The Queer Take: When a community's lives are bigger than the law, celebrating legal 'victories' can feel like settling for 'enough'

The Queer Take is a fortnightly column by poet-writer Joshua Muyiwa. Read more from the series here .

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The month of September has passed us by. And as a queer African-Indian femme-presenting man, I know that it has been two years since the reading down of Section 377. (Hey! Honestly, I had no idea, but information has a way of finding you these days.) But I’ll tell you, I didn’t celebrate then, and I find it even harder to celebrate in this present political climate. Then: it felt like a bone thrown down from the master’s table to distract the dogs while they continued to loot and plunder. And today, I’m convinced it is exactly so.

Of all the many things that weigh down the queer person in the world, this law was perhaps the least bothersome of them. It did possess its symbolic stature. But at the level of the daily grind, it remained precisely that: symbolic. There are heavier things that weigh down the queer person in these nation-states. However, there is a certain joy to finding oneself on this side of the fence. It is the uncanny ability to see that something else is possible with one’s life. It is this sense of knowing that one can take another route and still journey on. It has never been the easiest one, but it can be forged.

I’ll admit that the deliciousness of this knowledge needs daily affirmation, but it does form the heart of my decisions. I mean, it takes such strength for my sisters, brothers, acquaintances, enemies, friends and lovers from the community to find a way to be true to themselves. (Or at least as true as they can be.) I know it does because I’m tired most mornings from the tremendous effort it takes to do so. It isn’t just fueling this engine, which is exhausting, it is also making peace with the things not afforded to me any longer.

Also read – The Queer Take: The awful hollowness of being asked ‘How’s life post-Section 377?’

And our engagements with the Law have betrayed the fact that we – each one of us in the LGBTQ+ community – have actually had more engaging exchanges with Life. What do I mean? I mean, we’re willing to expect and accept less from the Law than Life. While in Life, we’re willing to leave our birth families to make our own warm fuzzy feeling somewhere else, boldly walk down streets holding fear like a burning ball in the core of our bellies, swish in and out of categories like they’re changing rooms, find ways to make each other sing the body electric , fashion flesh to our bidding and so on. But from the Law, we’re convinced that we must be happy with our lot, which is little. We don’t ask for the moon and the stars but seek the scraps granted to us. We nibble, we never bite.

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In 1973, Black soul singer Gladys Knight walks onto a stage in a pair of black stilettos and a sharp black suit – I’ll give you a moment to catch your breath – leading her backup singers The Pips, three Black men in cream suits, to the heralding of trumpets and a booming brass band. She’s come to lay down the truth .

On the perfect music cue, the trumpets dip for a moment, and like a kid knowingly jumps onto a passing bus as they do every day, Gladys steps up on the next uptick with her voice. She belts out, “I’ve really got to use / My imagination / To think of good reasons / To keep on keepin’ on (Keep on keepin’ on) / Got to make the best of (Best of, best of) / A bad situation (Bad situation)”.

I remember first listening to this song as a teenager – long after I’d stopped going to church – and feeling like this is what I’d been missing at all of the Sunday masses. Or whenever my grandparents said “Today was a good service” to tease me back into the Good Lord’s Fold. But, I knew it wasn’t entirely true.

On watching the live performance video of this song 47 years later again (while writing this column) I’m struck by other subtle shifts. I mean: Gladys Knight has three male back-up singers, she isn’t the backup singer. (Star!) Gladys Knight wears a suit. (Stunning!) Gladys Knight is in control. (Super!)

But ever since first listening to ‘I’ve Got To Use My Imagination’, it was the words that arrested me. The message (if songs should even bear the burden of having one) – imagination helps one make the best of a bad situation – illuminated plenty of the paths I’ve taken so far. In these years of being alive, the reaching out for something not promised to me has been the lifebuoy that has helped me keep on, keepin’ on.

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We have rich imaginations. Look at the lives of the queer people around you – blessed be the ones that were cut short. Look again. Really look. Do you see the ways their very existence is a testament to their thinking? Do you see the ways that they gobble life till it no longer has juice left? Do you see the ways that they have gamed your systems?

Towards the end of March, I found myself muttering like a mantra under my breath: in the end, there will be queers and cockroaches. (I’m not stupid, I know that the fact is our community is heavily affected by the pandemic. But let’s not forget the socio-economic factors and the lack of political will that were already gunning for us.) But despite so many hurdles, we’re still here. And if the Law must arbitrate on Life, then it must be bigger than it, or roomy enough to make space for it. Though, in looking at the lives of queer people around me, and even my own, I know it is something else that makes us stomp out paths in the thicket. We weren’t ever satisfied with enough. I’m convinced more than ever that the fuel in our engines is imagination. It is the thing that keeps us, keepin’ on.

Joshua Muyiwa is a Bengaluru-based poet and writer