For centuries, our society has been unfair to women. They have always been treated like a second gender. Mainly in India because our society has been male-dominated from previous eras. Now, women have started getting equal opportunities and rights. However, woman gender was always accepted by our society. At the same time, the LGBT community wasn’t even considered a part of it.
Shyam Konnur was also among the community. At an early age, he found out that he was gay. The news didn’t go well with him, and he ended up considering his sexuality, disease, and sin. He went to church to change himself and to seek redemption and forgiveness. Later, he realized that it was a myth. It’s his identity, and nothing can change it. So he decided to accept it. However, the journey of acceptance wasn’t easy at all. He had to face many hardships. Still, in the end, he rose above the discrimination.
People have never acknowledged their presence and even linked their gender with disease or many other superficial beliefs. These individuals face insult and mockery daily just for being themselves. Our society does not accept them despite getting the position of the third gender by the Supreme Court of India.
Now, people are coming out to fight against discrimination, inequality, and injustice. Rather than hiding their identities, they are accepting themselves. And why shouldn’t they? They deserve equal treatment. Why can’t we give them what they are asking for? Because it takes no compromise to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression. Then why do we deny their fundamental rights?
Let us hear his story.
Shyam Konnur – His Story
I’m Shyam Konnur. Currently, I live in Pune, but I come from a small town in Northern Karnataka close to the border of Andhra Pradesh. I was born and brought up in the same village. My parents were teachers. I moved to Bangalore for my higher education for ten years, and then I moved to Pune.
As I told you, I belonged to a small town. That’s why there was no literacy about the LGBT community. My town lacked English medium colleges, so NGOs spreading awareness about gender equality and homosexuality was out of the question. These are the reasons why I moved to Bangalore.
During my school days, I started realizing that I was different from other boys of my age. Because I wouldn’t talk about girls like other boys did. Apart from that, I was never attracted to any girl romantically or sexually. It triggered me multiple times because we live in a heterosexual world where people always talk about relationships. We always need a partner to spend our life with, but my case was completely different from theirs.
At that time, I wasn’t aware of the term LGBT. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t understand these words like homosexuality, gay, LGBT community, and third gender. Back then, we didn’t have access to the internet either. Also, there were no media to cover news about LGBT.
It became more challenging when I went to college because everyone was in a relationship. All my friends either had girlfriends or were trying to date someone. I didn’t feel like doing it. I tried to speak to many girls, but it never worked out in my case. Even though I attempted to be close to every girl I could, I couldn’t develop romantic feelings for them.
Then slowly and steadily, I began to realize that my behavior wasn’t normal. We didn’t have much access to the internet during those, and we were learning to use it. To find answers to my questions, I searched about it on the internet, but there wasn’t much information. Through some articles, I learned that my condition is linked with a disease known as sexual addiction. I couldn’t digest the reality. It affected my mental health, and with time I slipped into depression.
Because I never shared it with anyone, not with my friends, not even with my family. I kept the secret close to my chest, locked up in my heart. I was afraid of many things. I always worried about my future, upcoming life, family’s prestige, and society’s reaction. The stress was so high that it wouldn’t let me sleep properly at night.
To heal me, I went to a consultant, but they also didn’t guide me appropriately. Then one day, I came across the ‘Guys for Men’ website, where I began to chat and meet random people.
I thought it would make me feel better about myself. I believed that these new activities would bring a noticeable change in my life, but it didn’t happen. During chats and meetups, I was always scared and nervous. Back then, there were no cell phones, only landlines, so I used to block their numbers after talking for a while.
Maybe because I had identified myself and I refused to accept the reality. I couldn’t accept that I was gay but meeting these people pushed me on the path of acknowledgment. However, I wasn’t willing to walk on it. So I stopped meeting them.
While dealing with these emotions, I turned 19 years old, and I couldn’t bear the pressure as I used to feel alone. From here, I decided to change myself. I approached a company, and they fixed my meeting with a counselor, but I didn’t have the guts to talk about homosexuality. So it didn’t help much. Then I planned to end my life by committing suicide.
I consumed 100 allergy tablets together. Nobody knew about it until the medicine displayed its effects. Rather than fainting, I started hallucinating. I wouldn’t reply to my family’s questions. Around 2 in the night, I was running here and there on the road like a drunkard. My movements worried my family, and they took me to a doctor. Luckily, the medicines weren’t too heavy, and I was cured when their effect wore off.
Continue reading part 2.
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