I met with my dean on the last week of what was supposed to be my last term in college. I wasn’t going to pass my classes to graduate on time. That much was certain. He had asked me to go home and carefully decide which one of two options I would take to move forward with my time at Dartmouth. I could extend my term by a few weeks and use that time to catch up on missing work and then receive my diploma. Or I could withdraw from school and return when I felt ready to retake my final term. This was all after I had pled for months and finally convinced my parents to book a hotel for Commencement, letting them know that it was a big moment in my life. I assumed that no matter which way I chose, I would disappoint them.
I chose to withdraw. I did not graduate. The hotel room my parents had booked went to waste.
My decision might have seemed like a waste of a year, but ultimately it was about comparing who I was during my senior spring to who I wanted to be after graduation. I was going to graduate with a degree in economics modified with computer science and a double minor in Chinese and theater, close to my dream of being the liberal arts poster boy. I even had a job lined up at a financial consulting firm in Boston. It seemed like I had everything together. But my decision to withdraw was shaped by factors that weren’t so obvious on my resume. I had only just begun to face that I had been dealing with depression and anxiety for the last three years.
Four months earlier, I had come out to my fraternity and friends on campus but still wasn’t sure who I was. I applied for a mentor through Outreach Peer Mentors, but I never heard back, and I felt lonely. To add to all of this, the police brutality toward Punjabi citizens in India after their protests of Balwant Singh Rajoana’s execution, and the white supremacist-driven attack on a Gurdwara, a Sikh temple, in Oak Creek, Wisc. suddenly left me feeling burdened by a racial identity I had actively resisted for years. I was living two separate lives at home and at school, and I didn’t feel ready to leave Dartmouth and abruptly merge my polarized existences.
When I first called my mother to tell her that I was not graduating, I anticipated hearing a lecture in return. She knew that I was seeing a counselor regarding stress, and I had confided in her that I had been depressed for a long time, but that conversation seemed like history. All she could say was that she trusted me to make the healthiest decision for myself and that I had the support of my parents. The lack of resistance in that conversation was more difficult than the hypothetical rage I had expected. If they had reacted with anger, I may have given up attempting open communication with my parents. But their ambiguous reaction meant I would have to explain myself. It meant the conversation wasn’t over.
I went home to New York during finals week to attend my sister’s baby shower. That night, my parents sat me down on our living room couch and asked why I was depressed. I froze and told them I wasn’t ready to talk about it. They offered suggestions: “Is someone at school bothering you? Are you having problems with a girl?” They had observed my active social life and could not imagine that my smiles masked tears.
We reached a truce — I told them that I would talk to one of my sisters, Priti, so she could act as a buffer between us. My sister lived halfway between my parents’ home and Dartmouth, so it was an easy stop to make.
I felt the type of stage fright I might feel before a performance. I had practiced what I wanted to say, but at the end of the day, how she would react was not in my hands.
When I reached her house, I told her that I had come out on campus as bisexual, and I didn’t know how our parents would react. Had I graduated as planned in four weeks and gone on to work in Boston, this conversation would have never been necessary. I could have postponed this conversation until a time when I decided I wanted to get married. But leaning into my fears allowed me to keep an openness between myself and my family that I learned to value. I wanted so badly to pass this hurdle in my life. My sister was the first person to call me out on homophobic language I had used in middle school, so I trusted her to be open-minded.
She told me that my family was not prepared for this conversation. The possibility that they might have a bisexual son had never crossed their minds. In the Sikh community, sexuality is rarely discussed. There is a lack of prominent queer Punjabi Sikh icons, so many parents can find it difficult to accept a spectrum of sexualities that seem to be at odds with the norm. This especially upsets me since Sikhism was founded as a community to defend the oppressed.
My family is fairly prominent in the New York Sikh community — they attend religious congregations weekly and everyone knows my father for supporting many of the Gurdwara’s initiatives. He is also known for running in the New York City marathon for the past 22 years wearing a shirt that says “Proud to be a Sikh.” But nowhere in our social circle were there any out, queer Sikhs. Every time gay rights were mentioned at the dinner table, my parents quickly asked that we talk about more appropriate topics.
Priti agreed to talk to my parents but warned me that it wouldn’t be easy. She reassured me that any resistance that might come from them wasn’t from a place of hate, but a fear of their son being discriminated against.
A few days later, while I was back on campus for senior week, I received a call from my sister. The conversation with my parents had not gone well. My father’s response was anger; my mother’s, tears. They blamed themselves for raising me poorly and pondered conversion therapy.
I put that conversation aside and chose to spend my senior week with my friends on campus, who would soon march at Commencement without me. Four days later I received a call from my mother and let it go to voicemail. I received another call later that day and picked it up after a deep breath. We talked about pretty much everything — except my conversation with my sister. My friends were fine. I was eating healthy. I was getting enough sleep. Finally, my mother told me, “You have nothing to worry about. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Your father and I will always love you.” I don’t know what happened in those four days, but it felt like a miracle. I suddenly felt lighter and had a smile glued to my face for the rest of the week.
I returned home, and life was back to normal. I found an internship with a bank. I started seeing a therapist on a regular basis, but it felt unnecessary at that point. My vision of my dramatic return was completely subverted. I worked weekdays, went to dinners with my family, partied with my friends and even went on a few dates. It took me a while to realize that aside from that initial phone call and letting them know that I was going to the Pride parade, I hadn’t really had a real conversation with my parents. It had just seemed like everyone forgot.
I’m not sure what inspired the conversation, but my mother sat my brother and me down for a “feminism talk” in December. She told us to respect women and not to conform to societal gender roles. I was impressed but a little worried. The next day I told my mother that I agreed with what she had said but wished she had used the word “partner,” not “wife,” when discussing marriage.
It was the first time I had hinted to my mother that I may not end up with a woman.
She then asked if there was still a chance. I realized the conversation was far from over.
In December, the Indian Supreme Court overturned a ruling that declared Section 377 of the Penal Code unconstitutional, a law introduced during British rule that criminalized homosexual acts. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, I decided to come out on Facebook. Although it seems like a miniscule step, I no longer wanted to hide from a global movement. I then attributed my parents’ difficulty in having this conversation to the ongoing effects of colonialism. My social media accounts were filled with campaigns asserting that “Homophobia is a Legacy of Imperialism.” Many believe that the idea of sexuality as a binary in colonized countries is a result of Western influence. Understanding the oppressive history that contributed to my parents’ heteronormativity shifted the attitude I had toward my parents’ skepticism and made it easier to respond to.
My time away from campus was a productive 10 months compared to what I had expected and feared, which was the thought that I would be wasting a year of my life. At Dartmouth, I had been caught up with the parts of my identity that troubled me and felt oppressed me — being a queer person of color, for example. After extensive reading about identity formation in New York, I remembered that I was still an Ivy League-educated, upper middle class male. Although it will take my parents more time to fully embrace who I truly am, I will never forget that I was blessed with the privilege of even having the opportunity to start a dialogue with them in the first place. There are others much less fortunate than I to whom I can offer support. In addition to taking steps toward a healthy sense of identity during my time off, I was home for both of my sisters’ baby showers and welcomed a baby nephew and niece into my life. I saw a close cousin get married, and I didn’t miss a single elaborate Indian wedding ceremony. I explored my career options and rekindled my love for theater enough to decide to pursue a career in producing. I am a much stronger person than I would have been if I had I graduated and gone on as planned to Boston last year without combing through all the problems I was grappling with first.
