An LGBT Story : An Epiphany
I’ve always believed that travelling, and when possible, living and working in a foreign country, broadens our perspectives and challenges our views on important issues. What follows is a personal story about how my understanding of lesbian relationships was transformed by a real-life encounter.
Even while living and working across various parts of India, I was aware that some people have different preferences when it comes to their sexual partners. Intellectually, I accepted that same-gender attraction was both real and valid. However, about ten years ago, my perception of same-sex relationships, particularly those involving gay men, was heavily influenced by stereotypical portrayals in Bollywood films, where they were often shown as overly effeminate. Some of my impressions also came from mythological figures such as Shikhandi in the Mahabharata. Lesbian characters were scarcely represented. The only significant portrayal I recall was in Fire, the Shabana Azmi film, where lesbianism was depicted not as a natural orientation but as a desperate alternative for women let down by heterosexual marriage.
Now, to the story. This happened a few years ago during my early days in the UK. I was on a train from London Victoria, heading somewhere in southwest London. Sitting beside me was a beautiful woman who appeared to be South Asian, although she had a fair complexion. South Asians living abroad often develop a knack for recognising one another, and I guessed she was either North Indian or Pakistani.
She wore a lovely nose ring and had dark eyes and long black hair. Her colourful top had handmade beadwork around the neckline, a style often worn by Indian women or by Western travellers returning from India. I estimated that she was in her late twenties or early thirties.
She smiled at me, and I smiled back. I noticed she was reading a travel guide about Turkey, so I casually asked, “A good book on Turkey?” She replied that she and her partner were planning a holiday there. In the UK, the word partner is commonly used instead of husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend. It’s intentionally neutral with regard to both marital status and gender.
We began chatting. I shared stories of family holidays, and we discussed our work. She held a Master’s degree in counselling and worked with a well-known charity, or NGO as we would say in India. As I had guessed, her parents were from Delhi. She had spent part of her childhood in Delhi and continued to visit India regularly. She loved Indian festivals like Diwali and Holi, enjoyed Indian food, and appreciated traditional clothing. Although not particularly religious, she said she visited temples on special occasions.
During the conversation, I mentioned that I had a daughter at the time. She responded that she also had a baby. We then moved on to what our partners did for a living. I was a little surprised when she said, “My partner is a beautician and does beauty treatments.” In the UK, this is perfectly ordinary. I had seen women driving taxis, men working as nurses, women serving as firefighters, and even female prison officers working in male facilities. So her statement didn’t strike me as particularly unusual.
Still, I wanted to clarify. I asked casually, “So what’s his speciality? Haircuts? Facials? General treatments?”
She looked a little surprised. “Oh, you got me wrong,” she said. “It’s not a he, it’s a she.”
Noticing the flicker of surprise on my face, she asked with a smile, “Are you shocked? Did I share too much?” Then she giggled. “It’s a bit unusual to share all this with someone on a train.” She added that her partner was from Karnataka.
I hesitated slightly, then asked, “You said you have a baby?”
She giggled again and said, “Yes, it’s not so difficult these days.”
I knew that many lesbian couples have children using donor sperm and IVF. Still, I chose not to ask further questions. Even though the train was fairly quiet, not packed like a Mumbai local, it didn’t seem like the right setting to go deeper into personal details.
Soon, the train arrived at my stop. We exchanged smiles and goodbyes. That short journey stayed with me. It became a kind of turning point. While I had accepted the idea of same-gender relationships at an intellectual level back in India, this encounter dismantled a number of assumptions I hadn’t realised I still held. I was still in the early stages of adjusting to life in the UK, and I was in the process of unlearning and relearning many things.
Some of the myths that were quietly broken for me:
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Lesbians are exotic women who wear tattoos, do drugs, and dress or behave like men.
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Lesbians are usually white Western women. Indian women are rarely lesbians, except perhaps in extreme or unusual circumstances, as portrayed in Fire.
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Lesbians do not want children, because they are somehow not ‘normal’.
That conversation stayed in my memory for years. Just a few days ago, I saw the same woman again on another train. This time, the carriage was crowded, with many people standing between us. We made eye contact and smiled. She seemed to giggle slightly, perhaps remembering our earlier exchange. The train moved slowly, filling up even more at each stop. When the crowd finally thinned, I looked again in her direction, but she had already left. I never saw which station she had got off at.
