I have a family of alcoholics. Everyone drinks more than they can handle. In the middle of 2009, while visiting New Zealand, Nana is hospitalised after suffering from two heart attacks. The cause is consuming nothing but alcohol for far too long. Ma and Pa leave for New Zealand immediately. They are told that Nana is very likely to pass away. With my Pa and Ma gone, the village priests have free rein to do whatever they want to rid me of my attraction to men.
There are two temples in our village. They have both been safe places for me until it became clear that I no longer fit the mould of a typical boy.
The temples are on a hilltop. They are surrounded by beautiful gardens. Aji sends me to one of the temples to get flowers for our house. If I am unlucky, the elders will see me and order me inside so they can pray for me. They make me kneel while one of them reads from a Sanskrit text. They light an arti, a plate of fire, and wave it in circular patterns around my face as the chanting gets louder. The arti is symbolic of great Hindu fire rituals. The heat of the arti can melt my face.
After days of trying to pray, the priests know the prayers are not working. They need a change of tack. They order me to go to the second temple so they can pray my attraction out of me in a different manner.
The windows are up high so no one can see inside. The walls are made of cement. I have been sitting in the temple for over an hour and nothing has started. I am starting to feel like they have run out of prayers to say. Good for me. They may be done with me now.
The priests come in with a thick chabuk — a whip made of rope fastened to a wooden handle.
Surely they will not whip me with a chabuk. That would be inhumane. In South Indian culture whipping is a part of praying. People volunteer to be whipped in order to bring them closer to God. But whipping at the temples only ever happens to the adults across their hands.
The priests order me to bow down and pray to idols. It is futile to scream for help. No one is coming to save me. If they hear me, they will assume that I have done something wrong.
The floor of the temple is made of rough tiles, almost like grit. The tiles gouge my knees. Just to kneel on them is painful. Kneeling on them for about half an hour at a time is excruciating. They tell me they know it is painful kneeling on that floor for so long but the evil inside me deserves it. Debilitating pain is the only way to punish the evil spirits that have possessed me.
I am kneeling with my hands up and palms together. The priest pulls back the chabuk and whips me across my hands. He hits me so hard that my body slams on the ground. I faceplant on the tiles. The other priests tell me to get up. I struggle back up. The second whip sends me back to the ground. Fire shoots up my arms. This pain is nothing like anything I have ever felt before. Another whip and my hands will be cut and fall off. The chabuk has dug a red pattern around my hands. My arms scream for help. The pain blows my head up in terrifying blackness.
Then a whip on my back brings me back. I do not have the strength to get back up, so the priests lash my back with the chabuk. The pain is so intense, so consuming, I do not know where I am. My eyes fog up as the chabuk cuts through my skin. Agony surges through my back. I am in debilitating pain. I scream. I beg for them to stop. The whipping continues till they are tired. They will kill me if that’s what it takes.
They do it again. And again. And again.
A mildly abbreviated version taken with kind permission from the new memoir One of Them by Shaneel Lal (Allen & Unwin, $36.99), available in bookstores nationwide
