Living A Double Life: My Queerness And Gender Identity At The Workplace

Picture this, a flamboyant, loud queer in flamingo shirts and wonky bright eyeliner. I defined my gender as ‘a mystery that wasn’t my business to figure out‘. I was loud about my identity, brash in my tone and quick to irritability. My days consisted of daydreaming in back benches at University, and going to queer potlucks. My world was brimming with possibility, I was standing on the precipice of change, waiting to dive in. Just me and Avantika, my walking aid, and the world before us.

Then, I went back to my hometown. Everything crashed around me. I was slapped on the face with an offer letter from my old University. The same one where the uniform was gray, drab salwar suits, where I was hidden deep into the closet, all the while secretly pining over women in my room. Now I was invited to go back, as a teacher in suits again, non-gray ones this time around, with gendered pronouns greeting me after every breath and constant reminders of the existence of heterosexuality. I was pushed right back into the closet, deep deep into it.

Hiding my gender identity

I felt like I had fallen down from the clouds I was residing in, zapped back into reality. And in this reality, I liked money and wanted it, so I wore the exact same shoes back from my uni days, put on an ugly, mismatched outfit, and walked into my double life.

I limped into classrooms, sans Avantika this time. I was so sure that I would be rejected as a potential candidate if they saw my beautiful walking aid, that I left it at home when I went for interview that day. I hadn’t debuted my disability, so what right did I have to bring it with me post selection? Who cares if the full teaching days made my knees weak, made my legs go numb and left my hands feeling like they were made of stone? I couldn’t randomly become disabled overnight. How ridiculous that would be!

I had entered the University with wild fantasies for change, employee solidarity and freedom of expression as if I was in a movie and this was the part of my life wherein everything clicked into place. I amused myself with these thoughts. Within the first week of my time there, I pitched an idea for a Gender Sensitisation Workshop. It was then that I was exposed to a world of heteronormativity that I had never encountered in real life before. 

‘If the government thought queer marriage was right, they would have made it legal,’ one of the teachers said firmly. ‘What will the kids call their queer parents? How will they address them?‘ said the other. 

These were the more humorous and absurd of the statements from the lot. The rest made my ears get hot with rage.

The funniest part of all this? I had pitched that workshop so Queer people would not have to be exposed to a rhetoric like this.

Living a double life

Meanwhile, in the evenings, I was working constantly on organising a Pride Parade in another city. I was now an active part of multiple queer organisations and helping them organise events proved to be a constant source of the joy in my life. I was writing articles about my queerness and disability. In short, I was working hard to promote the gay agenda everywhere.

And in the mornings, I would get into drag, wear my hyper feminine kurtis and leave for work. I would smile a lot, and be the most agreeable person. 

To any unassuming person, I looked like any cis-hetero person. But then, I would teach about gender roles with rolled eyes, and disgusted face. I would let it slip every once in a while, that, ‘hey, gender is a spectrum.‘

I tried so hard to be a normal, straight and cisgendered person. But then, my colleagues would talk about their marriages and kids, as if it is the most casual thing, as if our lot isn’t fighting tooth and nail every day to get that. They would caution me, the only unmarried person in the room, to get ready and brace myself.

I could be a normal, straight person but then, the bright eyeliners called my name everyday and begged me to go bigger and more creative. So did my outfits, so did my accessories. 

Being ‘Ajeeb‘ at the workplace 

One thing was certain. Anyone could see that I was ‘ajeeb’. Whether it was because I told my students to ‘Chill karo‘ when they were super stressed out, or because I used ‘they‘ pronouns constantly, or because I connected most issues to capitalism while giving my lectures or because I was the only one who tried to make their outfit more masculine every day.

Once again, I was ajeeb. I had spent all my life being the ‘ajeeb‘ one in groups. For one fleeting year, the year my queerness  and gender identity grew and exploded out of the closet, I was not the only ‘ajeeb‘ one. And now I was back to the same place from where I had started.

I never realised just how ‘ajeeb‘ I was until I came back and had to censor every thought and every thing I said. How long do I try to be myself when I am just looked at weirdly for all of it? So, after a while, I gave up. I poured myself into work. Never brought up my personal life, who/what I liked/disliked, my opinions, my politics, my humour, my gender. I tucked it all away safely inside me, just letting it out in lectures occasionally, but never during casual conversation.

I came in wanting to create a huge change. Transform the system. But I settled on doing it behind closed doors, in the privacy of my room, on my laptop, through my words. I settled for being loud online. I created new worlds, new friends and new opportunities for myself all on my own, all to hold onto some semblance of sanity and peace.

All of this was done while trying my best maintain anonymity. Because what if my real world caught up to this space? What if my room was exposed, for all to see? What if I was ridiculed and shunned? What if, what if, what if?

It is so strange when you have to separate your accomplishments. When you have to make two different types of resumes, ensuring that they never overlapped. When you can’t share something that you have achieved, at your house, or at your work. You can only whisper it into a void online.

So, I hid. I hid and hid parts of myself at both places. I bit my tongue everywhere. I lie and lied until the truth itself seemed like a blur.

How much do you endure, before you are tired?

Reclaiming myself: being proud of my gender identity and queerness,

One day, after a horrible day of excruciating pain, I was done. The next day I arrived with my walking stick. I knew the questions were about to come, I was scared of them, but the pain was not worth the social discomfort. So, I answered them, every single one of them. I did it very vaguely because I had no interest in sharing my medical history with everyone, but I did it- I debuted my disability. 

I only grew bolder after this incident. I brought my stick on my off days, on days of flare ups, not caring about the explanations people demanded of me. I was not putting on a constant display of illness and that confused some folx, but I couldn’t care less. They could Google what invisible illnesses meant.

I stopped fighting and arguing with my colleagues whenever they made some inane and factually incorrect statement about gender. I didn’t have to. My mere existence was proof enough against their cis-normative views. A part of me would chuckle thinking, ‘The thing they’re afraid of the most- a trans, gender fluid person- is sitting right amidst them, helping them out with their lectures.‘ They had been infiltrated whether they liked it or not.

Ever since the beginning of that semester, I had been forced to grow out my hair. My mom sternly saying, ‘You’re a professional now. Take it seriously.‘ This loosely translated to ‘you’re a professional now, you MUST perform femininity.’ Scared of harassment, I grew out my hair. I forced myself to like them. I really tried. I wore kids’ clips that were in the shape of fruits. I wore bow-shaped rubber bands. I tried to make it fun. But then, the weather started heating up. And I threw all the caution out the window.

One fine evening, after college, I walked straight into a salon and chopped the long curls off. The next day, I went to work, with a boycut, just me and Avantika, and the stares of a hundred or so people

This time, I just laughed, and walked into my office. No anger, no hesitation, no awkwardness. Just the radical, rebellious joy of asserting myself and my gender identity. I was Ajeeb after all.