KNOW YOUR AIQA – SUHASINI
Your name/nickname :My name is Suhasini but I go my Spocko.
About you: I’m 18 year old semi closeted queer person and I’m still find my that I cannot yet identify myself, except there is an interesting need to appear more and more masculine some days.
A picture of you or your orientation’s flag if you are closeted
Your story :
“Oh,” My mother says as if she is going to divulge an idea that she shouldn’t. “My daughter, she is studying in an English medium school.”
There is a obvious self-deprecating pride in her, free from the grasp of scrutiny of thousand and one house-wives whose husbands allowed them to work outside; a certain moment of cheap contentment, and saccharine in her voice drenched with half cup of poison.
My aunt hollers, unladylike like my uncle would say. She slapped her thighs a couple of time as if it’s the second funniest thing she heard; the first being her marriage she would say. There are a lot of sayings I barely understand. “She can speak in English?” my aunt asks.
My mother calls me over, her hands trying to smother the unruly curls over my boyish haircut then running them over my masculine clothing. It was modern, it was safe.
“Talk to your aunt.” She says to me, “Talk to her in English.”
“Hello…” I say, hovering over my words and clanking my teeth against each other to pronounce them correctly. “My name is Suhasini. I study in Nursery.”
“Brilliant!” My aunt says adoration in her eyes. My mother smiles, and then says “Of course, she will be speaking like an English-man soon.”
I didn’t catch much of it, except that I was euphoric. One day I’ll be a man. One day I will be a man and marry the nurse in our local hospital.
Why you choose to be a part of AIQA.
I wasn’t exactly a privileged brat but I am still, how much I deny, an upper class Brahmin with too much chances that a sweatshop worker, or day a sewer cleaner won’t have. Throughout my life I have seen my younger self nodding along with my relatives saying “If you don’t study you are going to be like them” , as if any of it was their fault. I once asked my uncle why they are working like that, he said “because they didn’t study” and when I asked why they didn’t he said “because they didn’t have money”. Back then when I was 11, I thought if I had enough money I won’t let them work like that. I felt it was as easy as that.
Then came my identity and feeling of isolation, the objectification of gender and traumatic experience form certain assaults I would like to forget and wash away, and sleep in peace without the constant feel hands on me. Yet, sleep was far away knowing when I go out I would see children younger than me working to feed themselves. I felt disgusted as an human being to not able to do anything for them.
That’s why I joined AIQA, to see a change in future and be along the people who need me to most.
