Suvir Saran – a multi-faceted personality who says he was aware of his sexuality at a very young age. And he was comfortable with it. He, probably, came out about his choice when most of the LGBTQ+ community were scared to. And he attributes that strength to his upbringing and family.
In a chat over a delicious Bihari meal, Suvir opens up about all that he has written in the book and more. He talks about his illness after a fall that made him mute and blind. He says that despite being what others called – a vegetable – he could hear what other were saying about him, it registered so well that he repeated every sentence later to the family and friends. He also shares the moment he actually told his mother, something that is not mentioned in the book.
Excerpts from an interview:
The mirror comes across in the book as your alter ego. Is it still so?
Bad or good?
That’s for you to say. Is it still your confidante?
So I don't think I used the mirror as a friend or a confidante. The mirror was the truth. The mirror was the Ayni Haq that Allama Iqbal spoke about, that you have to. If you live a lie, go live it. But at the end you have to answer yourself and the mirror does not lie. The mirror is seeing you for all your fractures, for all your successes, all your failures, all your mishaps, all your philandering, all your betrayals, all your lines and wrinkles and dark spots and sleepless night eye bags. Because the mirror sees every storm that you have, all the vicissitudes you have suffered and braved. You may make up all the stories for the world. In the end, what's left in the mirror is your truth. When you stare at this reflection, it is neither your alter ego and it is the shattering of your ego. If you are a person hiding their truths, the mirror is your enemy. Why the enemy? Because you are telling people, oh, I am so perfect. The mirror is showing you all the flaws. You are frightened by the visage in the mirror because it is your truth which you don't want to accept. And that’s what mirror always has been to me!
You mention art and music were your sanctuaries in childhood. Are they still?
They're the only sanctuary I ever have, mother. Siblings and maybe a couple of friends, but even with humans, there is always a sheet that lets you see the form, but very faint. What is hidden on the other end, which my end of the sheet, is truth that is trembling to be seen for clarity, but afraid if it would be judged. So in music, in art. in. Poetry, in writing, in reading, in travel, in aloneness. There is none of that fear of being judged. So you can get consumed and subsumed and celebrated and lost and be wild and be open because all you are doing is being one with yourself with no fears at all.
Childhood traumas are hard to get over? Have you got over yours?
Trauma of all kinds live with you a lifetime. We have to learn to accept, hold tight, and yet file away in the distance the traumas that make us who we are. We can never undo them. We shouldn't because undoing the will be. We are spending more and more time trying to forget them, and this is a battle you never will. But I wouldn't change anything about my life. I didn't get to 53 being a man that didn't get the trauma, that didn't have sleepless nightmares, that didn't have that had seen a knife kill the Hindu by a Muslim in the riots in Bombay after Babri Masjid. What I saw as a child, as a preteen, as a teen, it has made me who I am. But those traumas come at a great expense. Maybe my parents, maybe my schooling, maybe Pandit Ji as chef, maybe my daadi’s switch from being a ritualistic Hindu to being a very Vedantic scholar of Hinduism. I saw the world evolve and the world grow, and I think I have taught myself to grow over my traumas. But I can tell you I am still learning to brave them because they tear apart, they tear you apart every minute of your life and you have to submit. I can't be lost in the past, I have to move forward. So that's but they do come to haunt every second. They haunt you with your behaviour towards somebody. I had to hold and guard and protect myself from becoming the people who had harmed me.
But I felt vindicted when Shobha De while launching my book in Jaipur said that she got to know a man she didn’t know through the book and thanked my mother and posthumously my father for being amazing parents. I felt vindicated that my mother now publicly been. She's not the child of a homosexual. The world will condemn. The world will condemn. She's been told. The world has been told by Shobha De that she respects the man and she is proud of the woman. So that was some kind of a victory that in my life, I don't celebrate victory. This was one victory I would celebrate…
Title of the book is ‘Tell my mother I like boys’. When did you actually tell her?
I told her on the phone from New York when I was 20. My grandmother, her mother, lived in San Francisco. She invited my then lover, Chuck, and I to come spend a weekend with her. She had given my brother, brother-in-law, and my sister an ultimatum. If you don't have him, come out to me. I will out him. So she said you and Chuck are not roommates, you're lovers. She said to me, in our times, we call them famously single, confirmed bachelors, light on the loafers and lesbian spinsters and these are the words. They have existed forever. She said so many of the Sufi Saints were gay, she said. She said nothing wrong with them. She said I want you to be out because I don't want you taking drugs and alcohol and get depressed. We love you as you are. And when I came out to my mother on the phone from California that night, I said mom, I have something terrible to tell you. I'm so sorry. She said what happened Baba? I said I'm gay. Oh my God, she said I thought you had driven a car over somebody, robbed a bank, said that's who you are. That's not terrible. That's who you are.
And recently, few just a couple of years ago, I said to her, I said, mum, when did you think I was different? She said all alone. I said what? She said… yes… everything your brother and sister did, you thought very differently from both of them. You thought differently from every other child I ever witnessed, I said. So, what did you know? She said, I knew you were gay. I said, why didn't you ever ask me? She said no parents, no mother would want their child to be gay or born different because the world will be a jungle where they will be eaten raw and paraded naked and embarrassed for life.
Was the world kind to you?
I faced a lot and I don't want to get into the ugly, but there are people in power, people of reputation, people of awards who were very unkind. They were governors and their wives and senators and their wives and congressmen and their wives in America. That put their foot in the mouth when they gave me a compliment. Oh, you are gay, but you look so straight. You are Indian. Oh, you look so fair skinned. You are Hindu, but you have good ideas. So the people put their foot-in-the-mouth. Ignorance is a is the reason humans become vicious.
You say let bygones be bygones… can that really be so?
No, as I said, they filed a way. And they are there to teach you not to repeat it. Why is history taught? Well, the easy part. I have also mentioned repeat repetition of it. You history Tariq. Why do we teach history to never repeat the same crimes committed once before that killed the humanity in ourselves and others? So, bygones are meant to be bygones that you learn from, you don't repeat them.
Do you think in today's world of influencers, Michelin stars, etcetera, are any more relevant?
Irrelevant. And in fact, the only people who give them relevance are the idiots who go attending these journeys and are dumb enough to give them any credence. So, it's a you scratch my back, I scratch walls and done when you had journalists. Who went with financial independence of having money from a publisher to go out and eat? You could come and trash the place if you thought it was terrible. But when the influencers being given a free meal, they write what they want to celebrate it. No, the old journalists came independently, often hidden till they got known. And wrote what they wanted. You could not influence them, you couldn't embarrass them or yourself by even telling, asking, ma'am, did you like it? Thappad padega, did you like it? I am not your consultant. Then I will tell you if I like it. If you ask Gailgi, what do you think of my food? She will read it in my review. She is not there to tell you if food is good or bad. You served it. She is not judging it. It is not a job to tell you what she thinks it is. So that journalism is gone. Now anybody whose daddy gave them a computer or a phone. And a little digital camera have become a journalist. Whether have they think or they reflect or they look at the broader picture irrelevant. Daddy, mummy gave me money. I am a journalist and this is sad. It is world over.
You talk about giving. And what’s ‘giving’ in reality?
Giving is no give give. Giving has a form. Giving is giving to me is goodness. It makes me happy. It is an emotion. If I don't give, I am a miserable human being. Giving is an emotion. Giving is second nature, like breathing like pulse in your pulse in your heart. The day you stop giving is the day you stop being happy. You need a shrink, you need a therapy, you need some drugs. When you give, you go to sleep.
Are you still scared?
I told you, once bruised, bruised for life. But if you dare to live, you have to live with the demons of your heart, of your survival and everyday play a balancing act. And you wish you were more successful with each passing day, but there is no guarantee you will be successful. There is no minute without challenge. So it is a you are the parwana and your life is the flame.
