Ammamma (my mother’s mother) was very particular about her appearance. She was always well dressed and had a high opinion of her good looks. In the Victorian English she was fond of speaking, she termed herself ‘handsome’. She liked dressing up and smelling nice. But she was equally invested in studying and being professionally independent. In the Kerala Nair milieu in which she was raised, even though women inherited the family name and property, they were not encouraged to attend college, let alone work for a living. As with so many matrilineal societies, real power resided with the women’s brothers, and such was also the case in Ammamma’s family.
Ammamma was the brightest and most ambitious child in a family of nine siblings—three brothers and six sisters. Some of these siblings were half-siblings who had the same father and whose mothers were twins, one of whom died early. (This practice of marrying sisters- and brothers-in-law is, of course, a common practice all over the subcontinent. In Kerala, there was also a specialized version called the ‘exchange marriage’ in which one brother and sister married a sister and brother from another family in order to minimize expenses.) She completed her schooling at Moyan Girls High School and her intermediate at Victoria College in Palghat, where she was only one of two girls in her class of 100 students (the boys would block the door in order to tease the girls, who could only enter the classroom along with the teacher). After that, Ammamma persuaded her mother to send her to college in Madras. Ammamma wanted to study medicine—she had her heart set on it. But there was a lot of objection to this course of action, especially from Ammamma’s brother, Narayan, who seems to have had the power to sit in judgment on all the actions that his sisters were and were not allowed to perform. ‘There is no need for girls to study further,’ Narayan insisted, basing his remarks on what, we do not quite know. But Ammamma was the rebel. Even as her mother was being swayed by Narayan’s strongly stated objections, Ammamma mounted an equally fierce case for being allowed to study further, even going so far as to approach her father (fathers were distant, unapproachable figures at the time) to speak on her behalf. This determined resistance was but a template for what was to follow later on. It was also the reason that Ammamma was a committed member of the freedom struggle against the British and donated her gold jewellery to the nationalist cause when Gandhi asked his fellow-countrypeople to give their all.
Finally—whether from sheer exhaustion or the prevailing of better sense—Narayan was won over, but only to a compromise position. Ammamma was still not allowed to study medicine, but was allowed to study Chemistry instead. Ammamma’s mother acquiesced to this compromise position, and so Ammamma moved to Madras to study at Queen Mary’s College. She was a good student and won many prizes for both academic achievements and co-curricular activities. She also continued to dress well; so much so that her friends called her ‘the princess’.
During the week, Ammamma stayed in the hostel on the Queen Mary’s College campus. But on weekends, she would take a break and go to her step-sister’s home. This was Kunhimalu, whose mother had been the twin of Ammamma’s mother, and who was now married to Rao Bahadur C.B. Nair, who worked with Indian Railways.
Also staying in the house at this time was C.B. Nair’s nephew, Kunhiraman, who had finished his education and was in Madras to look for a job. Kunhiraman was Ammamma’s nephew—her father’s older sister’s grandson, so he was someone she had known all her life.
When it was time for Ammamma to return to college after the weekend, it was often Kunhiraman who borrowed a motorbike and dropped her back at the campus.
Romance blossomed between aunt and nephew, and bloomed for many years. Through Ammamma’s BA degree at Queen Mary’s College, then her lecturer training (the degree now known as a B.Ed) at Lady Willingdon Training College, and then her job as the headmistress of a school in Kannur, just outside Calicut, they were were romantically involved for about 4-5 years before Ammamma told her mother that she would marry none other than Kunhiraman.
This announcement caused a great deal of consternation, as we might imagine, and created scenes similar to the ones we see in Indian movies. Parents promising to have heart-attacks on demand, the family honour being called into question, the woman being forbidden to leave the house ever again. Ammamma’s brother Narayan (yes, the same one), even picked up a knife and went after my grandfather-elect. Luckily for us all, he was stopped in time. Finding his physical violence thus thwarted, Narayan then turned his wrath onto Ammamma and her helpless mother and said that Ammamma was not to step out of the house.
In fairness, there were objections to this marriage from both families. Kunhiraman’s family said that their clan had already married three women from Ammamma’s clan, and they did not want to add to that number, especially given that they were closely related. Ammamma’s family countered this social slight with an intellectual attack. According to them, Kunhiraman was not academically as highly qualified as Ammamma (he studied at Madras Christian College, but did not complete his BA), and did not have a ‘proper’ job yet. What was even more shocking was that he was also younger than Ammamma by one whole month!
And so it went—punch and counter-punch—until Ammamma’s older (step) sister from Madras, Kunhimalu, came visiting to the family house in Kavallapara, Kerala. Sensing an opportunity (after all, her romance with Kunhiraman was hatched under Kunhimalu’s roof), Ammamma pleaded with her sister to intervene on her behalf. For added dramatic effect, she locked herself in a room and refused to come out until she had everyone’s permission to marry Kunhiraman. So Kunhimalu spoke to her anxious step-mother and her angry step-brother and managed to convince them that if marrying Kunhiraman was what Ammamma wanted, then it should be allowed forthwith.
And so, defying family, custom and propriety, Ammamma followed her desire. She travelled on her own, lived on her own, thought for herself, fought with her family, and married the man she picked for herself. Kunhiraman—my Ammachan—meanwhile, followed his own desire, defied his family’s wishes (the women of his clan did not attend the wedding), and married the woman he had picked for himself. Ammamma married Ammachan in Palghat in 1937. My mother was born in 1942, 5 years after their marriage. Ammamma and Ammachan lived together (mostly happily, as far as I could tell) for 59 years until Ammachan’s death in 1996.
* * *
STORY 2: ‘PETE’
(The source is a lightly edited transcript of an email exchange I had with a grandfather named ‘Pete’. He wrote to me after being contacted by my research assistant, Shilpa, and asked if I would be comfortable with an email exchange.)
1 November 2015
Dear Pete:
Thanks for your reply. And yes, we can certainly start over email!
This chapter for which I wanted to find queer grandparents is born directly of one of the premises of my book (called A History of Desire in India). We are often told in India, at the first sign of sexually untoward behaviour, that ‘your grandparents would never have done such a thing’ or ‘your grandparents would be horrified if they ever found out’ or ‘wait till your grandparents hear about this’! By finding grandparents who have themselves been sexually untoward, I’d like to showcase the hollowness of such a claim of familial propriety. I also hope this will allow people to feel more easy in relation to such manufactured family strictures. An additional goal is to suggest that sexual desires can change: most gay people around the world start out as straight, even if only in accordance with family wishes, and then somehow figure out what it is that they want. Desires exist multiply and differentially in all of us.
I am thinking of desire as a universal term but trying to find landing points for it in India. Rather than a history that starts with the Kamasutra, however, I am focussing on somewhat eccentric subjects, like grandparents!
Could we start with a broad and general conversation about your story: how would you narrate the trajectory of your desire?
With many thanks,
Madhavi
24 November 2015
I started writing in reply to your mail but the process ended up being part catharsis. I’ve cut back a lot but I suspect it is still much more than what you neeed or want.
I’m afraid that I don’t fit your image of an Indian grandfather. My children certainly couldn’t use the expression ‘What would your grandparents say?’ (at least about same sex desire) since both my wife and I made it clear to them that whatever their sexual orientation turned out to be, we would be accepting of it.
I also question your premise that most gay people start out straight. Though sexuality can be fluid and not just evolve but oscillate over time, I suspect that most of us are kind of hardwired one way or the other. In a heteronormative world, however, it might take a homosexual some time to recognize and acknowledge his orientation and, just as there is satisfying M2M sex between heterosexual urban migrants, I suspect many homosexual men are capable of heterosexual relations.
In my case, I should have known from the beginning that I was homosexual even though I had sexual relations with a number of women. It somehow never occurred to me to reflect on why none of my heterosexual couplings (I really can’t call them affairs) ever kindled the kind of passion I felt while in the arms of another man.
Regards,
Pete
I am interpolating a later email exchange here since it is on the same subject—of how this chapter is to be framed:
30 August 2016
Dear Madhavi,
While beginning to write my next bit to you, I went over our previous mails.
When I re-read the premise of your chapter on grandparents, I felt it rang a little hollow in how an Indian parent would address ‘sexually untoward behaviour’ with a child. Feedback from me might not be appropriate and I would take no offence if you chose to ignore it. However, if you are so inclined, I’d like to hear of how you arrived at that premise.
Either way, I’ve decided to share as much of my life and its context as you wish to hear and let you figure out how relevant it is to your chapter.
I will try to tell my story with candour and honesty because of your commitment not to share my identity with anyone.
Pete
PS: I was at the 50th reunion of my High School class this February and was thinking what fertile ground it might have been for you.:-)
Dear Pete:
I haven’t yet got to the chapter on grandparents, but I think my premise remains largely the same: to see desires where we might not think to look for them. By and large people don’t think of ‘older’ people as having desires, and certainly not as having ‘deviant’ desires. What happens, then, when we tell stories of people about whom we did not think ‘in that way’? The basic mandate of this book is to enlarge the horizons of desiring possibilities, and that is the framework within which I also see this chapter.
I will only use what you send me if I feel it fits this mandate. And of course, your identity is completely safe with me!
With warm wishes,
Madhavi
Dear Madhavi,
It makes perfect sense as you put it now.
I find that the very notion of Sex/Desire is taboo here. Never to be discussed. Certainly not with your parents or in turn your parents with theirs.
Pete
And here, in his own words, is Pete’s story:
THE TRAJECTORY OF DESIRE
Long before I had actual sexual desire I was fascinated by the shape of the young male body and had a deep interest in its genitalia. My first experiences were with older cousins when I was seven. They were probably preteens but if I recall correctly, it was I who seduced them. Not the other way around.
When I turned eight my family moved to the US for some four years. American schools in the 50s had a very casual attitude toward same-sex nudity and boys were exposed to each others’ naked bodies during showers after gym and swim classes in the nude. With my Indian shyness, I was embarrassed to be naked but I can’t say that proximity to so many naked boys didn’t excite me. Though I still knew nothing about sex, let alone homophobia, some sixth sense kept me from openly displaying my interest. I missed my vacations with my cousins at my ancestral home and looked forward to returning and resuming our play. I did not anticipate that by then their interests would have changed.
Almost twelve, I still had no clue about sex but that soon changed with my enrolment in an all-boys’ boarding school. A senior boy coerced me into my first ‘French’ kiss but I never needed to be coerced again and the next four years were bliss. Pretty much everyone slept with everyone but we all assumed that it was a phase and that we would ‘straighten’ out once we had access to girls.
In my case that never happened.
I attended college in Delhi in the late 60s and was a member of the Westernized ‘hep’ set influenced by the hippie invasion. We thought it was cool to partake in drugs and espouse free love and liked to think of ourselves as the trendsetters of Delhi University. Somewhere along the way, unbeknownst to me, I’d also turned into a swan and the girls were plentiful and available. However, I evaded addressing my lack of desire by convincing myself that I was behaving like a ‘gentleman’. Despite my occasional anonymous nighttime encounters in the dark verandahs of Connaught Place, it never struck me that I might not be the only one for whom same-sex attraction was not just a phase. More difficult to explain is how I could have overlooked the passion in the relationship I had with my one true love. The one who was in my mind when I posted a poem on the Orinam website which led Shilpa to write me.
At 24, I went back to New York for graduate school—and finally lost my virginity. It was almost by accident. Unplanned, unwanted (certainly by me) and unemotional. But she was a gorgeous blonde diva from the entertainment world who made the move on me. How could I say no? I then slept with many other women in quick succession. Blonde, Brunette, Ethnic Chinese, Jewish, Black American, Black African, you name it. Maybe I was trying to find the same degree of passion that I had with men or maybe I was trying to convince myself that my ‘phase’ had passed? Anyway, I put out of my mind the parade of men who were also simultaneously sharing my bed.
Convinced of my ‘manhood’, I proposed to an Indian woman of the appropriate community, caste and class. A Fulbright scholar with a PhD, she was not just any ordinary woman but an intelligent, good-looking academic with a sense of style that her students tried to ape. She was also the object of many a man’s heart but with my still youthful good looks, the beginnings of a successful career and a family background of note, I was the one who won her hand. I must say that we made quite a striking couple. I entered the union fully convinced that I would be able to fulfil the implicit vow of fidelity that marriage entails. After all, I had never lusted after any woman. What should have been a curious lack of desire I once again explained away as a product of my upbringing as a gentleman.
THE AFTERMATH
My wife and I had successful careers and are blessed with great children. Though no angels, they’ve given us much joy and filled us with pride as they’ve become adults and parents themselves. To the world at large we’re an ideal family and our luck is enviable.
As for fidelity, I started straying soon after marriage and have strayed ever since. But discreetly. My wife and I have many openly gay friends but not to even one of those friends have I ever come ‘out’. I remain deeply closeted and it’s a role to which I have become accustomed.
Am I ashamed of being gay? Not one bit. If being ‘out’ only affected myself I probably wouldn’t hide. But my sexual orientation is only one aspect of me as a person and my coming out now would devastate my wife. The rest of my world I could handle. My guilt is entering into a contract that I should have known I could not keep. My wife deserved better, even though I did tell her as I proposed that I was attracted to men and had had homosexual relationships in the past.
Retired now and with time to reflect, I realize that while my duplicity was expedient, it came at a terrible price.
26 November 2015
Dear Pete:
Thanks also for your account of the trajectory of your desire. I will return to some details in it at a later stage, but for now, could you tell me, please, what the socio-historical setting was for that trajectory? Were there people around you, in college, in New York, your friends, who were out? If so, then why, do you think, were you not able to come out? What was the narrative of your friends who did come out? Was there ever conversation in your family about homosexuals or homosexuality? If so, then what role did you play in those conversations? And what do you think of the very idea of ‘coming out’? What would it mean for you to ‘come out’?
As always, thanks! Please take your time, and please also ask me if you need any clarifications.
With warm wishes,
Madhavi
After several months of silence, I heard back again from Pete, but this time, under his real name (which I have rendered below as ‘No Name’), in an email titled ‘Come from the Shadows’:
18 August 2016
Hi Madhavi
This is [No Name]. Pete is a nickname from school that I use (less and less with each passing day) for anonymity. I’d intended to send you a longish note I’d written a while back but it seems to have vanished into the ether as I switched mail accounts.
Cheers
[No Name]
21 August 2016
Thanks, Pete. When you sit down to recreate your email, do see if you can also extend the narrative to your current position, in which you very bravely seem to be, in your words, coming from the shadows. Please also be assured that I am not going to share your real identity with anyone, until and unless you’d like me to.
With warm wishes,
Madhavi
22 August 2016
Oh Madhavi. It’s nothing to do with bravery. I’m not ‘coming out’ or doing anything dramatic. I just succumb more easily these days to the fatigue of leading a duplicitous life.
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