In Solidarity

February 18, 2014

My February post is in solidarity with our LGBT brothers and sisters in India and all around the world.

In December 2013, the Supreme Court of India recriminalised homosexuality and turned the clocks back three years (here's what I think of that). My respect for the highest court of the land has evaporated quickly at this blatant denial of basic human rights.

There can be nothing criminal about love when it has honesty, equality and mutual respect. What is criminal is violence, deceit, bias, and the play of power...and these must have no place in love (or in our lives at all).

Morality is a strange thing and could so easily cripple a blooming soul. I think ideas of right and wrong are confusing but a good way to tell is whether or not your actions hurt someone. Some beautiful Marathi lines come to mind, “...सौंदर्याचा आस्वाद घेणं यात पाप वाटायचं काहीच कारण नाही. पाप बळजब्रीत आहे, सक्तीत आहे, परिणामांची जिम्मेदारी नाकारण्यात आहे, खुशीत पाप नाही.” – तुझे आहे तुजपाशी, पु. ल. देशपांडे. (“…There is no reason to feel that appreciating beauty is sin. Sin lies in coercion, compulsion, in refusing responsibility; not in happiness” – Tujhe Ahe Tujapashi, Pu. La. Deshpande.)

Let this also be a reminder to us all, to try to be unconditional, unselfish and true in the way we love. After all, it is the one mysterious thing that lies in every human heart and can perform wonders if given the chance.

E. M. Forster is so right when he says (in ‘A Room with a View’), “You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: Love is eternal.”