I Wanted to be the Man Of The House

By Priya Dali May 20, 2018June 6, 2020 In Art, Culture, Pride 0 Childhood Dreams, Comic Strip 0

I was always intrigued by this fascination to know details about a person’s moment of realisation about their sexuality. ‘When did you know you are gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans,’ has become a question that is asked of nearly every LGBTQ person who comes out. Over the last one year, I have been asked by many friends and acquaintances about my sexuality, repeatedly. The first few times, I brushed it off saying I’ve always known and felt that something about me different but I was getting tired of answering the same question again and again. I remember having a conversation with a close friend who, out of curiosity, was trying to question her own experiences and her sexuality. She helped me realise that I didn’t have a clear answer, at least one that I was confident about as my truth.

That made me wake up and take notice of the void created by that question. Some people remember their big AHA moment while some don’t. Some describe it as a feeling that has been with them since forever. I decided to revisit my childhood experiences, believing that this was not a sudden realisation but rather a very gradual process of understanding my own preferences, likes and dislikes, over the years. During this process of sorting through blurry, old memories and trying to over-analyse them, I found the answer in a game that most of us played when we were kids, “Ghar Ghar”.

So much fun it was to walk around in dad’s oversized shoes, turn mom’s dupatta into a saree and save a teddy with your miniature doctor kit! It always made me feel like a grown-up who had a beautiful family and a house and knew a lot of things in life! I don’t know about you guys, but I would always end up playing the boy’s part because I had short hair. And unlike most girls, I didn’t mind playing the husband or the man.

I was glued to this one observation I made about myself. I wondered if maybe it was this act of pretending to be a grown up and building a family with a partner is something that comes naturally to all kids, queer or straight. The idea of being the man/husband while playing that innocent game of house wasn’t as off-putting for me as it was for most other girls and it definitely wasn’t because I felt like a boy but probably because I didn’t mind being the girl’s partner in the story.

This fictional comic is an attempt to offer a different narrative of a story we all loved to enact as kids.

Priya Dali

Priya is a work-in-progress illustrator, a part-time joker and full-time bhukkad. Her work mainly revolves around the topics of sex and sexuality, with the intention of demystifying and helping both, the younger and the older generations, unlearn certain assumptions and prejudices about the same. She often uses humour, memories and pop-culture as tools to connect and communicate with her audience.