Kumam: What is your experience of the Pandemic? How did it affect your college life and life in general?
Sampriti: To state in any way that the Pandemic has changed our lives would be a profound understatement. It has upturned our lives in multiple ways. The Pandemic remains a turning point in my life, especially so as I was nearing the second half of my college.
Personally, my college life has been divided into two equal halves of offline and online classes. Taking admission in Hindu College in 2018 meant that I got to take a step away from home and be a migrant in a new city, Delhi. Life was a rush, but somehow things always fell into place at the end of the day. One of the things about studying in a liberal college remains the space for diverse conversations. Hindu was the melting pot for me which allowed me to learn about the experiences of people coming from varying spaces of life- all with their own stories, struggles and gifts. The conversations and the classes around these red bricked walls remained one of the most enriching experiences of my first three semesters in college. As a woman, I felt more liberated in this new city. I carved my own safe space away from the comfort zones that families are said to provide us with. I would say I was more liberated because I could exercise freedom in my everyday choices without being monitored closely by anyone. I had an individual identity for myself, which is difficult to attribute to young small town women who are always seen as a part of a family only. However, being a north eastern woman meant that my liberation came at the cost of belongingness.
The second half of my college life began with online classes at odd hours and ended with my graduation from home. The stretch of this Pandemic and the novel experience of an online college has taken away from us more than just the fests, fun and farewells. It deprived us of one of the most radical experiences which remains the chance to meet new people, learn of their stories and share your own. The visibility which diversity offers to people from the marginal communities, as well as the privileged lot, helps to shape the perspectives of young individuals in college. The absence of this very peer diversity in real life meant a different experience altogether. It somehow lessened the youthful energy once exhibited to put forth one’s opinion as passionately by college students. I feel like the driven, young woman in me, who was always alarmed at the first call of gendered differentiation around her, was tamed down and kept aside in a box within me. The bigger issues of a Pandemic, a crippling economy affecting everyone, the immediate intensive safety measures for the family meant that somehow I was less expressively angry on patriarchy. I would not say I was less concerned, but I was seeping into a comfortable zone of silence. Not every time did I feel the need to call out what bothered me. I felt like a tamed feminist, tamed for my own sake, to just not create more chaos than there already is. In my own space, I thought my issues were chaotic and petty, I felt being unheard was comfort and speaking up was straining. But, isn’t this exactly how the system wants us to be: to find comfort in the silence of being suppressed against the fierce freedom which comes from being vocal women? We can do better than this, thus, here I am writing about us.
Kumam: What was your experience of quarantine, isolation and lockdown with one’s own kins, families and close ones?
Sampriti: The quarantine phase began like anyone else’s, one with an uncertainty of adjusting to the new normal and getting to terms with the fear around a deadly disease. Initially, I felt a sense of reconciliation with my family members, because we engaged more with each other and spent all the time together. I don’t remember any other time of my life when all of us were under the same roof for such a long period with the free time to engage. I also felt a sense of belongingness at the initial months of the Pandemic. It was a time of gratefulness for the security and comfort that a home provides. I also fostered a feeling of belongingness; a belongingness in living in small towns with cleaner air, water and oneness with the culture. The feeling of not being an outsider in the society can be seen as reconciliation. The belongingness, however, came at the expense of a liberty for a woman, and it did not take much time to learn about it.
Initially, I enjoyed the time and company of the people at home. With time, banality seeped in. And as the static moroseness of the lockdown proliferated, there was little novelty and even lesser space for growth as an individual. Over time, lockdown drained most of us. Conversations bore a repetitive tone and a shared exhaustion. All days passed just like the other. Often, there was a collective acknowledgement of how the big fears of a deadly disease are looming over everyone’s heads. But again, we lived the next day pretending to be unaffected by the graveness of a Pandemic. All was fine in the safe family bubble- which we all tried to protect so fiercely.
For me, I seeped into a zone which was isolated even in the company of people. My liberty, which I wore as an armour in a big city around the people I chose to befriend, was fading into oblivion. I lived a life which was secured within the four walls of the house with the close family, a big one rather as I belong to a joint family. Days passed with a setting haze on my thoughts. The grief of disease, isolation, loss and death seemed to have made all other thoughts very insignificant in my mind. There was not much to say or express about one’s own self because the constant thought in mind remained how the Pandemic has hit others more brutally. The pressure remained to learn to be happy and grateful. But was I really content?
As the Pandemic has kept me home for over 17 months now, there is no denying that I am stretched by the isolation, just like my peers in their own homes. On some days, I crave for the space to be alone and delving in my own thoughts. On other nights, it seems as though it’s a cry for company which is distanced. However, a familiar space is no space for growth. I made my own niche of comfort and all that happened, happened in the same space over and over again. Now tell me, is there any scope for a journey ahead on a tied boat in static waters? How do we grow and change if we are stuck in the same place? That is exactly how I felt. Safe, secured, provided for, but somehow chained.
Kumam: Do you think women and queers experienced the Pandemic any differently from heterosexual persons? Did you experience the Pandemic any differently from other family members, relatives or friends?
Sampriti: Women’s existence in a patriarchal society has and will always be different from the ones who benefit from this system. The inequalities in gendered relationships have not been latent, but the Pandemic accentuated the ways in which women, queer and trans folks had to live a life of more disadvantage and difficulties.
For most women, the first cost of the Pandemic was their liberty- exercised mostly in the public realm away from homes. Pandemic introduced the outgoing public workspace into the private households. Being constantly at home also meant an increase in the household responsibilities. The burden was doubled for the working women as the public workspace was shifted to the private realm of home which now demanded twice the work of household responsibilities and work pressure. Instances of domestic abuse, crimes against women have been on the rise in India after the lockdown. Viewing the lockdown from a gendered lens would help us see how women from different backgrounds have borne the brunt of this Pandemic way more than others. However, herein I would like to highlight some instances which could be felt at a personal level.
The patriarchal setups of families have created pressure on women emotionally and thus they need to establish their own survival networks outside of home. The women and people from the queer and trans communities have lived their lives with the support of peer care networks. The female friendships that I personally share have helped me grow into a more empathetic person. The emotionality and comfort which female friendships and queer networks provide us with keeps us afloat in the patriarchal waters. The lockdown has distanced people physically, and in keeping up with the quarantines and isolations, the Pandemic has hit hard on these care networks of women, queer and trans folks. There is a mutual exhaustion which is witnessed in these relationships because let us face it, not every relationship can weather the novelties and complexities of virtual bonding.
Again, the lack of privacy at homes has also curtailed the forms of conversations we can have with our peers. To state a simple example, many families do not have big houses with rooms for each individual. Living in cramped spaces also mean that every action is being somehow monitored and thus the conversations are not as free-flowing as they would otherwise be. A lot of individuals find it difficult to call or video call the peers because of the lack of privacy at homes. For homemakers, their outings with the women friends have been curtailed, leaving them with little space for the outlet of their emotions.
Being a woman, I cannot stress enough on the need for these care networks for emotional stability and survival, especially during unprecedented times as this Pandemic. The prolonged lockdown and the ruthlessness of this virus have fallen heavy on the queer individuals because their support systems have been distanced and some stand shaken.
The members of the queer and trans communities have been exposed to the ugliness which comes from being trapped in homes, or being isolated in a Pandemic. Most of my queer friends whom I talk to regularly feel trapped because there is no outlet for their frustration. Living in the same place for such a prolonged time can cost you your mental peace. Closeted individuals face the dual challenge of keeping up with conforming to a different identity and at the same time having to fight one’s own battles of being isolated and deprived of the freedom of expression. All these difficulties also add up to the ultimate questions of their own ideas of having a home or a family. For the queer individuals, I personally feel that ideas of family and home have been alienated as there is no space of acceptance. A lot about their lives would be about their ‘chosen families’; but, will they be allowed to choose families of their own legally? All these questions are on a loop when you are in one place, all the time, but also constantly see everything around you change in a Pandemic.
Addressing the second part of the question, I feel that with each age group came different circumstances which we had to deal with in the Pandemic. For me, the difficulty which stood apart from my parents was attending college online without being able to meet my peers at such a critical juncture of my career. Moreover, at times I felt the need for someone my age around me, to understand the kind of issues that we face as to-be graduates. Like most college students, I was also collectively deprived of the opportunities which come to you of having a diverse group of people around you. The absence of a physical peer support group meant lesser exposure to the ample ways in which an individual can explore their own identity.
Kumam: What is queer grief to you? What is your relationship to it? Do you speak or write or express it, if so how?
Sampriti: The adherence to a societally proclaimed ‘normal’ which rests on an inconsonance with one’s identity, one’s very existence is how I visualize queer grief. It does not necessarily have to be a particular instance of outburst or exhaustive breakdown by a member of the community, but an accumulative process over the years of being subjected to a ridicule or ‘otherness’ in a patriarchal society. It is living in conformity, without being able to allow oneself the authenticity that every individual rightfully deserves. To me, queer grief translates to the exhaustion that comes from having to explain one-self to people, to society, for the littlest of choices by an individual that fall well within the ambit of one’s personal liberty. Queer grief is the emptiness which stems from being othered in one’s own home, from being denied the right to choice of one’s lover, of one’s clothes, of one’s speech, of one’s desires, of one’s passions, of one’s own liberty of thought, of one’s very existence. The queer and trans folks have been subjected to an alienation not just from the society, but also from themselves and their bodies, because they have grown up in a society which sees them as different and non-conforming, often and mostly which is unacceptable/sinful! The society creates doubts in the minds of young people who belong to the LGBTQIA+ community by projecting an image of a normalised heterosexuality for the creation of a family to eventually build the society together. Thus, the ‘happily, settled family life’ image is posed in contrast to the desires of members from the community. How do they locate themselves in such spaces where they have grown up witnessing only one normal: a heterosexual monogamous union? So, queer and trans folks face an uncertainty or doubt in their minds because they are ripped of a belongingness from the basic unit of the society.
The queer and trans existence are also challenged by the usage of words meant for them as slurs or with a derogatory connotation. For example, the word ‘gay’ is used as an offensive slang in everyday lingo of a lot of people. This means that every time a gay person comes out in public, they have to explain themselves as to why it is not an offense. Language, thus, is another way in which members from the community are transferred to a space of otherness. The way social institutions such as schools, families, marriages, kinships etc. are shaped in patriarchal societies, it deprives the members from the queer and trans communities a sense of familiarity. The petty instances of discrimination in these institutions leave the queer individuals with more battles with themselves, and with others in the society. The exhaustion that comes from a lifetime of being subjected to discrimination often weighs heavy on the community members, hammering one’s confidence and that, to me, is queer grief.
Maybe it is the unacceptance and the lack of visibility of members from the community which has resulted in a significant portion of LGBTQIA+ members living their entire lives in a closet. The absence of a space to just be yourself, to just be..is queer grief.
Personally, my relationship with queer grief would be more so as an outsider than one who has blatantly faced the ostracisms. Mainly because, all my life I have identified as a cis-gendered female (yet). My sexuality and gender remain my own space which I am exploring and questioning in my own ways… I empathize with the exhaustion that builds within the members of the queer and trans communities for explaining their identities to be deemed acceptable. If you asked me this question a year back, I would have told you I am an ally. Today, I doubt I can say the same that I am just an ally – exploring oneself is a lifelong process, and it has just started for me.
My way of expressing queer grief would be about the conversations that I have with my queer friends. The fight for basic rights of the members of this community seems to have only began and will take a long time; until then, I feel the conversations must happen not just in elite college spaces and social media handles, but also in the everyday lives of people. In my own life, I felt the significant impact has been on people from my own generation and the one’s younger to us who have learned to be more accepting of the diversity of genders. The small window which social media provides has helped in raising awareness about the queer and trans folks at a speed which was rather not seen before. Again, a concern that might accompany the liberation which social media has given the members of the community remains the portrayal of a particular classist and privileged image only of the LGBTQIA+ members. The more relatable the content is, the more people from the community will come out.
Personally, my conversations with friends have helped me channelize my own position in this community and to be able to express myself more coherently. In my own family, the conversations around LGBTQIA+ almost did not exist until we started sharing the experiences of our friends to explain how their life is different, difficult because families and societies are rigid in their approach to diversity. It was not a very smooth conversation as queer experiences challenge the very foundational institutions of a society- marriage, sexuality, kinship, family. But it was necessary for the ‘normalization’ of what is a reality for us. Even if casually, the familial space is now familiar with the existence of queer communities. It seems that things are still easy when you bring in ‘another person’ to explain queerness in Indian families, I wonder how things would unfold if they know it is one of us.
Sampriti Rajkhowa (she/her) is a recent political science graduate from Hindu College, University of Delhi. She identifies herself as a feminist. Her interests lie in working for women, and other minorities from the North East.
Cover Sketch by leivon_art
The Pandemic Series: A COVID 19 Archive of Northeast India, curated by Kumam Davidson Singh is supported by Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India (SAATHII) Fellowship 2020-21 and Orfalea Centre for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara research grant awarded to the curator.
THE CHINKY HOMO PROJECT 