Turns out I was not alone in thinking this. I had unexpected company—the Kolkata police.
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Love recognises no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope”. Justice Revati Mohite Dere and Justice Manjusha Deshpande, quoted this from Maya Angelou, African American poet and civil rights activist, in their ruling on the right of an adult Hindu woman wishing to live with her Muslim partner.
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Nitin Gadkari would not agree. In a recent podcast, he declared that this business of heterosexuals living together without marriage, and same-sex lovers getting married would not bring joy to the world. In fact, it would bring not only satyanash but also maths problems. Because it could lead to an imbalance in the sex ration of 1,500 women to every 1,000 men. And then men would have to be permitted two wives each. Frenz, I was always bad at maths (ya, I know, what a surprise) and being old-fashioned, I feel pyaar ke angne mein ginti ka kya kaam hai? Calculation is fear’s bedfellow.
Fear is not what the Kissing Kouple of Kolkata’s Kalighat Metro station felt, despite the Kyunki Hum Kabhi Young Nahin The types around them. As they were lost in a kiss, a man filmed them. An older man egged him on with “Viral kardo unko, these jokers”. This hectic discomfort with intimacy that quickly reaches for violence seems such an adolescent response in full grown adults. Turns out I was not alone in thinking this. I had unexpected company—the Kolkata police.
As the internet began to lather up for another tired and tiresome round of outrage, several Kolkata police officers took to social media. “Grow up Kolkata… grow up humanity” said one. “We will take action against anyone interfering in private life,” warned another. Such maturity should be unremarkable, but nowadays it is exceptional enough to wow us.
Private life—the land everyone wants to colonise. The gormint, brands, influencers, priests, shadi-kab-karoge relatives, habitual online scolders, leftists, rightists, teachers, resident welfare associations, the My Gate app and of course, many new laws.
Justices Dere and Deshpande weren’t in the mood for this wrong-headedness. “We are not getting into the issue about the marriage… as what they desire is a ‘live-in relationship’ and… as an integral part of their right to live with dignity, by making individual choice in personal relationship, merely because of the societal disapproval, the couple cannot be deprived of this right, which is conferred on two individuals, under the Constitution,” they wrote.
I saw someone ask online whether quoting poetry in judgements was an Indian thing, as if it was out of place. As if that is the point—though, like the reflexive urge to film and censor intimacy, deflection to deflate a surge of emotion is favoured by gentlemen—say through the asking of trivia questions or making of puns. How to speak of the heart of fairness that beats within justice if not poetically? Love is the poetry of our everyday life. Uncle ko poem sunao beta.
In a week when Ambedkar and the spirit of the Constitution were bandied about in Parliament, it is a Christmas gift, this fair-minded and human defence of privacy from the land of law and order. The basti next to my building is warming up for X’mas. They’re playing “Nothing’s gonna change my love for you”. A Christmas bursting with love to all of you.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at [email protected]
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