Lessons Learnt0

I cry, I dance. I laugh, I talk.

I love, I lie. I am a young person.

I understand, I care.

I realize, I reflect, I respond.

Because if I don’t, who will?

Aam Sabha, September 2011 

I have always thought about the need to know everything and be aware. However, awareness, in the definitive sense, has a broad purview, and this thought has always been accompanied by a probing question – if change needs to be made, is awareness solely enough? And so I carried many more questions like this, along with me to the very first ‘Aam Sabha’ of The YP Foundation.

When I entered I saw three corners set up in the hall on three different topics and young people like me walking around and trying to decide, as if going through the menu in a restaurant, looking around what food for thought they want to take back home – whether from the “Alternative Sexual Identities” by Maria Mehra, from “Safe Spaces” by Prabhleen Tuteja from ‘Safe Delhi Campaign- of the NGO Jagori” or from “Sexual and Reproductive Rights” by Anusha Hariharan from the queer collective ‘Nigah’.

The ‘Aam Sabha’ started with an ice-breaker where we had to gather into different groups in order to yell words that made us uncomfortable, out loud. Never in my life had I yelled the words penis, vagina and clitoris so loud. All this had already built up a curiosity in me, I knew I wanted to be a part of all the three sessions and so I decided to divide my time to all three topics accordingly.

Maria Mehra, a dynamic transgender woman, asked us in the session to close our eyes and listen to her voice. She told us that she had always had a feminine voice, that when she was a boy, her voice never cracked to acquire the baritone that we usually identify with masculinity. Our eyes still closed, she asked us to raise our hands if we still thought her to be a man or deserved to be identified as one.

A moment later, we opened our eyes, and looked around. Not one person had raised their hand, and it was in this silent agreement that our session with Maria began. In a society where gender roles are set in stone and anyone who fails to come under the “male” or “female” tag is just thought of as abnormal. The session went ahead with all of us getting acquainted with trials that people like her face in the world, from the difficulty to use public bathrooms as neither gender accepts them as their own, to the confusion while writing their gender in a government form. We listened with rapt attention as she told us about how she was blatantly rejected at a job recruitment agency because she was, well, ‘different’.

On the adjacent corner, the session on Safe Spaces by Prabhleen Tuteja addressed issues that I could relate to on a very close basis, and experiences that I encounter every day. Many a times while travelling alone in the city, when it gets a little dark, certain dimly lit and the not-so-busy areas tend to make me nervous, even if I’m familiar with the place; and the tag of “Unsafe City for Women” on Delhi/NCR doesn’t help! In the discussion, our group was further divided into three sub-groups and each sub-group was given a certain ‘identity’, like- a girl in her early 20’s from the North-East or a 20 year old boy carrying a lot of cash, and so on. We were to come to a consensus on how safe or unsafe a particular area in a typical Delhi neighbourhood (areas like a Temple, an ATM, a park, a college etc.) was for these different identities. It made us realise how certain problems affect different kinds of people differently, how one needed to look at things from the point of view of different people around us.

The last session was on “Sexual and Reproductive Rights” by Anusha Hariharan from Nigah Foundation.  Anusha began the session by asking a question on what one means by a “relationship”. My first thought was that relationships could hold different meanings to different people. It can mean love to some or sex to others, or may pertain to friendship. As the discussion moved further I realised how the society moulds us to believe in a very narrow way, how the definition of a romantic relationship gets limited only to the one which exists between people of the opposite sex and dismisses any romantic relationship between two men or two women. It is affirmatively classified as unnatural.

Now I come back to my original question – is “Awareness” solely enough? We are an aware generation but still somewhere there is a sense of indifference in all of us, we know about people like Maria, who knows 7 different languages, and has a lot of  potential, but is not able to enjoy the opportunities that we are bestowed with because well, she is “different”. Again, we don’t really want to take the pain of raising our voice in their support.

In my own city, which I am constantly reminded of by all ‘keep your city neat and clean’ banners, after a certain time I do not feel safe because I belong to the gender which society has shaped into a vulnerable one.I am aware of the issues and problems around me, most of us are, but the point here lies in the fact that knowing isn’t enough, getting up and doing something about it is what we need. Taking action requires a space to talk, which allows one to project her/his thoughts. We don’t only need ‘safe spaces’ for our bodies but also for our thoughts.

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Reclaiming Our Choices is a loosely affiliated group of concerned individuals and organizations that seek to address issues of gender, sexuality, health and rights by initiating, facilitating, participating and supporting an action-oriented campaign in Delhi. It is supported by UNESCO, in collaboration with Equal India, Must Bol, NAZ (India) Foundation, Queer Campus, and The YP Foundation. With the understanding that empowerment carries different meanings in diverse situations we do not aim to guide any movement. Rather, we seek to facilitate one part of a larger conversation. We hope that through a de-centralized campaign flowing from the hearts and minds of youth across the city, challenging, exciting, and unexpected results will follow.