“Being queer can mean a hundred thousand experiences under the sun. However, what does it mean to be a queer at this university, for this individual?
With all its claims and offerings, it has been anything but the struggle to be seen. to be able to express your inner churnings and above all to feel them as equally validated. The great task despite everything has been to mould oneself into the cis-het framework of morals and rigidly narrow scope for imagination therein.
You don’t wake up to be queer by smearing lipstick or discarding your skirts for trousers. Sadly, it is to see the very idea of self being dissected, debated, argued and become someone’s thesis, research project. It is to become someone else’s intellectual property and be called upon to validate the same.
being queer here is being ‘too much’ for claiming your fair share and ’too little’ for not performing enough.
to be not alone but lonely.
to be too tired to be angry.
to sit anxiously to be ‘informed’ about the left-overs available to be scrapped off. above all, performing queerness within this university much like the world outside calls for beauty to marry strength. can we imagine queerness without one being brave? can I walk these corridors with grace and beauty without resorting to tons of strength? can beauty go hand-in-hand with tenderness and innocence, beauty’s usual companions?
can my queerness not be performed in isolation?
can the spotlight shift from the ‘performance of queerness’ to ‘queerness’?
too difficult to comprehend? let me dumb it down.
can it shift from empty, CV building research papers and centres to bothering about the inclination of the ramps on the campus? can it shift from hollow pride marches to making our sports inclusive? can it move ahead from the notion of gendered roles as we take pride in organising our flag-ship events? can it move ahead to accommodate the diversity other than a meal twice a week in our mess? can it move ahead to ensure usage of English or subtitles as we join in to celebrate our culture once in a while?
can we move to standing up in one voice against the world of bigotry that has been of our making? me and you? us and them? ALL OF US.
ahh…
must be too much? must be too much.
what? odd, that queerness is more than your Navtej Johar, NALSA, Naz Foundation?
It has been so for centuries; it shall continue to be so.
continue to be what?
a refusal to die down. a refusal to not overlook the endless possibilities that our imaginations hold.
and for this university, I shall borrow some wisdom of a person who has become a strange habit almost ritual-like for me at this university. They say, “Their biggest flex in life is that they are loved, respected, and feared in equal measure by the same people.”
This is it. When you don’t do the “too much” for fear but respect; don’t take “too less” for love. Your love and respect leaves no scope for fear. That’s when we shall be performing queerness right, in some measure at least. then this little universe, an ailing universe of ours be infused with some life.
I hope. too much?
hope not.
~ By Ishant Kumar Sharma
Very few would be able to discern the difference between ‘to be’ and to ‘perform to be’; in a world going tizzy performing their lives for optics it’s incomprehensible to be authentic without labels. Much like filters they want to be seen in the ‘right’ light, contrast, exposure and brilliance.