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Journalism of Courage
Counsellors advising gays in the city speak on the challenges of their job
For counsellors advising gay men in the city, there is never one formula that works. Ask 28-year-old Sumit Basu who came from Nagpur, worked in a call centre and is now a counsellor with the Naaz Foundation in Delhi. 8220;It becomes a challenging task as there are no tailor-made solutions and ignorance about the issue often makes it difficult to convince people that there8217;s nothing wrong with being gay,8221; Basu.
8220;There can be no moral absolutes in these cases. I couldn8217;t possibly ask him to break up with his wife. That would be inhuman as the wife would be on the streets. Again the man would never experience the happiness of conjugality within his marriage. So I advised him to find a single partner for himself who would give him some stability instead of frequenting cruising places,8221; says Basu. He admits it might sound outrageous to some but he says, in such complex situations, there are no answers in black and white.
8220;People still have many prejudices about homosexuality. Sometimes when a guy comes out to his family, they react with hostility,8221; explains Basu. That is why he generally advises men in their 20s who wish to come out to their family, to go about it gradually. Basu remembers how once when a 19-year-old college student from a well-to-do family told his brother about his sexuality only to be accused of bringing 8216;shame8217; on the family. 8220;The boy was weeping inconsolably when he called up the helpline and was feeling terribly guilty,8221; says Basu who had to organise several counselling sessions to purge this sense of guilt. 8220;You have to be assured that there is nothing wrong with you to be able to fight a prejudiced world,8221; he says.
Even for people with committed partners, there are difficulties in working out the relationship primarily because of the lack of social and legal sanction and the absence of well-defined roles in a gay relationship. 8220;A lot of gay couples want to move in together but are unable to do so as they stay in the same city with their families. It8217;s difficult to move out of your home in such situations.8221;
Rahul Singh, who has been a counsellor for the past eight years, has seen a remarkable change in perception towards this issue in recent years. 8220;This is evident from the fact that in the past three to four years we have been getting increasing number of parents coming to us for counselling.8221;
He remembers how once the parents of a 19-year-old Delhi University student came to him. 8220;They did not know what being gay meant. We had prolonged counselling sessions with these parents and this year they actually participated with their son in the Delhi Gay Pride Parade,8221; says Singh.
