there almost every day. Twice.
(*All names have been changed to protect identities.)
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