Does it make a difference?

The public joy over the Delhi High Court’s nod to consensual sex between people of same sex made me stretch beyond my armchair espousal of the cause and see if it will make a real difference to me, my family, friends and my extended acquaintance tree.

I know that no one expects this ruling to bring legitimacy and acceptance of homosexuality as "normal". But beyond the point that it will help a same sex couple to escape jail by shoving the law of the land into the world's face, I do not see much coming out of it.

Apart from the smoke spewing, liberated women in university whom I grudgingly admired for their unabashed assertion of their sexual identity and preferences, I am uncertain if it will bring happiness to the rich builder back home who I heard is getting his son treated for abnormal effeminate behaviour.

I have almost no hope that the senior and not so senior members of my huge family will stop clucking with a sneer, ‘uska beta ya beti gay hai’.

Will it bring a smile to girls in my all girls college who did not know if they were lesbians, bisexuals or in throes of virgin passion when they chose to fall in love and be with a girl. Some of them are married now. Some are worrying about how to deal with it as a closet homosexual and play a happy wife. Some are over it as a hippie stage of their life. Will it help any of them to come out in the open with their preferences?

Small towns have an eerie way of clamping on your sense of freedom. In a UP university where once upon a time only de-feminised looking girls escaped the roving eyes and sometimes fingers of boys unsure of how to deal with their testerone drives, an open display could still be disastrous.

I cannot comment on men and what they go through as I have never been close enough to anyone to know what emotional turmoil they go through trying to wed their reality with the one that the world wants them to adopt. But I can imagine a certain guy who swayed gracefully as he walked down the campus road, swirling in mock contempt at those who laughed at him, taking it all in his stride.

Will it stop a policewallah on the evening beat from not badmouthing a same sex couple cosying in a public garden unable to afford the refuge of an expensive place?

What about all the new senas and dals that will crop up to war with the sins of the mankind and especially the womankind.

I personally am unsure how will I react if I unknowingly love a person who is not straight in the public eye. Pardon my disgusting admission but that is the truth.

I have trembled at the thought of a son wanting to pluck brows or wanting to wear thongs or lusting after a boy in his class or a daughter declaring she hates stilettos and makeup and would prefer to feel J-Lo’s ass than getting one like her. This is an extreme end of my imagination and I am trying to have fun at the cost of the feelings of lots of people out there.

But just like you all deserve to come out I deserve a chance to speak too. That said at the end of the day, I will still stand by what a friend, family or relative chooses to be.