Review: So now you know byVivek Tejuja
A memoir that highlights how a gay child survived despite being a target of hate and phobia at home and outside
How would a herd of goats bring up a sheep? It would sound different, walk differently, wouldn’t have the same kind of fur or horns. No matter how much the goats try to make the sheep a great goat, it will only ever be the best sheep it can be. The goats here represent Indian society and the sheep is their beautiful gay baby, whom they consider an abnormality.
Vivek Tujeja’s book shows how unequipped our society is to deal with inborn variations in the nature of our children. He tells the story of a boy who, at age eight, learns a secret that even the eldest member of his extended family would not know how to deal with. The secret was hidden in his heart but simultaneously exposed by his caprices. To people, the differences seem like flaws, something to be constantly discouraged. As a result, the child forms a hateful idea of himself and distrusts his instincts. Now, where would a sheep be if it distrusted its instincts?
Tejuja’s book deals with love, heartbreak, success, failure, loss and gain sensitively. Each brief chapter is a story in itself and encompasses one of the author’s lived experiences. And it’s all expressed with an equanimity of tone that comes only after attaining a sense of closure from the past.
The title’s explanatory note persists throughout the book. He recounts the story of all LGBTQI+ children, and to some extent, all minority children, when he recounts the confusion, fear and sadness he felt as a kid and the happiness he experienced when he found the courage and the freedom to be himself.
So Now You Know highlights how a child, whose nature was unacceptable to society, survived despite being a target of hate and phobia at home and outside. Tejuja documents some delicate moments of self acceptance in contrast with the shocking rejection his child self faced from his family. Like the time he was reprimanded by an uncle for repeating the dialogues of Maharani, the villainous transgender pimp in Sadak (1991). The child in Tejuja, desperately looking for representations of different gender identities in pop culture, was overjoyed to see Maharani. Though she was a negative, villainous character, she was powerful and funny and that spoke to the confused eight-year-old.
Tejuja writes that others knew “what he was” before he ever realised he was any different. While school bullies were vocal in expressing their doubts or certainties about his nature, his family did the same through knowing looks and covert suggestions. Through all this, the boy carried on being confused, not knowing what, if anything, was wrong with him. If this isn’t a conspiracy, what is?
The author also writes of another familiar rite of passage moment for LGBTQI individuals: being taken to the psychiatrist when they finally figure out what makes them different and work up the courage to tell their parents. Remarkably, Tejuja deals with this in an impartial, forgiving and humorous tone.
Read more: A brave, true-life take on growing up gay: Review of Boy Erased
The book would have been “incomplete” without stories of “gay sexploits”. Tejuja manages this in a way that is both innocent and shocking. This part of the book is a must-read for Indians as we are a nation that, despite having come up with the Kama Sutra, struggles to understand sex and sexual expression.
This memoir is also the story of a boy who loved to read and grew up to make a career that revolves around books. He has ended up writing a moving one. The last chapter reads like a poem, and surprisingly, the end starts a whole new imaginative flow in the reader.
Pradhuman Sodha is an independent journalist. He lives in Hyderabad.