Illustration/@meeracles_, Instagram
Dear Santa,
Here's a tiny disclaimer before we get straight to business. I am not your usual target audience. For one, I am 30 years old and agnostic. I am also gay.
Ding ding ding. You don't get a lot of us in your mail, do you? Why does a 30-year-old agnostic, gay man even believe in Santa, you'd ask?
Here's a secret, sir. I don't even know if I believe in myself anymore; so the least I could do is put my faith in someone else.
And you, dear Santa, seem like an excellent choice. It's that time of the year, after all. Now, now, since I've been relatively nice this year, I tried to compile a wish list of all the things I (and other gay men) would want this holiday season - and as you can clearly see, I tried not being too selfish:
An end to homophobia and oppression.
Wouldn't that be an excellent little treat for the Yuletide season? An end to bigotry? Giftwrap it for me, please.
Meera Latkar
A friendly neighbourhood gay bar.
No, we don't want a bar that seeks us out every other Saturday of the month - we want a bar where we can be ourselves every single day of the week. Yeah, we might like drinks and drunken banter at the niche pub halfway across town, we'd love it a lot more if we could have them without the masks and other men's musky colognes.
Adoption rights for LGBT folk.
India does not routinely allow same-sex couples to adopt a child. That's a shame for both, couples looking to start a family, and kids missing out on one. I think it's safe to say that having two dads (or two mums) is better than having none - because we can all agree, the world can never have too many self-aware fashion conscious children who know the benefits or organic eating and working out five times a week, can it?
A dating app that actually works.
I don't want somebody to swipe through; I want somebody to wipe off all my tears.
Aniruddha Mahale
Nicer gay men.
We might have religious fanatics, bigots, homophobes and extremists in this world, but no one hates the gays like the gays themselves. The Mascs hate the queens. The gym boys hate the chubs. The chubs hate the twinks. The bears hate the daddies. The Katy Perrys hate the Taylor Swifts. Everyone hates the sapiosexuals. This hamster cycle of homosexual hate needs to stop. How about we enter 2020 with nicer, gay men instead of entering a heated argument over who's better - Britney Spears or Madonna?
A family that accepts my existence.
Here it is, the crux of this letter. The reason why I, 30-year -old agnostic gay man, am writing to you. If I can place my faith in your existence, why can't my family do the same for my sexuality?
Desperately looking for answers.
Yours truly,
A believer.
A former TEDx speaker, Aniruddha Mahale is a writer who also runs the Guysexual, a portal for queer culture in the desi context. Having previously published with Juggernaut Books, he is currently working on his second novel with HarperCollins India. When he's not writing, he prefers to read boys instead.
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