Went out for dinner last night with Travel Agent, who's an old friend of mine hailing from that outlandish part of town called Colaba. Travel Agent and I used to date, ages back when I first came to Bombay, but then , after I started seeing my first ex, we sort of settled into comfortable 'friend' mode. And now, we have a very funny relationship - we make plans to meet, but invariably meet after a gap of a month or so, have dinner at a fancy place, pledge to meet up soon, but only do so a month later.
Last night, we went to Under the Over.
And on the way back, we met up with a friend of his, whom I see regularly on the gay.com chatroom. It's actually quite scary that I'm such a frequent visitor there that I recognize people by their chat ids, but let's not go down that road for now... Breach Candy Regular, BCR, is getting married next month, and should be on his honeymoon by the first week of January. Strange, considering that he's all of 22 years, and the entire time last night in Travel Agent's car was spent reminescencing about the 'jolly gay times' the two of them had shared.
As we left BCR, Travel Agent explained to me how strongly familial pressure works in Gujarati families like his. It's expected that you get married, and fast, and no excuse is just ever good enough - not the "I want to settle first", or "I want to earn more money first", and definitely not "I'm gay, you see, folks". So the BCRs of Bombay, even from the time they hit the gay scene, are all very clear in their heads: I'm gay, but I'm going to get married soon, so everyone else better be clear with that. I found it even stranger that BCR and Travel Agent had once been so close that BCR had asked for a relationship.
"A relationship? When he knew he's going to get married, and he's not even going to put up a token resistance?" I asked Travel Agent, who laughed, as he coursed the car along the road.
"You don't know how it works there," he replied, "They have it down all pat."
I suppose I'm the only one who hasn't.
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