Babul mora naihar chhooto hi jaye

Each time I hear those opening notes of Raga Bhairavi, I see my mother’s silhouette in our South Delhi living room—eyes closed, fingers tracing invisible arcs of rhythm, her breath keeping pace with Begum Akhtar’s voice.
The air trembles. The rain bruises the bougainvillea. The ghazal becomes gospel.

She hums, “char kahaar mil mori doliya uthaye.”
Four men lift my palanquin.
A bride leaves her father’s house, a daughter departs her name.
A ceremony disguised as surrender.

As a boy, I thought the song was about marriage. Later, I understood it was about memory—about the ache of being loved yet let go.
And so the song became my story.

Because queer people are always leaving home.
Even when we return, even when doors open and hearts remain warm, there’s a quiet corner of belonging still boarded up—one window the world has yet to unseal.

I left India at twenty with a suitcase, a secret, and my Nani’s shining truth.
She lived then in San Francisco—my mother’s mother, formidable and tender, the kind of woman who carried entire histories in her handbag.
It was she who outed me, not cruelly but courageously. One dusk, she looked at me across her kitchen, her voice calm as candlelight:
“Suvir, gay people have existed throughout history. You are not an aberration—you are continuation.”

That moment became my inheritance—an heirloom of honesty, a lineage of light.

Soon after, I told my mother. Trembling, twenty, terrified, I said, “I’ve done something terrible.”
She stopped me mid-sentence: “This is not terrible. This is who you are.”
The questions came later—but they came clothed in care, cushioned by curiosity, never cruelty.
Her love was unwavering even when her understanding wavered. That’s the kind of love that saves you—unpolished but unbreakable.

In New York, I met the man who would become my mirror.
We were young, foolish, full of fire and flavor.
We built a home that smelled of garlic and cardamom, of ambition and belonging.
Two men, one heartbeat, twenty years.

His parents were divorced; we were blessed with both their homes—two hearths, two holidays, double the warmth.
Our fathers never met: two men on parallel continents, courteous, contained, unaware of how alike they were in their quiet dignity.
But his grandmothers—both of them—became our fiercest champions.
One wore pearls and mischief; the other, prayer beads and poetry.
They cooked for us, prayed for us, and protected our love with grandmotherly grace.
In their kitchens, affection wasn’t ideology—it was instinct.

My own family, too, formed the spine of my survival.
My mother, my brother, our sprawling clan of aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors—each extended a steady hand.

When I returned years later, my father was gone.
He had slipped away quietly while I was still abroad.
His absence filled the house like incense—visible in sunlight, invisible at night.
Luckily I had told him my secret, my story, and so now he lived happily in my DNA.

My mother met me at the airport, eyes rimmed with both exhaustion and exultation. My brother followed close behind, steady, silent, strong—the ballast of my Delhi days. Their love was unflinching, their welcome wordless yet whole.

And then there was my sister—our eldest, our anchor.

She and her husband had stayed on in New York, raising their son, my nephew, in the same city that had once raised me.
Together, we helped bring him up: the four of us orbiting one another through homework, holidays, heartbreaks.
He grew under all our eyes—hers, steady and practical; mine, sentimental and chaotic; her husband’s, patient and precise; and my lover’s—kind, creative, constant—another father in every sense.

My nephew had, without realizing it, the rare grace of being loved by four parents. Our bond was a patchwork of cultures, continents, and care—a New York childhood embroidered by Delhi rituals, Manhattan mornings spiced with home-cooked dal. Between us, we stitched together a village that raised him—his mother’s strength, his father’s calm, my indulgence, and my lover’s steadfastness.

Through those years, my sister was more than sibling—she was sentinel. She steadied every storm, championed every choice, never once questioned the core of who I was or who I loved. Her husband stood beside her with quiet decency, and their son—our son in every emotional sense—became proof that family is not defined by formality but by faith.

They, too, were my kahaar—the bearers of my palanquin when I was far from home. When life in New York cracked, when love frayed, when loneliness fogged the windows, it was their laughter that cleared the air. My sister’s voice over the phone, her husband’s humor, my nephew’s music—and the man I loved, making dinner in the kitchen behind me—they were the morning in my midnight.

And yet, even enveloped in such abundance, the world found ways to whisper. Love, it seemed, was welcome only if it conformed. There was always someone—polite, well-meaning—ready to remark that what we shared was “beautiful but not quite real.”

I remember a dinner party. Candles flickered, cutlery chimed, conversation flowed like champagne. A guest, half-drunk on curiosity, leaned in: “But don’t you ever want a real family?”

A real family.

As if two decades of devotion were dress rehearsal. As if the dinners, the duties, the daily ordinary miracles of partnership were placeholders for something proper.

After the guests left, the silence in our apartment felt cathedral-like. He reached for my hand; I reached for calm. And from somewhere deep inside, I heard Babul Mora—the sound of a palanquin departing, the hush of a love still holy though unblessed.

Wajid Ali Shah knew exile intimately. He lost his Lucknow but found eternity in his Thumri. His lament became legacy.

That, too, is the queer inheritance: to turn marginalization into music. Our empire was not marble but memory. We ruled over dinner tables, friendships, students, and strangers whose lives we touched. Yet on every form, every lease, every hospital chart, the question persisted: Relationship to patient?

Homophobia seldom shouts—it smiles.
It edits. It erases.
It removes names from invitations and replaces them with ellipses.
It calls you admirable but avoids your address.
It is bureaucracy dressed as benevolence.

And still, we cooked.
We created.
We survived by seasoning our silences with spice.

After twenty years, our love reached its natural hush.
Not a rupture, but a resting.
Even endurance needs exhale.
We parted gently, the way good songs fade—not because the melody ends, but because silence deserves a turn.

When I came back to India, I returned to monsoon and memory.
The city smelled of rain and reckoning.
My father was no longer there to meet me, but my mother’s eyes were—bright, brave, brimming.
My brother stood beside her, stoic and soft at once.
Relatives arrived bearing laddoos and love; neighbors brought nostalgia.
I was not the returning prodigal but the reclaimed son.

And yet, even amid affection, there lingered a faint unease—the world’s old habit of wondering.
Acceptance is a process; even love must learn its language.

That is why Babul Mora Naihar Chhooto Hi Jaye feels like autobiography.
It is not merely about leaving; it is about the limits of being loved.
About how even the most generous arms cannot always erase inherited apprehension.

When Begum Akhtar sings it, her voice doesn’t cry—it confides.
Her Bhairavi bends like silk in rain—half ache, half assurance.
She transforms loss into lullaby.
That’s what living as queer in this world requires: the art of aching elegantly, of holding heartbreak with hospitality.

Every queer couple I know carries that cadence.
They convert scrutiny into song, loneliness into luminosity.
They make of survival a style, of resilience a ritual.

We may have no ceremonies, but we have constancy.
No sanctioned vows, but sacred vigilance.
No temple bells, but the daily rhythm of reaching for one another through the static of stigma.

Babul Mora Naihar Chhooto Hi Jaye is not a dirge; it is documentation.
A melody that memorializes what the world forgets.

It asks: what is family, really?
For me, it is a constellation.

It is my Nani in San Francisco, holding the torch of truth.
It is my mother, whose love never flinched even as her understanding evolved.
It is my sister, sentinel and song, standing steady through decades of distance.
It is her husband’s humor, my nephew’s light, my lover’s care—another father in our circle of four.
It is my brother’s quiet strength, my aunts’ teasing, my uncles’ unspoken pride.
It is every neighbor who knocked on our door with sweets instead of suspicion.
They are my char kahaar and more—the many bearers who lifted my life when I forgot how to walk light.

Still, even carried by so much care, the weight remained: the whispering world asking, Is it real? Is it right?

Perhaps exile was never punishment; perhaps it was pilgrimage.
Perhaps every departure is devotion in disguise.

Wajid Ali Shah’s Lucknow dissolved, but his Thumri outlived empires.
Our love, though unwritten in law, lives on in the language of those who witnessed it.

Whenever I light a diya now, its flame flickers with faces:
two men cooking in a Manhattan kitchen;
his grandmothers laughing in mirrored living rooms;
my sister setting an extra plate at her New York table;
my brother rescuing me from melancholy with mischief;
my mother humming Bhairavi at dusk;
my father’s silence lingering like benediction.

Our love was never less—only less acknowledged.

So when I hum Babul Mora today, I no longer hear farewell—I hear faith.
A hymn for all who have loved beyond the boundary of expectation, who have built belonging from the bricks of doubt, who have turned exile into evidence of endurance.

It is for the fathers who never met but whose sons learned love anyway.
For the Nani who named truth as heritage.
For the mother whose acceptance was both armor and anchor.
For the sister whose strength steadied continents.
For the brother who never needed explanation.
For the grandmothers who blessed what the world refused to believe.
For the families who, in their evolving ways, learned that love is its own legitimacy.
For the lover who became father, friend, and faith all at once.

Babul mora naihar chhooto hi jaye…
Char kahaar mil mori doliya uthaye…

The palanquin moves.
The clouds swell, the city stills, the song stays.

And love—exiled, exquisite, enduring—walks on.
Unregistered. Unrepentant. Unforgettable.