When I look back to my earliest memories of what I would call “love”, I realize they never followed the script people expected. Some of them involved girls. But the one that shaped me the most began with a boy. A boy who wasn’t my boyfriend but was merely my best friend, yet now, the abbreviation of “bf” fits both in this context. I had recently moved to a new city, Bengaluru. The city my family moved to when my father’s new job promised a “better life.” We had culture shocks everywhere, from having trouble hiring maids who only spoke Kannada to traffic unlike anything I had ever seen.

Back then, I didn’t know what gay meant. I only knew that I’d left behind my old friends, my school, and the world I knew. I was not lonely in a new city that was tuned into a rhythm I wasn’t. I was historically known for my charm and my great ability to mingle with people, turning them into my fans — or at least, that’s what was told to me by my parents to make me feel better about this change.

I was the kind of boy who would be the commentator in a cricket match. While others would focus on playing, I would focus on trying to be the funniest over there. One day, this one boy – he looked chubby, really cute- approached me and asked, “Are you new here? I’ve never seen you before.” I nodded with a faint smile on my face. Those were the days when we broke friendships with “katti” and “batti” to say we’re friends again. Unlike today, with fake friendships, back then, it was not just cool but customary to become friends by just saying, “Let’s be friends”.

That’s how it all started.

We lived in the same apartment — a five-story beige building with two elevators, echoing staircases, and a basement that required a trek up the ramp with your cycle to leave. The smell from every house told a story — sambar that smelled like sunshine caught in spice: warm, tangy, and alive with memories of home. The onion-tomato tadka — a sizzling mix of cumin, garlic, and curry leaves jumping in hot oil. Agarbatti or dhoop burned every evening, mingling with the oddly comforting scent of detergent and sun-dried clothes that carried an unmistakable “clean” smell. Fried things — pakoras, fish fry, aloo bonda — filled the air with the aroma of golden oil and comfort. It rested in the heart of South Bengaluru like an old soul wrapped in green, where every lane hummed with the quiet rhythm of temple bells and coconut fronds — a neighborhood both timeless and tender, part tradition, part gentle modern sprawl. The air smelled faintly of filter coffee and rain-soaked earth, and in the golden hour, you’d see old couples on evening walks, children racing cycles past jasmine-laced gates, and autos humming along roads lined with stories older than the city’s tech dreams.

We went to the same school, though in different sections. We’d spend our evenings together every day like it was some sort of ritual. We played for hours after class, argued about video games, and laughed about stupid jokes that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. But somewhere between those hours of laughter, something softer – a quiet intimacy that had no name – slowly faded the lines between a friendship and a relationship.

Our routines became sacred. Every evening after homework, he’d run to my house, and we’d play “video games” in my room. At least, that’s what we told our parents. It wasn’t even a lie—we did play. Just a different kind of game. It wasn’t Minecraft or GTA V like we’d promised to spend 30 minutes on every day, but something else—something closer, more intimate.

We’d close the door, telling our parents that we might make a lot of noise and disturb the others in the house. But behind that door, we did a lot more than just make noise. We cuddled, tickled, and locked eyes every few minutes, as if trying to say something we didn’t yet have words for. Touching each other felt like innocent self-exploration for our age, yet it carried a deeper meaning—perhaps the earliest fragments of our sexuality.

We had always been taught that a relationship could only exist between a boy and a girl, destined for marriage. We never thought it was possible to defy that. Every movie, every TV serial—none of them reflected what I was experiencing.

Those thirty-minute “gaming sessions” became the highlight of our day. We didn’t understand why being so close felt so right. Also, we were quite young and never really questioned this subject that much; we did what felt right. Even if it meant hiding.

At that time, we didn’t have Wi-Fi. My dad had a Jio 4G dongle that he plugged into his laptop. I’d borrow it “to practice for school computer science practicals.” Back then, I didn’t know what it meant to be queer. I just knew that if love made me happy, why did everyone else seem so afraid of it?

My dad had returned from the USA that month, and as much as my mother liked giving us privacy and knocking, my father was the exact opposite. With no regard, he would just open the door on us. That evening, silence followed after he saw us when he barged in. He was always a believer that you would only need privacy if you were doing something “bad” or “inappropriate,” and behind closed doors, only bad things could happen, and this singular event solidified his belief in this even more.

That evening, after kicking that boy out of my house, he then sat me down and rambled on about how what we were doing was “unnatural,” a result of “too much time indoors,” and that something like this wouldn’t happen back in my village. He claimed this happened because people wanted an outlet to express their feelings and because our society has made boys and girls talking a taboo. That’s why boys end up doing this nonsense.

For the next two weeks, I wasn’t allowed to see this boy. My father even removed the lock from my door. But even that didn’t stop us. We’d sit lying on the door, palms pressed against the door just to do this again without detection. Every time we would do this, our parents would forcefully make us unlock the door. There was an inherent embarrassment we both faced tied to this event.

That door became our teacher. It taught me that in India, love like mine could exist, but behind closed doors - never to be seen.

Eventually, things changed. We were still friends, but not like before. Extremely supervised and stared at, I had become the behavioral norm I expected to see from my parents.

A few months later, my family moved again – not out of Bengaluru, but to a different apartment complex across the city. It was far, to the point it felt like another world. This was nothing like my old apartment. The air here didn’t smell of sambar or filter coffee; it reeked of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber. The road in front of the apartment was unwalkable with no footpaths and high-speed vehicles zooming through. With a train line being in front of the apartment, the trains honked past our windows every few minutes, shaking the walls like a restless heartbeat that never lets you rest. On the other side was the HAL old airport, where you could hear fighter jets cutting through the wind with triple-digit decibel sounds. The highway roared like an endless sea of engines, and on the other, the metro sliced through the sky. There was metal and motion everywhere, but no peace.

Dust settled on everything – on balconies, on bedsheets, on lungs, and on my memories. The air was heavy, not just with memories, but with particles you could almost chew. I remember coughing till my chest burned. The air purifier showed triple-digit AQIs and lung infections, bronchitis, and borderline asthma if it was part of my address. Even now, years later, I still feel it hanging heavy in every memory of what home used to mean.

This was also the time we got a 300 Mbps unlimited internet broadband connection and my own laptop. Yet, I still didn’t think of my memories as much. At that age, I didn’t even know the word “gay”. I only knew that it was a bad thing that my classmates threw like a slur, and my conscience claimed I must stay miles away from being recognised as that term.

Years passed.

I changed schools, met new people, and built new routines. The boy behind the door became a quiet memory I didn’t talk about — not because I’d forgotten him, but because I didn’t know how to explain him. At that time, I had some girl crushes too, and I think that was the reason why I was able to justify that I didn't like guys. When I was 10, my therapist suggested that I had a profound, unprocessed connection with him that I didn’t have words for and suggested that I explore this further, but I never did. Not at least until I stopped going for therapy.

My dad thought I was “adjusting well.” What he didn’t know was that I was learning to hide a piece of myself that had nowhere to go. One thing that I find common in India, across all classes and backgrounds, is queerphobia. Whether it be subtle or direct, no matter how rich or poor you are, people still face this.

Years later, when we were passing by the area of my old apartment, I asked my parents to meet him. We parked the car in that same place under that same tree, with the cold weather and hot sun. We talked about life, we walked through the streets, and ate ice cream. But he wasn’t the same. Within minutes, I realized how much had changed. The softness was gone. He spoke differently now – more performative, like someone trying to prove something. The whole narrative in whatever he spoke went like “men should be strong”, “boys today are too emotional”, “the world’s gone soft.” Mocking people in his school who have traditionally androgenous names like Ashlin and Alex.

He laughed it off, but it wasn’t funny. I could hear the echo of every YouTube video, every manosphere influencer, every toxic voice that had told him what being a “real man” was supposed to mean.

And as he talked, I realized — he wasn’t just avoiding me. He was avoiding himself.

That day, as I listened, I thought about all the ways we’re taught to reject our softness. How school only spoke of love in one direction — boys and girls, never the messy reality that someone might feel both. How every movie and classroom, and textbook erased people like us.

We learned early that certain feelings were invisible. That affection between boys was “cute” only until it wasn’t. That silence was safety.

If, back then, someone had simply said, “What you’re feeling is normal,” everything might have been different. If a teacher had said it. If a movie had shown it. If society had mirrored it back to us in any way.

But instead, we learned shame by osmosis — from every snicker, every moral lecture, every parent’s nervous glance.

Because society never reflected what I felt, I thought I was broken.

I spent my pre-teen years trying to straighten myself out — literally. I laughed at the wrong jokes, lowered my voice, tried to crush my softness before someone else did. I performed masculinity like a role I hadn’t auditioned for. Sometimes I exaggerated crushes on girls in class just to fit in. The confusing part was that some of those feelings were real too — just not the whole story.

But as I entered my teen years, I found people like me online. I read queer stories, watched creators talk about the same confusion I’d carried for years. For the first time, I felt seen.

It wasn’t therapy that healed me — it was representation. It was hearing someone else say the words I was never allowed to say.

And I realized something: love isn’t wrong. Silence is.

When I think of that boy now, I don’t feel regret. I feel empathy — for both of us. He became a victim of the same system I escaped. We were two sides of the same story: one who kept feeling, and one who learned not to.

If schools had taught us that love has more than one shape, if the media had shown boys like us holding hands without turning it into a punchline, maybe we would’ve had a chance to grow without guilt.

But maybe that’s why I’m writing this now — not to romanticize it, but to reclaim it. To say: yes, it happened. Yes, it was real. And no, it wasn’t wrong.

Because many queer people have a story like this — the first time they realized love might not follow just one path.

Love doesn’t always survive. But it leaves fingerprints on your soul — faint, invisible, impossible to erase.

And sometimes, all it takes is a half-hour behind a closed door to know you were never wrong for feeling it.

Today, so many of us go digging through old journals, photos, and chat logs — searching for proof that we were always this way. We replay memories, analyze glances, and reread messages to find that one moment that can confirm what we already know.

But queerness doesn’t always leave physical evidence. Sometimes, it survives only in what we couldn’t say, in the pauses, in the way we flinched when someone said “that’s gay” like it was an insult.

And if you don’t have any proof — no diary entries, no confessions, no secret love letters — that’s okay. Because absence is also a story. It tells us how deeply we learned to hide, to edit, to forget. The erasure itself is proof — proof of a world that taught us to disappear, and proof of the courage it takes now to be visible again.