Where there is HOPE

By: Gaurpriya Singh Roy

Life is a beautiful journey full of ups and downs, a journey to cherish and thrive. For many, it is a storm to pass, and for a few, it’s an exquisite voyage to adore. it’s all about the way you look at it, a game of perspective many fail to understand; yet everyone seems to have their unique point of view towards it, so it is fitting to say that life may mean so much to many and so little to some.

It is a tremendous joy to those who look up to life to be so gratifying, but it is a pity for those who don’t value it and dismiss it or attempt to throw it away.
People need to understand that there is always hope and life has so much more meaning to it than what they credit it for and throwing away life is not a solution but a poor escape that will only lead to further suffering of their close once, there is a great saying by Ain Eineziz, “you have been given this life because you are strong enough to live it”, this inspiring quote enlightens us on why we precisely have an entire week dedicated to aware and lend a shoulder to those who require us and let them know suicide is avertable.

World Suicide Prevention Day aims to raise awareness that suicide is preventable, improve suicide education, disseminate information about suicide awareness, and reduce suicide stigma.

It is conducted on the 10th of September every year since 2003 by the initiative of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Each year, a different theme to focus on is chosen to shed light upon a different aspect of suicide prevention. This year’s theme, which will continue until 2023, is ‘Creating Hope Through Action,’ which aims to reassure people experiencing suicidal thoughts that there is hope and that we care about and want to support them.

World Suicide Prevention Day is a day to reflect on the importance of life and to remember that no matter how bad things appear, there is always hope. Many people know an individual who has committed suicide or who has lost a friend or family member to suicide, We can prevent this loss by raising awareness on this day. It also serves as a reminder to society that consistent and increasing advocacy for mental health resources is required so that people suffering from mental illnesses can get the help they require.

You as a reliable individual can be a Ray of hope to someone suffering by just Reaching out to them, who may require assistance. Certain behaviors are widely recognized as indicators of suicidal ideation. We can all learn the warning signs of suicidal intent so that we can intervene early.

Discussing this issue is an important first step toward ridding society of the notion that mental health issues should be kept hidden. On World Suicide Prevention Day, organize or simply attend a panel discussion about how mental health issues intensify suicidal thoughts.

The insights and stories of people who have lived through suicide can also be extremely powerful in helping others understand suicide and encouraging people to reach out for help, as well as individuals to reach out for help themselves, and the most important of them all is to ‘Look for resources,’ there is a wealth of resources for people to learn more about the causes of suicide and how to prevent it. Numerous books, films, and events are available online that can point you in the right direction. As it is said, “Knowledge not only gives you power but can also save your life”.

We fixate too much on the past/future and disregard the present, Age, health, illness, pain, and the influence of a substance or medication are all merely physical factors. Personality, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and mental health are all emotional and personal factors, Life experiences include family, culture, friends, and life events; How you put all these factors to use and the POV you determine to give is that all that matters in the end.

What If Every Month Was Pride Month?

By: T S Venkat Narayanan

One of the most common issues people around me have raised is –

“Why do we have to treat them special in the month of June? What even is the purpose of pride month? Isn’t it just another way for corporations and clubs to increase their profits/appeal?”

Okay, so first- pride month is celebrated to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which took place in the June of 1969.

Second, yes! It sure is a way for corporations to appear more ‘woke’ and youth-friendly.

Now, the most important question- 

“Why do we have to treat them special in the month of June?”

Well, pride isn’t about treating the people from the community in a special manner. It is more about treating them with respect (like we would treat other humans with), acknowledging their struggle and making them feel part of society instead of an outcast.

In this piece we shall look at how it would be if every month were to be pride month.

Now, with every month being pride month, the significance of pride month would obviously reduce.

“Ohh, how angry it would have all the gays with the spotlight off them for good.”

Ironically, this would instead make the community even happier as it would make more people aware and sympathetic of their struggle. 

It would also normalize their existence in the society.

What would this mean?

People would stare less at them, make them feel less uncomfortable. Companies and organizations would stop using them as a prop like they do in the month of June just to be discarded once the month is over.

Violence and crime against them would reduce in numbers, the members of the community would feel more empowered which would lead to them being more accepted in society, having better healthcare which would cater to their needs. 

Now, wouldn’t that be just nice?

He Couldn’t Really Break Free

By: Vishal Agrawal

Mr. Martin died a peaceful death they said. There were no signs of pain or agony. His wife gave her condolences and came down to sit beside her son. When almost everyone was about to go, a man went up to the podium and called attention to him. It was as if they knew him from somewhere. All of them had seen him some time, somewhere. 

When that man read out Martin’s note, everyone was moved. They somewhat understood where this was going. He knew the actual Martin. For everyone, Martin was the ideal male role model. He led the ideal life as social norms defined it.

Nobody really believed it when the letter claimed he never truly loved his wife. Everyone thought they were the ideal couple. But his wife didn’t seem surprised. She appeared to have known bout this all along. His kids appeared to be experiencing a life-changing shock. The scenario goes back to the 1960s.

He told it all in his letter. Martin had his first crush in his college days. “I realized I was unique after I lived in the men’s dorm. I still wasn’t able to speak it aloud.”Being gay in those years was not considered natural. He felt loneliness creeping over him as he thought he could never find love.

He never felt attracted to girls, when everybody around him was. For the longest time, he believed something was wrong with him. There was no representation for somebody like him, there was no validation.

In front of his parents and friends, he explained how he was able to act normally. What would one do if you were unable to communicate but were confined within your body with your brain still functioning? How can you maintain your sanity when everyone you know and love cannot see you? He claims that as a young boy, he had a weird coma. As his mind started to work again, he was left with nothing but his own thoughts. He was confined and had nothing to do except think. Additionally, they weren’t exactly pleasant ideas.

“Nobody will ever be kind to me. I’ll never be loved by anyone.”

And of course, there was no way out. You are doomed, he believed.

He concluded that leaving his ideas behind was his only choice. According to conventional conventions, he continued acting normally. Even though he had a crush on a boy in college, he nevertheless made friends with a girl, She fell in love with him and the two of them eventually got together. Even though he had no idea why he was deceiving himself, he was aware that something was wrong. He continued living in his cocoon, He didn’t know that coming out was really an option. He married the girl and had two children, but he always felt incomplete. When he told his wife one day, she didn’t really believe him.” You can’t be gay”, she said in response. It was a challenge rather than a command. She implied that he was definitely not gay.

But by expressing that, he felt better. He didn’t care if she believed him or not. He got to hope when he saw advertisements for a gay Bar. He started going out and meeting new people, people like him. He met different people, He met a man who was very different. He was quite older but Martin’s world slid when he was around him. Martin began to have feelings toward him. He could sense movement all around him. He felt like himself for the first time. The man reading the letter wiped his eyes and said, “yes, that was me.”

 He realized what it was like to be joyful and in love for the first time. He was too delighted to give it much thought, even though he knew what he was doing was wrong for his family. He then began the relationship in private. His family could never know about this. Alongside his daily responsibilities, he did enjoy this. Later, he was promoted to manager at work.

He was really skilled at living a double life – but still, he knew something was missing.

All he wanted to do was live freely, and come out. But he knew in his heart that he was powerless to do so. He lived his life, took care of his obligations, and retired early. He remained faithful to his partner and carried out his marriage vows till the very end. But he had split apart somewhere between social pressure and love. He led a normal life for so many years, but what others didn’t realize was what was going on inside his head. Others watched in surprise as Mr. Martin’s true love wiped his tears stepping down from the podium. All were wondering how a seemingly flawless man could be so sad for years and realize that true happiness was found elsewhere and still couldn’t enjoy it to the fullest. 

One World, One Heart, One Pride

By: Gaurpriya Singh Roy

“Loving yourself is the greatest revolution,” proven by the LGBTQ+ community just by doing the most mundane thing: fighting for love, 

Love-a language misunderstood and mistaken. Hence, the month of pride brings to us the opportunity to know and explore the lengths of magnitude people have gone to for the sake of love.

Many consider the month of pride to just mean the celebration of sexuality, but Pride Month is an entire month dedicated to the uplifting of LGBTQ voices, a celebration of LGBTQ culture, and the support of LGBTQ rights. Throughout June, nationwide, there have traditionally been parades, protests, drag performances, live theatre, memorials, and celebrations of life for members of the community who lost their lives to HIV/AIDS. It is part political activism, part celebration of all the LGBTQ community has achieved over the years. Hence, the community knows the actual struggle for this piece of joy acquired.

Over the years, celebrating Pride has grown, not just in numbers within the LGBTQ community but also in popularity. This is wonderful but also presents a few problems. While people stand by watching corporations selectively jump on the bandwagon for a few weeks, the LGBTQ community has to live the truth and support each other all year long.

The month is a monograph of mixed emotions, perspectives, and celebrations—celebrations of not only emotions but also of people, their struggles and joys; mourning their losses and applauding their accomplishments. Although in reality, just a month could never be enough to acknowledge the profundity of joy and sorrow, this one month does sure serve its initial purpose of spreading awareness. ‘The biggest idealism about pride is about hope’, The purpose of this commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.

They say LGBT people are not people, they are just an ideology. Living in a place where people are dehumanized, we, as individuals, community or not, have to find ways to help, support, and fight for basic rights.

In conclusion, to me, pride refers to the freedom of expressing one’s true self—one that has been masquerading beneath government policies fuelled by orthodox societal norms—specifically those about homophobia—for a very long time. Pride Month and celebrations aren’t just about watching drag queens throw t-shirts from a float or buying items with a rainbow on them. Pride matters for many reasons beyond this and is much more than a few events in the summer. Activists and campaigners have certainly played a crucial role in bringing about what can be seen as a major turn of events in terms of the increasing numbers of egalitarian and human rights cuts across communities throughout the globe. It means celebrating the victories of what the community has achieved so far and also a revolt against what we’re still being deprived of. Thus, pride is and will be a ceaseless fight.

Masked Love

By: Anagha V

“Dear Friend,

Occasionally, when I lay down and closed my eyes, I used to feel like a skatefish in pisciculture. Bleak lifelessness around me – a world drained of joy. They only saw in black and white, do you realize?

The funny thing is, I swam around. I floated around like a little plastic toy, discarded into the vast ocean by some rich spoilt kid. As light, weightless, and wasted. I felt my fins and tail as I traversed the water, the strong current against them. 

My teachers had always told my parents that I was a queer child and that I daydreamed too often. Maybe they did get some part of it right, but I never dared to make the pun evident. Who are dreamers but lost souls, right? 

My room used to be no different from my terror of a thought loop. It was almost like a black hole, everything sucked you in, and you lost your nature. You know, like the universe is no longer to be governed by the Laws of Senses. If absurdism gets narrowed down, the only thing defined in it would be human hypocrisy. They ask you to love and then say you are not supposed to. They preach to you to be true to yourself but accept only sugar-coated lies. I know.

My school was no better. It was not like my friends were any kinder. Their images flickered in and out of my daily life like a television channel on a poor signal. Despite being left with all these people around me, I was permitted only to use one bland, broken communication device. Will they ever know me for who I truly am? And then I’m in the pond again, my form obscuring my vision. Would it have changed who I am? Would I have forgotten who I was? I am glad you were there through all this. 

At times I used to feel like this life was a conspiracy. But then you told me about the other colorful, joyous worlds I could spiral into when I was lost. Maybe all everyone in such a wicked world as mine needs is an ally. Things did not seem as hard. I finally had the courage to stand up for myself. You were not right by my side physically, true. But you were with me, in your heart. That is more than anything I wanted or needed. All this suffocation of shutting myself inside is finally off my shoulder, and I just wanted to say thank you.”

People are often just scared to speak up for themselves. They have to realize that what makes them unique is everything about them- their age, gender, identity, sexuality, interests, and whatnot. The pride community is not for today’s relief or tomorrow’s comfort. It is a movement for as long as it takes. And it is home. To love is human, and to love is divine.

To Be Loved or Not To Be Loved

By – Krishanu Das

The feeling of love is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world. It’s a powerful emotion that can make us feel both happy and sad at the same time. The term “love” refers to an overwhelming emotion of heartfelt affection. But does it exactly define the true essence of Love? 

I was about 15 or 16 years old at the time, and I was trying to figure out a lot of things in life. I was running late, especially for an Indian kid from a middle-class family who was expected to have figured out their life by this point. It was difficult for me to find significance in many things, but one day I came across something that made perfect sense to me. It was probably insignificant to most others, but it meant everything to me at the time. My life was turned upside down, and everything that didn’t make sense before began to make sense. I met a girl. She wasn’t perfect, but she seemed to be able to complete me.

My friends thought I was crazy and that I wasn’t making any sense, but at the time, their opinions didn’t matter to me. This girl was all that mattered to me. She was in my class, so I made it a point to speak with her daily and get to know her. She was incredibly sweet to me, and I always felt “PERFECT” when I was in her company. I was so delighted that I used to look forward to going to school, and when school finished, I was upset, but the anticipation of seeing her again kept me awake all night. I was genuinely happy and everything was just “PERFECT”, but I suppose nothing is supposed to be perfect in this universe.

I went up to the girl and confessed my feelings for her with a lot of courage. Her smile had vanished, and I couldn’t think of anything else at the time. I’d exhausted all other options and was simply hoping to God that she’d say yes. But it appears that the universe had other plans for me. She said “no”, and I didn’t know how to react to it. Everything just went blank for a moment and I didn’t have anything to say. 

Everything that previously made sense to me began to disintegrate, and nothing appeared to make sense to me. Going to school was a burden, sitting in class was excruciating, and seeing the same beautiful face every day was depressing. I had blamed everyone up until this moment, and then I started blaming myself. Was it, however, entirely my fault? I’d only done one thing: I’d fallen in love. I had no idea how to communicate my feelings, and all I could think about was being rejected. My sorrow had turned to rage, and I couldn’t seem to settle down. The tension and restlessness were unbearable.

At this moment, all I could think about was blaming the girl, and my rage seemed to know no bounds. I simply wanted to express my rage, and I had painted her as the villain in this situation. I couldn’t accept the fact that she had rejected me, and seeing her made me feel horrible. Was she, however, the “terrible” person I painted her to be? She made a decision that she had every right to make.

At this point, I realised the issue was with myself and with society, which believes that if a person makes a decision for their own good, we label them as “bad” people if their choices do not coincide with our own. Every individual has the right to make their own choices, and we, as individuals in society, must respect those choices and learn to accept differing viewpoints. I felt it convenient to blame the girl because I had to learn it the hard way. “Consent” is something that transcends people’s and society’s opinions, so maybe I was supposed to be blamed at this point?

“Time is the finest healer,” as someone once said. I believe in my case, I just analyzed the situation and realised that sometimes not everything is in my control. That’s when I realised that not everything is supposed to make sense and that some things just “happen.” I believe that at this moment, I had made peace with all of my sadness, anger, and restlessness and that this helped me to escape from the situation.

Children Learn by Example

-by Viraaj Kumar Kulshreshtha

Growing up in an average Indian household, Suman was exposed to a lot of things as a child. Things and events that would go on to shape him as a person. He would observe his family day in and day out, watching how they would treat the people around them. He grew up watching them stereotype people they met. This was especially true when it came to gender roles. And this created a lot of problems for Suman as he grew older.

The first of these problems would come when Suman finally left his house. From a young age, he was taught that only women were supposed to work in the kitchen, as a result, he never learned to cook. And as one would expect, he became dependent on restaurants for his meals.

Another issue that arose was the fact that Suman had developed certain social stigmas based on what he had seen as a child. As a result, he at times made comments that were homophobic or neurotypical and would play them off as a joke. And even after repeated instances of people telling him that these sorts of comments were hurtful, he didn’t stop, because to him there was nothing wrong, they were just jokes after all.

Suman also felt weird when he would see men cry over things. To him men weren’t supposed to cry, they were supposed to be tough and were supposed to never express emotions to others because that is what he was taught. That is what he had seen growing up.

Now it is possible for Suman to overtime understand what he was doing wrong, but by that point in time, the damage was already done, people were hurt because of his comments. However, this could have been avoided had the difference between right and wrong behaviour been explained and shown to Suman at an early age.

We often use the phrase ‘Children learn by example’, and this doesn’t hold true just for physical activities, it holds for emotions and behaviours as well. Children learning through example was an important part of Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, and this was proven through the Bobo Doll Experiment in the years 1961-63. Usually applied to allow for more complete growth of a child, this theory can also be applied to the way social stigma and stereotypes are seen and understood by the children in society.

To put it simply they learn stereotypical behaviour and inherit social stigma from their parents as they watch them use these in their day-to-day life. Therefore it becomes really important for children to learn the right behaviour as they grow. Not only will this ensure that they can grow to be more sensitive towards and avoid comments or jokes that are stereotypic and are also able to avoid falling prey to various social stigmas.

Marks of mutation

-by Aniket Banga

“Hey bud, pass me the popper!” says Bug when he points towards an orange hard drive with a semi worn-out plastic film. They call it a “popper” because it has digital blueprints of the security network, sitting between the mesh of wires at one corner of the table in that one tiny basement at his uncle’s old suburban homestead, which wasn’t very well ventilated or well lit in particular but served the purpose for Michael and Bug as their secret hideout. Michael stretches his arm to the end, untangling the wires and fetching the drive while bug keeps a check on the timer and the network link. They find a link that would connect them directly to the Pentagon’s server. Michael turns towards him passing the drive and looks at him and asks, “Are you sure our parents won’t find out?” and Bug smiles while sticking his eyes to the screen saying “Oh shit! Things just got exciting!”. 25 mins later and 3 firewalls into the system before they can access the nuke codes to the mobile launcher which siloed the16 PAC-3 missiles that were kept at the military station outside San Francisco, the alarm went off and the officials found out about the hack and both Bug and Michael were arrested. Michael took the entire blame on himself because he was still 11 and could get away with the hack by spending time under juvenile detention while bug would have been prosecuted for the same.

5 years later, when Michael finally got out, his father was there to receive him while his mother wasn’t very happy with his return so she took his sister to the market. He gets admitted to an all-boys school this time which is 10 miles away from his place. Even though going to school was a real struggle, Michael was still happy because he had 2 things to look forward to – he was subject to early dysphoria. His parents would call him out every time he tried wearing any of his sister’s outfits and not let him be friends with the 3 girls who lived next door as they were a strong feminine influence on him. As a result, Michael grew up to hate his parents, but now he could spend more time outside their watch. The second reason was that he always wanted to swim and this new school had an Olympic size pool which was a dream come true for him. A few days after he got into school, mike went for his first P.E class, looking at the pool from the door through the corridor he couldn’t contain himself with all the excitement and rush he felt while imagining his body completely free in the middle of the pool away from all the hatred and judgements, just feeling the bliss of his existence which he was craving for the past 5 years in the detention house. One thing that was bothering him was that he didn’t know how things function in a locker room because during the 5 years he spent in prison, he never got to experience conventional schooling. He was worried that this could somehow get him in trouble and it did, he was subjected to one of the first and the deepest traumas of his life.

He walks into the locker room and sees everyone changing clothes and taking showers completely naked, and that’s where his body-conscious state kicks in. He tries to cross the swarm with his towel wrapped around his body but the kids stop him and start calling him out for covering his body. He tries to push them away which makes them even more aggressive and the two of them pull his towel off while the others burn his body with hot water to teach him a lesson and make him abide by the rules of the locker room. This one incident got him so terrified of people that post this, he never took swimming lessons again, he only stayed under shadows at school and couldn’t even dare to step out of his class during breaks and would rush to the bus stand as soon as he would hear the bell. Michael had faced similar cases of social unacceptance before but none of them bothered him as much cause he always had Bug, this time though, he didn’t have anyone to share his woe with, he was forced to stay away from Bug for his parents found him a negative influence.

Growing up, he still had a thing for computers and spent all his time either on the internet learning how to hack or about the pride community that his sister introduced him to and where he would always feel accepted. He got to learn all about the government’s policies while trying to know his rights as a person who was born transgender. He was pressurised to grow up as a boy, but felt comfortable in the body of a woman and identified as a lesbian. He eventually took his hormonal therapy and had surgeries to change the body’s anatomy. Michael has grown up to become an ethical hacker, while also maintaining a public activist blog. He has officially changed his name to Nomi and chooses to identify as a woman. Nomi found the one ‘friend’ she always needed in the form of her life partner amanita. She still has all the ups and downs in her life, some even bigger than hacking the Pentagon, but now she finally has family in that one person and knows that whatever might happen, they’ll always have each other’s backs. She continues to advocate for change and lives her life unapologetically.

A day in the life of a Chinki

 Chinki, Momo, Chinese, Korean, and so on, people usually call her using these names. Merenla was my colleague, but now, she is leaving Delhi for good, giving up her career, friends, and struggles to belong in her own country. When she was asked for her reason re, she said she is tired of feeling unsafe in her country. I wanted to know more about what she was trying to say, and so did the others. Today is the last day of her notice period. The entire office was there to bid farewell, and not even a single person knows her name. Even in a colleague’s gift, it was written that chinki, we will miss you a lot. Wow! 

Later that day, we decided to go out as she would leave for Nagaland the next day, and she wasn’t feeling well. I was there to help her. We got in a cab, and the cab driver sneered, “Looks  like you also got your country’s disease.” And she replied angrily, “I am an Indian. Please do understand that for God’s sake.”

As I reached her home, we saw a crowd outside their place, where the landlady was screaming at her tenants. An argument sparked among them by the pungent smell of Axone, their native dish, and in due course of the fight, a random person from the crowd came forward and slapped Merenla, calling her a ‘Coronavirus causer’ and spat on one of her friends’ faces. 

And after an hour or two, when things cooled down, we turned on the news, and it said that two students from Nagaland were brutally tortured for hours by local men in Goregaon to teach them the lesson engraining in them the ideology that ‘they don’t belong here.’ They said, “If you Northeast people come here, we will kill you.” 

While I was shocked watching the news, one of her roommates murmured, “Same thing, Different day.” 

How is insensitivity towards a particular community so normalized? While thinking about this, I realized that even I was a part of this. Though she was my friend, I did nothing to stop the casual racism against her. Instead, I was a part of it. The seven sisters belong to India only theoretically in our maps, but they are still foreigners in practice.

The shift in International Politics

Starting in the mid-2010s, democracies all over the world have turned toward the right, electing representatives that stand in stark contrast to those that pushed for globalization and international cooperation two decades earlier. Right-wing populism isn’t a monolith; it has different features in different countries. The movements and parties that belong to it share xenophobic, nationalistic traits, a tendency toward authoritarianism, aggressive leadership, and an anti-elitist message.

All over Europe, the past few years have seen a noticeable growth in xenophobia, particularly in reaction to asylum seekers and immigrants. Simultaneously, there’s been a growing rejection of European cooperation, propelling in favour of Brexit in the UK, and the rise of far-right movements all over the continent.

In India, voters had elected prime minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, in 2014 and then again during last year. 

How quickly right-wing populism has spread globally, or at least in the countries with democratic systems, is remarkable. When this decade began, hardly any of the parties and leaders that now run the world, or appear set to, were on anyone’s radar. Among the world’s democracies, a growing number has embraced right-wing populism, and either has governments led by populist parties or supported by them.

In the US, Clinton moved the Democratic Party away from its working-class roots and embraced the Reagan revolution — domestic deregulation and free trade. In pushing the party to the right, Clinton ended the political wilderness of the Democrats in America. In Britain, Blair did much the same by rebranding a working-class party as the New Labour to end nearly two decades of Tory rule. The socialists in France and Europe demurred at the Anglo-Saxon capitalist excesses but had no choice to adapt.

But the dynamics have changed due to the COVID pandemic. The Western imperative to separate from China was reinforced by Xi Jinping’s abandonment of the Deng line on keeping an open economy and a low international profile. The perception that China, the biggest beneficiary of globalization, has taken advantage of the West has been reinforced by the corona crisis.

 If the rightward shift had transformed the global political economy and international affairs in the last four decades, the drift to the left, de-globalization, the focus on redressing inequality and new political weight of the working class is likely to have a powerful and lasting impact on national economic strategies everywhere and the politics among nations.

 Democrats can attack Trump as fiercely as they want to, but they can’t afford to be seen as weak on China. Though the consequences might not be at par our expectations after the COVID crisis ends.