Priti is dozing in the backseat beside me. The streetlights cast a strange glow on the road ahead, marred by the bright, full moon in front of us. When we’re driving home, it’s past midnight. Like this is our last day together and something is about to break open between us. It’s weird, but after I’ve made my decision I feel like I’m on borrowed time. I have to tell them at one point or another. But I also know I can’t be talked out of it now. I know Priti will try to talk me out of it if I tell her what I’m thinking of doing. She turns back to the bride and groom to be. She narrows her eyes like she doesn’t believe me, but says no more. I quickly slip the phone into my bag and shoot her a wide-eyed, innocent smile. Everyone’s eyes are turned to the bride and groom to be so I thought this was the moment I could Google “gay happy endings” without someone peering over my shoulder. “What are you doing?” Priti asks when she spots me typing into my phone in the midst of the engagement ceremony. I try to think back to every movie, TV show, book that I’ve ever seen or read with gay protagonists. So that is how I spend Sunny Apu’s engagement, trying to construct the perfect coming out moment, and wondering if that even exists. So maybe-just maybe-they can accept this other form of love that blooms in my chest sometimes when I see Deepika Padukone in a Bollywood movie, and not when I see her male love interest. Unfortunately, one of those things is this: a wedding consisting of a bride and a groom.īut my Ammu and Abbu did make it past the customs that told them love before marriage was unacceptable, and that love after marriage was to be hidden in a locked bedroom like a shameful secret. To give us a better life, they said, even when in some ways they are stuck to the past. They uprooted their lives one day to come to Ireland. My parent’s “love marriage” is one of the reasons they work so well here, despite the lack of family and support. Suddenly, a song starts in the background. Their eyes meet across a crowded room, maybe at a wedding of distant relatives. They’d broken rigid tradition, and have what Bengalis call a “love marriage.” Though they’ve never told us the story, I always imagine a movie-moment meeting, exactly like in a Bollywood movie. I’d seen them as pioneers, people who made things happen even when those things might seem impossible.

I’ve never thought of my parents as traditionalists before this. I can almost see Ammu and Abbu stitching it together in their heads: Castles in the air, made of deep red wedding saree dreams and lined with thick gold wedding jewellery aspirations.

It isn’t directed at Sunny Apu at all, really it’s directed at the future. I decide to come out because of the way Ammu and Abbu look at Sunny Apu, with a mixture of pride and love and longing. By signing up you agree to our terms of use Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.

The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar