1991 - 2020 Shahmen as Radha by Ash Mountford
1991 - 2020
To those who once knew the love that now seems to be lost. Keep your eyes open, and, wider, your heart. Lokesh
Sydney, December 2020
Abu Dhabi, UAE
ZOIA
I lived in the thought of them. And, I lived for myself, too. 15.09.20
CLUSTERMINDFUCK
He rang. I panicked. This is not the only thing I am waking up in the morning for.
06.10.18
THE EXPERIENCE PROJECT my dear
reserved is a place for you, in me, in my soul, in my heart. forever.
circa 2013
Imbantua
Ballina
DEAR DAD
(edited/redacted)
This letter comes from a broken heart. Last night when mother and you asked me why I am always closed off and irritated at home and happy outside of the house, I knew I had to address this. I have always known this. I have always lived a double life. A happier life outside the house and a closed and guarded life inside and I have my reasons for that. All my life I have tried to stand up for what I think is right. I have tried to stand up for myself when the people who should have did not. I have fought against the patronizing cultural norms that dictate how I am supposed to act, react and behave just because that is what the society expects of me. Because that is how my parents acted, reacted and behaved when they were growing up and still do in front of their parents.
I still remember the day I told you about the sexual abuse I had endured at the hands of your family members. That day has gone down as the most disappointing day in my life because all you said to me was, “We should keep this between us”. I remember being so disappointed and angry that I called mother into the room and I told her what I had just told you. Yet, here we are, not a single piece of word, help, assistance from either of my parents. For all the damaging experiences I have been through. Not a single word to this day. For all the happy memories we have shared as a family, I cannot help but be reminded of my childhood as a traumatizing childhood defined by the following damaging experiences: - Sexual abuse; - Bullied by kids almost every day at school; - Physically beaten almost every week by Tony. I may have told you this a thousand times, but I cried to bed most nights; praying to God every day after school that Tony should not come home. I used to beat my face with mother’s shoes and slippers hoping that life would have mercy on me and Tony would not hit me that day. I used to beat my back with belts hoping that Tony would not raise his hand on me that day.
Praying to God to cut take my limbs or my life away as maybe then Tony would have mercy on me. I also remember asking mother after passing final exams that I am old enough now and I hope Tony would not hit me. How can you expect a child who has these memories to not be closed and guarded? We have talked a lot about forgetting the past. Mother and you have always taught me to let go of things and that I would only be able to succeed if I started fresh as a blank slate. I have prayed to every God there exists every single day of my life to help me forget the traumatizing experiences, to help me overcome my past, to erase my memory of these negative experiences, but to no avail. I struggle every day with this. I really wish that instead of focusing on my marks and labelling me, “nautanki” and “stubborn”, mother and you had focused more on the question why. Why is our son acting, reacting, behaving the way he is? I really wish that someone would have asked me what is going on and I could say all of this and get psychological help that I needed to deal with the trauma of sexual abuse.
I really wish that my mother and you would stop talking about my negatives and for once focus or praise on my positives and stop making me feel as if I am insignificant, as if I am incomplete. Just not enough. It feels like every decision of mine is me going against nature and that I am fighting my fate. I agree that you have my best intentions at heart and you want to see me be a successful person who is not scrounging for work and money and has a financially stable life. But this does not mean that I couldn’t follow my dreams and passions. This does not mean that everything that I have always wanted to be is wrong, that my dreams are wrong, that my passions have no future, that I am constantly wrong. I am going to keep this short. I cannot be true to myself and live a true life if I am not 100% honest with my parents. I cannot be open with my family unless I tell you this and I have to tell you this now. How you choose to take it is your decision – much like your decision to react the way you reacted when I was pouring my eyes out asking for help telling you about the sexual abuse. Over the last 10 years I have realised that I do not see a future with any girl. This may be because I am attracted to men as well. I cannot give you a false hope that I will one day I will marry a girl,
You may decide to call this a phase, a disease; that I am going against nature. Whatever you wish to call it. You may wish to consult your astrologers and engage in whatever form of rituals you may wish to “get me back on track”. But the only thing I will tell you is that I believe this is how nature made me. I believe that this is how God made me. The God that you pray to. The same God that I pray to. I will not be forced in to marriage. I will not be blackmailed into marriage. This may come as a shock but this decision to come out to you was not made lightly. I have thought about this for years. Every time I have thought about it, I have thought about dying and not putting my parents through this misery. I have, up until now, kept my parents before me, I have thought about what they may have to go through when they get to know about this. There is nothing worse for me than to break your hearts. But as it is, I’d rather be 100% honest and I’d rather have my parents know everything about me than live a false life. Not a single day has gone by when I haven’t thought about dying. Because that would be easy. Because that would be easier to put my parents through than telling them the truth about myself. The only thing that has kept me from doing this is
the thought of leaving my parents and my brother to pick up the pieces after I am gone. Until yesterday the only thing keeping me from doing anything like this was the love for the three of you. Unfortunately, after our last night’s conversation, that is no longer the case. Now the only thing keeping me from doing anything like this is me. I love myself. I care about myself. I do not blame anyone for the life that I have lived. Maybe it was what God had planned for me. How could God be so cruel is beyond me, but I do believe that mother and you did the best you could and did the best with what you knew. I cannot thank Maa, Karunesh and you enough and I will forever be grateful for raising me to be what a lot of people consider to be a “Sanskari child”. I would not be here without the blood, sweat and tears that you and mother have shed over me. I would not be here if you hadn’t worked three jobs to make sure Karunesh and I went to the best schools. What I am angry and upset about is what I had to go through. What life made me go through. You may wish to disown me, cut all ties, not call me your son, but I will always love you all. I am still the
same Lokesh. The only thing that has changed is that you now know all about me now. I hope you have the heart to accept me for who I am. I will do the best I can with what life has given me, with how God has made me, but I will not live a lie. Not anymore. Lokesh
24.05.18
Iytwelepenty
DAD
I want my son back.
Late 2018
Shahmen and Taj by Ash Mountford
ON LIVING MULTIPLE LIVES
On living multiple lives. On being selfish. On the concept of oneness. “Keep your family and your grandparents, their hard work in bringing us to this stage, their values, and what they always wanted to be known for in mind. Don’t put them in any kind of situation that may bring shame as we have suffered a lot in reaching to the level we are at now. Stop making us feel totally dejected, out of place.” – Dad, late 2018. It is hard to suddenly stop and face up to things you used to push aside because you were ‘busy’ with work and all the other excuses you conjured in the wake of your true self. I came out to dad and he didn’t get it. He thinks it is just a phase and that if I act on it I’ll be straying
away from what my elders expected of me. What he dreamt of seeing me be. To say that I find it interesting to see the huge intergenerational culture difference in perception of familial and social responsibilities and the concept of oneness would be to trivialise the emotional torment that it carries. I soon realised that I not only have to navigate the acceptance of my sexuality but also navigate the treacherous path of standing up to the years of familial and social expectations that had no place for one’s view of oneself. The same concept of oneness that is feared by my Dad to be devoid of co-existing with the cultural responsibilities I owed to my family, but above all one I owed to my foremothers and forefathers. While my mind was in overdrive trying to come up with acceptable ways of reconciling the two worlds, I hadn’t realised that I was overlooking something that was subconsciously stifling any progress I was to make in my endeavours. I hadn’t made peace with the lies that I was living. I was living multiple lives. One, which was open and ‘out’ to close friends and family. Second, which locked itself shut in the company of those it should never be closed to – my parents. The third, which in the face of it all seemed perfect but came with
its own baggage of low self-worth and depression caged in iron bars of helplessness. In retrospect, this oversight might not have been inadvertent rather an outright ignorance, feeding into the mistaken belief that I could make it work. That I could live multiple lives and make it work. There comes a point when you cannot live a lie any longer. There came a point when I couldn’t live a lie any longer. And, so it was decided. Sadly though, I had come to this point many times prior. It used to come knocking down hard during the times of intense internalised emotional conflicts. It came again and again. But this time it was different. This time I wanted to welcome it with open arms. This time, I knew I was ready to open the door, not only to let it in, but to release what had been locked deep inside of me for years. Caged then, now it was free. It wasn’t an easy decision. Being raised with strong cultural bonds that places an unreasonably high value on extended familial and social perceptions, this decision had bigger implications of which I was reminded of every single day. This also meant that I had to come out to my extended family in graded measures. Something that my queer peers know very well. Yet I have to remind myself that coming out also means
bringing people in. Some people I’d love to bring in, some I wouldn’t, and some I couldn’t - like my Granddad who is in his late 70s. It kills me because out of all the people I know, I want my Granddad to know about this side of me. I want him to know it, and, in some ways I need him to know it. But, I can’t. When all your life your parents have been your teachers, teaching you ways of life, culture and religion, it is hard when suddenly you are forced, against your will, to take on that role. In trying to not make my parents feel totally dejected, out of place, I was the one who was left feeling totally dejected, out of place. Trying to find ways of teaching your parents about your true self and to convince them that it is okay to be different, is not easy. But life wasn’t meant to be easy, and I am still here trying to make the best of it. No matter how much I don’t want to, I have to credit life. I credit it for lighting fire under my ass to reclaim myself.
I’ve got this.
19.12.18
Uluru
TO BUILD A HOME
When we want to fall in love. When every single bone in our body wants to feel the embrace of a muscle tone different to the one it grew wrapped inside. One can hope, but can’t force someone else to feel the same way. We can’t force someone to fall in love, at our pace, in the moment of our choice, and in the way we imagined. We search for a place where we feel loved. Maybe in an unknown yet familiar embrace. Maybe under the sun-lit sky with our eyes tracing the seams of the moon. Maybe on a rainy day under the lilac eve tracing the edges of the overabundant Wisteria, overflowing down the roof of a place we’ve made our home; much like the love we dream of, overflowing off the brim of a bottomless heart.
A flashback. Now we don’t long for it anymore. It feels familiar. We remember how we once loved ourselves. The beautiful world we conjured in our tiny brain. Growing up. On the roof, baking in the sun. Our oil-soaked head covered with a blanket so it didn’t overheat. Mother beside us shelling peanuts. We were loved. We are loved.
25.09.18
Priyanka and Taj by Ash Mountford
THE EXPERIENCE PROJECT if and only if
of his grip, firm but gentle; of his smile, calm and comforting; of his voice, crisp but soothing; of his eyes, sharp but mesmerising.
circa 2013
Priyanka by Ash Mountford
YOU CAN’T HURRY LOVE
Driving in, there was something in the air that struck me like it did when I drove in to Imbantua for the very first time. The dryness in the air set against the ochre and sage hued ranges reminded me of my days in Central Australia. It felt a lot like love.
21.05.18
Watarrka
ONE YEAR IN IMBANTUA
Sometimes I think if life would ever give me a second chance. If life would ever be as kind as Mr. X. They say you miss the things you don’t have in your life anymore, things that you didn’t value enough when you had them. Verity lies in realisation. It hides in the kindest of gestures that are often overlooked. It elopes in its entirety while we question our worth. We succumb to the demons of our own imagination. I succumbed. It has been one year in Alice Springs. With blinding sun on the horizon, a parched soul, and no prospect of even being remotely close to finding someone, I trotted along. 04.04.2017
Ngunnawal Country
REVOLVING DOOR
Why is it that no one prepares you for this? You meet people, you connect, you share some stories, they test the waters. Before you know it, you have weaved a new braid branching out from your ever-growing thread of connections. Reaching out in a new direction as if it has a mind of its own; diverting from the path that you had set yourself on after the last braid came undone. I am having difficulty in grasping this concept of ever evolving relationships, where you make connections and then suddenly you lose them to newfound emotional fixtures. You wish them luck and re-embark on your never-ending quest of finding connections that would last that much longer than any of your previous ones.
23.03.2018
Imbantua
I won’t tell you I miss you because I don’t want to reduce it to words.
Wilyakali
A RADICAL THOUGHT
Its 11:35 at night and I can’t seem to fall asleep. So, naturally, I get a glass of red and fire up my laptop to write about something that I had just afforded a passing glance few minutes ago on my phone. The article was titled, ‘The strange fate of a person falling into a black hole.’ There was something about the title that resonated with me. It felt so hauntingly familiar that it compelled me to succumb to self-reflection. Something that I had been dodging for quite a while. ‘If you fell into a black hole, you might expect to die instantly. But in fact your fate would be far stranger than that.’ It was written by Amanda Gefter, not that I knew anything about her. There was something in that introduction that gripped me. It spoke to my current state of mind. Intrigued by the similarities I could draw with my own experiences, I read on.
“It could happen to anyone. Maybe you’re out trying to find a new habitable planet for the human race, or maybe you’re just on a long walk and you slip. Whatever the circumstances, at some point we all find ourselves confronted with the age-old question: what happens when you fall into a black hole?” The emotional contingencies. Our silences speaking louder than our words. Our words curling up in fear with every breath we take; fear of losing control. Heart, skipping a beat with every conversational pause; the fear of exposing our vulnerabilities. Our thought process in perfect oscillation - left and right; and left and right; and left and right. Chemical incongruity setting our insides on fire. The metastatic, all-consuming black hole. Recent turn of events had preoccupied my mind more than they should have. This wasn’t the first time I had fallen into a black hole. Emotional black hole created by lack of connection that every human craves so deeply; third person validations. Everyone gets consumed by that black hole at some point in their lives. Some more often than others. Some do so while trying to find acceptance. The others just walk right into it.
“You might expect to get crushed, or maybe torn to pieces. But the reality is stranger than that. The instant you entered the black hole, reality would split in two. In one, you would be instantly incinerated, and in the other you would plunge on into the black hole utterly unharmed.” I can say with some certainty that the emotional turmoil that ensues after your heart breaks is bound to incinerate you instantly. You hope to pull yourself back together. From the ashes, like a phoenix. You hope to recover soon. Knowing yourself, you know that its not going to be easy. But the world is not going to stop just so you can take all the time you need to get your shit together. And then you think. Think about those people who seemingly have their shit together. Who, no matter how many times they get knocked down, seem to get right back up. And then you wonder why is that some people seem to come out of it unharmed, as if the Gods of separation have bestowed their mercy on them. These chosen ones don’t have to worry about anything and it’s not fair. Well, not until the next black hole appears and they can do nothing but get sucked right in.
Suddenly I realised that you are nothing but a sour excuse of a human being. You were better than this. You are better than this. You see, the movies we see, the stories we are told, all make us think that we will get right back up. Back to our normal lives as if nothing happened. But it doesn’t happen that way. Life doesn’t happen that way. We wear hearts on our sleeves, we bump into someone, and we fall head over heels. Then the light shines on our idiosyncrasies, we get exposed, everything is laid right out on the table, and then we loose. We turn the light off. And we bask in our sorrows. “How normal could it really be, you might wonder, given that you’re being sucked toward a rupture in the space-time continuum, pulled along against your will, unable to head back the other way? But when you think about it, we all know that feeling, not from our experience with space but with time. Time only goes forwards, never backwards, and it pulls us along against our will, preventing us from turning around.” The good thing about time is that it is what we make of it. It’s a healer when we want it to be. It’s a teacher when we make the most out of it. It’s a
photographic negative when we remember of it that way. It’s a treasure keeper when we lock good memories in it. Most of all, its where everything lies. Be in it. And as Amanda put it: “That’s the thing about black holes. They’re not just annoying obstacles for space travellers. They’re also theoretical laboratories that take the subtlest quirks in the laws of physics, then amplify them to such proportions that they can’t be ignored.” You cannot just close your eyes and hope that the blackhole goes away. It won’t. And the best thing you can do is to embrace it with open arms. You never know who might be waiting for you on the other side of all of this mess.
23.03.2018
George
Waterhole, Iytwelepenty
HIM
After reading this he asked me, “so, now that you’ve had a chance to think about it, what is love?”, to which I replied, ‘I have no idea. I have no fucking idea’.
03.01.2016
On my way to Wilyakali