The importance of being honest

(An extract from Siddharth Dube's upcoming memoir No One Else: A Personal History of Outlawed Love and Sex to be published by HarperCollins India. 

This is the first part of the web package on Himal Southasian's quarterly on love, sexuality and marriage in Southasia.)

Eventually, in the summer of 1984, after graduating from Tufts, a few months short of my 23rd birthday, I resolved to tell my father that I was gay. I reached this decision on my own, without discussing the wisdom of this course with my brothers. I did not speak to my newfound gay friends about it either, as I knew that none of them – whether Indian or American – had told their parents. I had very personal reasons pushing me to tell my father, and they overcame my knowledge that he abhorred homosexuality.

Over my years abroad, my father and I had become ever closer. I was moved that he encouraged me to follow my passion on matters relating to social justice, whether this  meant working in  slums and villages or entering the poorly paid profession of journalism (which I had decided to pursue, getting a fellowship for an MA at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism). Indeed, with my growing maturity, I had come to realise that he also genuinely cared about poverty and injustice, despite being a businessman and relishing the finer things in life. I had also come to admire his ability to uncomplainingly cope with whatever difficulties he faced, whether it was his mounting business problems or the inexorable unraveling of his marriage. I marveled that he unfailingly remained cheerful as well as generous to others, regardless of the stress he was enduring.