Stay Strong, This Too Shall Pass.

Dear Friends,

Hello from my apartment in Toronto. Today I decided to pen down few inspirational words for those who are struggling emotionally during this COVID 19 lockdown and pandemic. As we all can guess, most of us are inside our houses and apartments. We are not going out. Some of us haven't gone outside in weeks. And this is putting a lot of emotional pressure on us. Lot of us are scared of getting infected with this virus, others cannot just see being so helpless. Even I am also not happy because of this stay home situation.
  But dear friends, this too shall pass. I know things look very grim and we are seeing soaring figures of new patients getting infected everyday. But we have to believe that things will change and our lives will go to normal. And one day we will start going out and start living normal life. But it  is just now we have to be careful and stay inside, stay careful. Please take care of yourselves, don't let your heart fall into despair. Use this time to create something that will remain as good memory for rest of your life. Write your thoughts, do some origami (heard that is good for stress), do some exrercise, learn new language, read some book. Plan your next vacation. Do something that will keep your mind active. But don't sit idle. Please think that things could have been worse. Believe it or not but I spent almost all of my life back in India like this. Sitting inside, not going out much because boys would bully or beat me. No one to talk to, no one to talk about my hobbies with. Even if stay inside then my brash father would beat me to make me a "MAN". Living in constant fear. But I used that time to read books and learn about world outside four walls of my house. And today I am here in Canada living my life safely and without any fear. If I can survive in situation worse than this for 20 + years, then you can at least give some try. 
   I never wanted to bring about my past but lately I have been feeling this push of responsibility from inside to pen down this to encourage others to stay inside. There are millions of people in other end of the world living in far worse situation for years. Compared to that, this few months of stay home situation is nothing. We can at least stay inside and be grateful that one day things will change.  So my dear friends. Please be safe. Take care of your health and your heart. Be positive. And we will go out in sunshine again.

See Yah.

Happy Social Distancing!

Mystery of unknown future..

Mystery of unknown future or should I say mystery of other side?

I do not know that....

Why I am asking this question? It is beautiful Tuesday morning, I am having off, I woke up early, did my tai chi, was having tea and enjoying this beautiful weather and then he came. Thought of boyfriend. Why I do not have a good boyfriend yet? And this time it hurt me. No No No this is not a simple deal for me. I am a guy in my late twenties, I am gay and to be who I am I have done great sacrifices in my life and now when I am in that stage of life where everything is ok I need not to wait for boyfriend. This is what I think.

 To me, what hurt most about not having boyfriend is not that missing fun or love making but what hurt me most is that he is not in my life. he who I love most in my whole life after god. He the one who is my everything after god and there is nothing in this physical world that can be dearer to me than him. Whose even a one single semi smile can make me jump in the sky, who sing "hey dear" can make my day, by looking whom my eyes will lit like thousand candles, bright, happy and with full of energy. I am waiting for him and he is not coming.

 Don't give me advise. This is not my first rodeo. I have done all that meditation, patience, prayer and problem is, it is not that I cannot do it any more but the real problem is what if I do these things for my whole life and he does not come? I mean I am losing my 20s and the way 20s is almost gone in blink of an eye 30s will also go and I am not gonna get a handsome guy as boyfriend when I will be in my 40s. I will be looking horrible then.

 I did so many things to get a good boyfriend, did 16 somvar vrats of lord Shiva, went to gym, took lots of good snaps, enrolled on every gay dating site, went out an "socialized", meditations, visualizations, visions boards, tell me what I have not done?

All it feels like the time is slipping out of my fist as sea sand.  But then I think from another angle. I think that it is me who thinks like it is me who deserves a good boyfriend and I should receive it but what does universe see it as? What does universe has for me? and when? is it now or years laters? or decade or never? philiosophical angles says "chill" and practical angle says"move your butt". Trapped between these two logic I am simple single gay guy thinking about mystery of unknown future.

Why We Need Indian Language Version of Prayers For Bobby.

Even if we take voice of best Bollywood actress to dub Sigourney Weavers's dialogues we cannot dub her charisma. I don't wanna compare between Hollywood and Bollywood here. Today I am writing this post to share very sensitive point. It's on spreading right information about homosexuality. 

No matter how much we have advanced our English language but still we haven't lost that room of comfort for mother tongue in our heart and so our parents. Need not to surprise if most of ours' parents are not well versed in English & still prefer Bollywood movies over watching Avatar in 3D or Schindler's list. 

When I first saw Prayers For Bobby it touched my heart and I did cried at the end of the movie. It was marvelous presentation of problems of a gay man living in religious family and transition of a religious mother into open minded mother of all, a true story indeed. Sigourney Weaver was magnificent. No doubt about that! Ryan Kelley did the excellent Bobby. Hats off to director Russel Mulcachy for presenting realistic image of gays in media. Every gay man who has seen that movie really appreciated and liked that movie, and so their good straight friends too. This movie is a perfect eye opener.

We cannot expect such movie in Bollywood yet. But this is a must watch for those who are gay and those who are related to gays. It is an eye opener for those who do not understand what homosexuality really is. It is a sympathetic movie that portrays a mother in center stage. Whole movie moves around a mother of a gay man. Any mother who has a gay son can relate herself to the reluctant but caring mother in the movie. It is a great resource which will help families to understand their kids and accept them. 

But it is in English. Most of Indian Gay's parents can understand English and they often watch English movies but this is not enough. Still there is huge number of parents who don't understand English or they understand North American English accent. So for them, seeing movie like Prayers for Bobby will not leave the enough impact on parents. Listening dialogues in Hindi or any other Indian language will make them understand the situation in movie more clearly. It will help them to relate with the characters on the movie which will later turn into empathy. Once they are emotionally connected with the characters, they can feel their pain, suffering and analyze the situation from different angle. No parents would want their children to suffer, once they understood their child's suffering, that could change their mind.

Since in last several years LGBT movements has soared in India and many initiatives are getting taken by LGBT groups to spread right awareness of homosexuality in parents of LGBT people. They are doing excellent job towards bringing parents and gays closer. But if we could present movies like Prayers for Bobby to parents in the Indian languages it will really leave the great impact on parents.

There are so many great movies “Mambo Italiano”, “Chicken Tikka Masala”, “Touch Of Pink” and list goes on. If we could present it to parents in Indian languages and make them watch and understand it, it will be a really great effort.

This is my honest thought, thought to share with you. Think about it guys.