Saptarshi sounds chuffed even as he begins speaking to me. Why wouldn’t he be? A wedding at Santorini, an island off the mainland of Greece, which has been haunted by Bollywood recently, sounds like the picture perfect nuptial.
Why not get married at home in Bengaluru though?
Well, because it isn’t legal.
When they met it was, though, for a while. Saptarshi met Adil on the November 24, 2013 at the Queer Pride Parade in the city. “He’d come with a friend of mine and we exchanged numbers”, he says.
Love soon blossomed and they started dating. “Everybody is looking for love and there’s no fairytale story here,” Saptarshi adds.
Barely three weeks after they’d met had the Supreme Court re-criminalised same-sex marriages on December 11, thereby overruling the Delhi HC order in July 2009 that de-criminalised the same. It was a blow to many who decided to ‘come out’ and then had to almost retract.
This had not deterred the investment banker though. “Once Adil had met my parents and they got to know each other well, it (the idea of marriage) was already in my head”.
What was in Saptarshi’s head was uploaded on Youtube in April last year. It’s a video of the two getting engaged at the Palm Meadows in Bengaluru where Saptarshi proposes to Adil after a flash mob done by his friends. It ends with Adil blushing and accepting, and the two hugging over it.
“He wasn’t aware of it at all,” says Saptarshi of Adil, “while the planning had been on since mid-February,” he chuckles. “Everyone there started clapping and cheering us,” says Saptarshi who admits that maybe the staff at Palm weren’t aware of what was going on, but were still happy for them.
In our country however, it is not just two people getting together, but also the oft-repeated concept of the ‘marriage of two families’ and even how relatives try and put a spanner in the works.
“My parents were supportive and my mom was very happy, she even brought out sweets when we’d come home,” laughs Saptarshi. Adil’s parents though, aware that their son ‘isn’t straight’, according to Saptarshi, may take time accepting their relationship and the couple understandably plans on revealing it slowly to them.
What gets Saptarshi cross though, is the behaviour of his relatives. “There are some who spoke ill of us and some do till date,” he says. “They won’t talk to us anymore,” he adds. He also mentions his uncle, who, apprehensive about their relationship, met them. “I came here with a different thought but now I see that my sister (Saptarshi’s mother) is blessed”, he said as recounted by Saptarshi.
“If you accept yourself, people eventually do”, says the 27-year-old who will admit that putting up a video of their engagement online is a bold step. “It came out so well, that I had to put it up,” he laughs while adding that “I really wanted to tell the world that it can happen to anyone”.
It could happen to anyone. Yes. But not in our country, at least not legally, which is why they planned on the wedding in Greece. “Apparently we could get married in Nepal,” says Saptarshi.
Oh! And the complications surrounding an Indian marriage don’t end there as the two are from different religions. Saptarshi is a Hindu while Adil, a Muslim. To negate the entire issue, they’re getting married the Christian way in a church.
They are planning on returning to India after the ceremony though. The legality surrounding it all doesn’t seem to faze them.
“Unless you catch us doing it or put a camera in our bedroom,” he says, putting it straight to me.
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