Well, it's a known fact that it is difficult to be gay in any country - anything other than mainstream is often judged and heavily criticised. And if you are in India, things can get even more difficult. Here, most peoples' lives go in worrying what society will say – log kya kahenge? There is always constant pressure from the family to get married and start family life. No matter what you have done in life, getting married is the most important thing once you are settled in your career.

If you refuse to marry, the melodrama begins.

A lot of gay men in India succumb to the family pressure and lead a dual life. They conveniently lead a lie for their entire life. I always wonder how people do this and why there is a need to get married to a girl and spoil her life and yours as well. I am 32, the only son, and there is constant pressure from my family to get married but I always refuse saying I don’t want to get married. I have taken a decision in life not to lead a dual life. I am comfortable with my sexuality and others should also respect my decision. But I am not writing this blog to blame anyone or to portray anyone in a bad light. I am just writing this blog to explain to people what we have to go through in our lives.

BCCL

Society, people, they all have preconceived notions and their own set of rules. We don’t figure in that and we always have to hide our identity. There is always constant pressure on our minds about what will happen if somebody comes to know about our sexuality. We always have to hide our feelings, pretend to be like others and have to constantly kill ourselves from within. We attend marriages, anniversaries, and birthdays of these so called normal people and accept them in every way. So why it is so difficult for them to accept us?

We are also human beings, we also want to lead a normal life, we also want to choose our life partner, we also want to love someone.

Why can’t we do that? The amount of mental stress that this society exerts on us is unfair. We also want to love a person and live a life with full dignity. Is it too much to ask for? But this society has never cared and never will. It’s not an easy life that we lead, it's not easy for us to find somebody to settle with, it's even more difficult to live with a person we love. We are under a constant fear of somebody discovering the truth about us. We don’t even get basic rights to live. Some get married, some don’t. But the irony is that our hypocritical society will be happy if we marry and lead a dual life, instead of just living the way we want to live.

BCCL

From our growing years, life gets difficult for us. We feel attracted towards boys and not girls and we feel something is wrong with us. We keep sulking and blaming ourselves for this. Not many people are able to understand this and go into depression. I, for a long time, was upset with myself, and stopped hanging out with my friends, stopped interacting with the world and stayed indoors as much as possible. I used to think something was wrong with me and that I don’t fit into this society. Boys would talk about girls and I would feel very uncomfortable - like a misfit. It adds to the mental stress and also effects studies and overall personality development.

I figured out very late, after reading a lot of articles on the internet, that nothing is wrong with me. And that there are other people like me out there in this world. But I was lucky enough to have access to the internet. What about others who don’t have that access?

Some never understand what their real identity actually is.

BCCL

We make fake girlfriends because we want to show our peer group that we are normal like them. We lead a dual life and a life full of lies. And then most of us get married because we believe that this is the normal way of leading a life. But by doing so we spoil the life of the girl we marry, our own life and the life of the guys we date post our marriage. Because this is not something that gets cured after marriage. We can’t change this or cut it out of our lives. So people who think marriage is the ultimate solution are wrong.

Many parents, despite knowing their kids' sexuality, force them into marriage.

Parents are equally to be blamed for spoiling lives. They do this because, of course, Log Kya Kahenge and Mera beta aisa kaise ho sakta hai. But the irony is that they care about so called society but not about their child’s feelings. Well, such is life and nothing is going to change in India in the near future. Nobody cares for our emotions and feelings - it's all for society.