LUCY MUKERJEE:

All right. I just wanted to start by saying that this is very special for me, very meaningful, and it will be also for many people, who'll be listening to this once it goes live. Thank you for doing this. It's important.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Thank you.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

So I prepared some questions that sort of go in chronological order, starting with your childhood

LUCY MUKERJEE:

and then we'll move forward to present day. But if you feel like there's something we've missed or something that you'd like to talk about that I don't make it to, please feel free to bring it up. Don't let my questions constrain the direction of the conversation. And then when I've exhausted all of my questions, we'll pause and see if there's anything else you'd like to include.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Okay.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Okay. Sounds Good.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Great. Okay, good. Let's get started. So first things first, can you please say your name, where and when you were born?

ARVIND KUMAR:

My name is Arvind Kumar and I was born in Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh India.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. And thinking about the home where you grew up as a young child,

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Can you paint a picture of some of your earliest memories?

ARVIND KUMAR:

My grandfather built a grand house in our hometown called Chhapra in Bihar state. My mother was from Varanasi and she went to Varanasi to have her babies, for the delivery. But my father is from Bihar state, and so we lived in my grandfather's

ARVIND KUMAR:

house. It was a joint family. He had eight or nine kids. My father was the eldest. His job and career kept him in the hometown, in the house. His siblings got married and moved away, but there would be gatherings. The house was always full of relatives, joint family, so my earliest memories

ARVIND KUMAR:

are just growing up as -- I'm the youngest of the litter. Three older brothers. They're much older than me. I was an accident. So just growing up with other cousins running around and playing. Chhapra is a small town.

ARVIND KUMAR:

It's like the district headquarters, but it's very close to the rural areas. There was a lot of

ARVIND KUMAR:

village culture flowing in and out of the house. Things like the harvest, we had fields, several miles out of town, we had property, we grew crops, we grew wheat and we grew rice, but then it was transported to our yard in Chhapra. Then you have to beat it and get the grain off the stalks,

ARVIND KUMAR:

and then you have to squash it to separate the husk and get the grain out. All this went on in the angan in the central courtyard of the house, so it was full of workers and it was full of servants and it was full of people. I was just one gangly kid making his way around, but it felt very comfortable for me.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. That was a very vivid picture, I appreciate that. Can you describe your households in the sense of, was it conservative or more open? Were there music and movies? Was it religious? Those sorts of things.

ARVIND KUMAR:

My grandfather was very, very conservative Hindu. When I was born, he was sort of heading to retirement, but his

ARVIND KUMAR:

conduct shaped the household. He was a disciplinarian, he would not stand for misbehavior by children. If you were disobeying the rules, he was a lawyer, so he had an office in the front where he would meet his clients and his law books

ARVIND KUMAR:

and everything, the punishment for us children was to sit in the corner of his office with him for an hour, doing nothing. It was the most exquisite punishment to inflict on four and five year olds because nothing could be worse, right? To be constrained, to sit in a chair. My parents were also religious, but in different ways.

ARVIND KUMAR:

My father was very outward looking probably because he discovered Theosophy at an early age. He read a lot of Theosophical literature. Theosophy is really a movement that started in the late 19th century about the unity of all religions, including Hinduism. It was founded by an American and a

ARVIND KUMAR:

Russian, and they made their headquarters in Chennai, India, in Madras. My dad had a very broad spiritual outlook and the house was full of Theosophical books. My mother was more conservative. Her family background was more conservative. She was more Hindu identified than dad. I wouldn't say

ARVIND KUMAR:

that we were narrow minded, but we were very traditional. The whole family was your traditional, upper middle class family in a small town in Bihar.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Who do you think was your closest ally in your family when you were growing up?

ARVIND KUMAR:

I would have to say it was my brothers,

ARVIND KUMAR:

they were seven, eight and nine years older to me. They were the ones who didn't tease me. They were the ones who didn't bully me. They kind of looked after me. You know how kids are, we fight and we play and we hit each other and so on and so forth. I could always count on my brothers to be on my side. My parents were kind of

ARVIND KUMAR:

an absent absence in my life, even though my father was in the house, he had other interests outside the house. He is not so much into child rearing. My mother is another story. My mother became very active in social work in Chhapra. She founded a

ARVIND KUMAR:

women's college, which is still going on in Chhapra, today. My dad convinced her to run for the local constituency elections. She ran and narrowly lost. And then she discovered religion and she basically became a renunciate. She became a

ARVIND KUMAR:

Sadhu. In India, for men to take Sanyas is a normal thing, many men do, and they become religious monks and they leave the family and they go to the mountains and they come back and preach and so on and so forth. For women to take Sanyas, even today, a very unusual thing. That's what my mother did when

ARVIND KUMAR:

I was four years old. My memories of her are very, very limited at home. I remember her going to college because she had to work, teaching. I remember her doing Yogic practices at home learning the asanas and pranayama all of that. I grew up around all that thinking, this is normal. It was many years later

ARVIND KUMAR:

that I realized that my parents were not very good parents. They were loving, they were kind, my mother always protected me, but she was absent for the better part of my childhood. That's my history. I was fortunate that my father's younger brothers, my uncles were very

ARVIND KUMAR:

aware of the family dynamic, and so they stepped in. I was actually sent to Patna to live with my uncle for seven years. That's where I grew up, went to high school, graduated, got into college. My uncle and aunt are my second set of parents, basically.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Among your parents, your uncles and aunt, do you feel like there were any expectations of you that you either adhered to or rebelled against when you were growing up?

ARVIND KUMAR:

Oh, yes. Lots of expectations. Yeah. We're Indian, right? My father, the world that he inhabited, the most powerful

ARVIND KUMAR:

figure in the district was the District Magistrate also called the District Collector. This is a position created by the British and the District Magistrate was the supreme governor, he was also empowered to act as a legal judge. He could rule in cases. He was also called a tax collector because the

ARVIND KUMAR:

number one thing the British did in India was to collect taxes. So the head of the district was the tax collector. In independent India, all the district magistrates were chosen from a service called the Indian Administrative Service. To get into the IAS was a big deal, it's the cream of the cream of the country

ARVIND KUMAR:

everyone wants to get in, and it's very difficult. My dad's hopes for me were, since I was good in studies, he wanted me to become an IAS officer, and nothing would have pleased him more to come to my home district as District Magistrate. That was not to be because I was not interested in being an IAS officer. My skillset was more -- I was good at math,

ARVIND KUMAR:

physics, chemistry, I was reasonably good in literature, language. I might have done well in biology, but in my school, high school, you had to choose between the engineering, math track and the biology track. And I chose the engineering, math track. So biology kind of fell away from me because people who took that track wen

ARVIND KUMAR:

into medicine, and I didn't care for medicine. It was not precise enough, but math is very precise. It came easily to me. That's what I wanted to do with my life. After I graduated high school, I took the exams to get into the IITs,

ARVIND KUMAR:

these the top universities in India, and that's a joint entrance exam, and again, very competitive, very hard to get in. I got in, barely. In high school, I was the best among the best in the class. But when I went to college, I was among people much, much better, smarter than me. It was very

ARVIND KUMAR:

stimulating, very challenging also, at the same time. That's the track that I took, I studied engineering in IIT Kanpur. When I graduated, I wanted to continue and get a master's from the same Institute I had admission, but my brother prevailed on me to leave the country and to go to the US for masters. So I came to the USA, Studied

ARVIND KUMAR:

Business Administration, of all things. Got a job in California and that's what brought me here.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. Looking back on those early years before you moved to the US, do you remember there being any LGBTQ people around, either in your neighborhood or in the media that you were aware of?

ARVIND KUMAR:

What I knew

ARVIND KUMAR:

was that being gay was a stigma. You learned that in school people make fun of you, to express gay desire was not kosher, was not encouraged. But it's different from the West. There wasn't the sort of aggression and the violence and the threats that often

ARVIND KUMAR:

accompany, these gay bullying in the West. In India, it was more of teasing, in school, middle school and high school, there were kids in the class that would be teased for acting effeminately. I remember in the class senior to me, two guys sort of paired up in that

ARVIND KUMAR:

they were never seen without each other, they were best friends, so everybody teased them that they were lovers. Whether or not they were is not the point, the point is that they were assumed to be gay. They were teased for it, but they were also respected. One of them was top in academics, so it's not like they were bullied or harassed

ARVIND KUMAR:

or anything. It was just teasing. In high school. I had my first relationship when I was in ninth grade. I was a horny teenager, and we went on -- These were called away trips, a tour. About 40 kids from school went traveling all over India

ARVIND KUMAR:

in a railway compartment. We had a bogie and we lived together for like two weeks or something. We went all over the country, and I did this two years in a row. I insisted that my dad pay for it and I insisted on going. On the second of these tours, I hooked up with a fellow classmate, and

ARVIND KUMAR:

we were boyfriends for two years, 9th, 10th, and 11th grade. We were teased mercilessly because it was very obvious that we were into each other. We tried to be very cautious and careful, never to show physical affection in public, but you can't hide it when you're at that age, so it was an open secret among our classmates,

ARVIND KUMAR:

and they teased us, but I was one of the best students in class. My boyfriend was the jock in class. We could handle it. It wasn't like it would've been in the West. I can't imagine that happening here. That was my first serious gay relationship. I was also

ARVIND KUMAR:

kind of growing up and becoming an adult. I was very, very, very angry with my parents. I was living with my uncle and I had a boyfriend and I wanted to be a boarding student, meaning I wanted to ... Our school had day scholars and

ARVIND KUMAR:

boarding students. I wanted to become a boarding student and my dad wouldn't allow it because it would look bad on my uncle. When you have an uncle in town, why do you need to be a boarder? Long and short of it, emotionally, I was going through a tough time, reconciling my upbringing with how I was being treated by my parents,

ARVIND KUMAR:

by my uncle. They were not really listening to me. They were more concerned about money or 'what will people say,' blah, blah, these factors. I was never able to tell them I have a boyfriend. They knew we spent a lot of time together, but we couldn't acknowledge that publicly.

ARVIND KUMAR:

That relationship didn't last, it ended very badly because my boyfriend decided that he was straight and that I was responsible for corrupting him and he turned violent and he hit me and beat me. I was basically abused for that last year of our relationship. And I

ARVIND KUMAR:

couldn't be open with anybody about it, not with my family, not with anyone else. It was very difficult. When we were in love, our plan was we'd go to the same college. His grades weren't good enough to get into IIT and the moment I got into IIT, I really wanted to go there because my uncle taught there and my older brother had gone there. For me, it was like,

ARVIND KUMAR:

of course, I have to go. My boyfriend insisted that I apply for admission to schools in Delhi, in Bombay, everywhere but Kanpur because he couldn't get into Kanpur, and I did that. All the while, I'm being abused and beaten and so on, so forth. He got into Saint Xavier's College Bombay, and so did I. We went to check out

ARVIND KUMAR:

the college. It was very interesting. The seniors met us and they immediately sized him up as someone from an upper class background, therefore worthy of respect. They thought that I was from the hinterlands, and I was gonna get it bad in terms of being ragged. There's ragging in Indian colleges, freshmen have to undergo

ARVIND KUMAR:

this horrible custom of being abused by the seniors. The Bombay kids figured out very quickly that my boyfriend would not tolerate, would not stand for ragging, that they would have to pay if they did anything bad to him. But I had no such protection around me. Long story short,

ARVIND KUMAR:

the last time I saw him was at the Bombay train station. My family was there, we were all heading back to Patna and Chhapra to Bihar. My boyfriend comes with me to the station fully intending not to allow me to get on the train, and I'm hiding from him. I'm hiding in the

ARVIND KUMAR:

bathroom compartment, but he found me. I forget how -- I think my eldest brother was there, he stepped in very forcefully and said, this is bullshit. You're coming with us to Bihar. He was the one who made sure I stayed on the train and that my boyfriend didn't. That was

ARVIND KUMAR:

the last time I saw him. Very very traumatic, fit for a movie. That was me at 17 and a half, basically undergoing tremendous emotional trauma. I go to college, and in six months I have a boyfriend at college.

ARVIND KUMAR:

He is a very sweet, sweet guy, gentle, very sweet. We had a reasonable good couple years, but he also turned out to be straight, lost interest. I'm a bit slow to pick up cues. I'm not so socially skilled. It took me a while to figure out that

ARVIND KUMAR:

this is over. I'm still in touch with him, he was my first real happy love. Anyway, that's a long story back to your questions.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you for sharing all of that. It did feel like a movie. I'm sorry that

LUCY MUKERJEE:

you had such a difficult time. I think that Astra just wanted to jump in for a moment.

Astra Price:

Yeah. I just wanted to remind you Arvind to kind of stay not to rotate in the chair cuz as you're discussing and in the story, you're definitely rotating a little bit. If you can be mindful of that, that would be wonderful.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Okay. Let's jump back in. You talked about your first happy love and then of course you took the big step to pursue your masters abroad. Can you talk about that moment that you left a family home to follow your education in the US?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

What hopes did you have for yourself?

ARVIND KUMAR:

Well, I was excited to be going to the US because I'm a big rock and roll fan, and I was going to the home of rock and roll. I was very excited. Other people in the family had gone to the UK and to the States before me, including my brothers, so it

ARVIND KUMAR:

wasn't so unusual for the family. It didn't really hit me until I was on the ramp to get into the plane in Calcutta that I was actually not gonna be seeing my father for some time. The plane journey was horrible, landing in New York. I was actually headed for Ottawa, but landing in New York and

ARVIND KUMAR:

changing planes had to actually go from JFK to LaGuardia and I had to take a bus. It was August and it was cold. Jet lag. I spent the night at Montreal airport because I had to take a connection through Montreal to Ottawa, because Ottawa was such a small place. Finally when

ARVIND KUMAR:

I was in my brother's apartment, I felt okay, I'm home. My brother had a young adopted daughter and she was a lot of fun. They lived in a high rise. For me it was all amazing because everything worked; the electricity, the hot water, the roads, the cars, I was just amazed that a world like this existed. You read about it, but

ARVIND KUMAR:

there's nothing to compare with your first experience of being there in person. Also felt very antiseptic to me. I was accustomed to the noise in India. In India, if you step outside the house or even if you're inside, there's always chatter. There's the birds, there's

ARVIND KUMAR:

construction, there's the help, there's the neighbor. There's always sound. In Ottawa it was quiet. You go out for a walk, you go into the woods and it is quiet. So many birds in India, every town is just full of bird chatter. This was different. There's another thing that happens to

ARVIND KUMAR:

immigrants -- the first six months or so you lose your sense of taste. The food tastes bland. It's not just about that it's a different cuisine, it's just that your taste buds have not acclimatized. Nothing you can do helps it. You just have to be here long enough to get used and maybe start cooking yourself. Then maybe

ARVIND KUMAR:

it comes back. It was both very exciting, something to look forward to, but it was also -- What's the word? I guess, culture shock, although I wouldn't have thought of it in those terms at that time. It was just being in a different world. There are human beings here, but

ARVIND KUMAR:

they speak English, but not the way that I speak it or mean it. There was a lot of learning that I had to do, and I'm very grateful that I got to go to grad school because grad school is an easier introduction to the culture. If I had come straight here for work, might have been different. I enjoyed being in school and

ARVIND KUMAR:

interacting with students and professors and all of that and picking up some culture along the way.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

When you were in grad school in Ottawa, did you become aware of the LGBTQ movement? Did you have that sort of realization that there are millions of us around the globe?

ARVIND KUMAR:

Not really. So correction, Ottawa is

ARVIND KUMAR:

where my brother was. My grad school was University of New Hampshire in the United States. That's where I spent a semester. I had no clue about the gay lesbian student network on campus in 1979. I transferred to University of Rochester the following year. So '80, '81, '82, I was in University of Rochester and that's when

ARVIND KUMAR:

I was doing well in college. Personally, I was miserable. I just left all my college friends behind in India. Some of whom were in grad schools throughout the US, but not in Rochester. I had no friends and I found it very difficult to make friends.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Maybe it was my age or orientation or whatever, but I was miserable and I was lonely. I did not have any visible, gay, lesbian representations on campus. I would look through the phone book, we had phone books in those days, and I knew that Rochester had a gay lesbian center, which was near downtown. When I learned to drive, I had my sister's car, my cousin sister

ARVIND KUMAR:

lived in Rochester. I drove around the block a few times more than once. I did not have the courage to park and go inside. Basically, I graduated, I'm still in the closet, very much in the closet and miserable because what I used to think that it would pass

ARVIND KUMAR:

it's not passing. I'm homesick for my boyfriend in college. I want a boyfriend. I can't make friends, forget about making boyfriends. And the way I am oriented, I just can't have casual sex. I can't go to the bars and pick up someone

ARVIND KUMAR:

and get intimate with them. I have to know people for a while and build up some kind of relationship before the spark comes. Which is very different from the way people date here. I didn't know, but I learned later therapists have a term for people like us and they have an explanation for this. Anyway,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I got a job after graduation and I moved to Palo Alto, California. That was really the beginning of my happy life period. I couldn't have planned it that way. I would've gone wherever the job would've taken me, but I was lucky to get a job at Hewlett Packard in California. They brought me over. When I joined,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I found out six months later that several people in the group that I worked in were gay, openly gay. What did you do on the weekend? Oh, we went to this bar, we went clubbing. Then you figure out that this group is very accepting, is not judgmental, is very accepting. Then I started looking around more seriously

ARVIND KUMAR:

again, through the phone book. I found out that Stanford university -- Palo Alto is close to Stanford -- has a gay men's group that meets Wednesday nights. I couldn't bring up the courage to go there. There was a phone number. One day, I got the guts to pick up the

ARVIND KUMAR:

phone and dial. I got lucky because it was answered by this young Mexican American kid, Fernando, who was a volunteer at the gay men's group, who answered the phone. He talked to me, he was patient. He talked to me. He was not in a rush. After 10, 15 minutes talking to him, I said, "Can I call you next week?"

ARVIND KUMAR:

He said, "If I'm not here, just ask for me and they'll go and get me." So Fernando, who was an undergrad student at Stanford. Okay. He's from Texas going to Stanford, right? He Basically counsels me, I have a masters, I'm working at Hewlett Packard. He must be a

ARVIND KUMAR:

good four, six years younger to me. He held my hand over the phone and I got into the habit of calling every Wednesday night, to talk to Fernando, had this phone relationship going with this little kid. Then sense prevailed. And he never pushed me. He never said, "Oh, you must come here. You must come here." He was not impatient with me.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Eventually, sense prevailed. I said, "I'm an idiot. I have a car, Fernando doesn't even have a car. I can go there." I think it's the bravest thing I did, was pick up the phone and get connected to Fernando. That was also the luckiest moment for me. When I went to the gay men's group,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I found it's a large room. It's like a barn. It was an old firehouse. People sat around in a circle and they chatted. There was a facilitator, it was pretty loosey goosey. It was not very structured, but that was the first time I was in the company of other people who were self-identified as gay. And just being in that space,

ARVIND KUMAR:

not speaking, just being, made such a huge difference. Because until then, my gayness was all up here. You know, my agony and anguish and everything on killing myself in my head -- all I had to do was go out, meet people, and then I start feeling better. I met Fernando, he was very sweet, very good looking, but he had a boyfriend, unfortunately. But I've met other people

ARVIND KUMAR:

at the gay men's group and I became a regular, I started looking forward to it and I eventually picked up the courage to tell my brothers that I'm gay. I've waited a long time. I thought I would change, but it's not going away, and I think I'm okay with this. So that's the next chapter of my life.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. I'm curious.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

When you walked into that meeting, often we find ourselves the only queer person among south Asians, or the only south Asian person among white gay people. In that room, was it all white men or were there any other men of color?

ARVIND KUMAR:

There were people of color. There was Fernando, Mexican, American, Hispanic, there were African Americans,

ARVIND KUMAR:

not very many, but there were. It was dominated by white men, that's true. But there were non-white people in the group. I was the only Indian. So yeah, it still doesn't feel comfortable. Doesn't feel like your own space is also how you interact in that group.

ARVIND KUMAR:

So, I don't mind being the only Indian in the room, but I do mind if I'm ignored, if I'm not listened to, and in that group setting, everyone takes turns speaking and so and so forth. And you can tell which comments are interesting people more and so on and so forth. I never felt that there was much interest in my background as an Indian. I felt that

ARVIND KUMAR:

this culture in America, particularly there is no interest in things Indian. America has this love affair with Britain, England in particular and France, and the world begins and ends there. Perhaps Australia, once in a while, New Zealand, once in a while, but India is almost relegated, it's not in the forefront of

ARVIND KUMAR:

people's consciousness here. And when it is, in those days, not in a good way. I've had people meeting casually at a party, and the first thing they think to ask me is about the poverty in India. As a way of making conversation, they don't really care about the poverty in India, whatever, but it's the only thing they know. I went to the gay men's group

ARVIND KUMAR:

regularly for several years. And that was 1982, late '82, early '83. In all that time, I maybe ran into one Indian who came to the meeting and was never seen again, very closeted and very uncomfortable. After about three, four years

ARVIND KUMAR:

of that, I thought I've got to get out of my comfort zone and do something. Because I'm not meeting people that find me interesting or that I find. That's how Trikone started. I had met one person through The Advocate classified. The Advocate is a gay magazine, gay men's magazine.

ARVIND KUMAR:

It had classifieds in there. My friend Suvir had a listing in there and I contacted him. He lived in Santa Clara, not far from here. We met up. He had a very similar background to me. He had gone to IITs, he worked as a techie in the valley and so on, so forth, we were not romantically interested in each other, but he became my gay Indian friend.

ARVIND KUMAR:

In those three years, our circle of gay Indian friends didn't increase, it was just Suvir and me. I basically talked Suvir into why don't we start a group for gay, lesbian, South Asians. I pushed him into it. We put together the first newsletter and sent it out to every gay publication

ARVIND KUMAR:

in the US and Canada and every major newspaper in India, hoping to get some coverage. We also sent it to Indian American publications. We got lucky that the west coast Indian paper called India West. No,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I'm getting ahead of myself. We sent this out, right? So the journalists and the editors have got these press releases from us and this newsletter, the march in San Francisco, Pride March, happens every June, and I had been to the pride parade previous years, I knew what the deal was, how it operates and everything. In '86,

ARVIND KUMAR:

when we formed Trikone, I said, we have to march, it doesn't matter if there are two people holding a banner, we got to march. By June, early June, we had met about four or five people from the various newspapers, gay newspapers in the US that had gotten in touch with me. We had a banner making party the night before, we bought cloth,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I printed out lettering on laser printers and we glued it together and made banners. We brought poles to carry the banner. We had about six people who basically didn't sleep, working on this the whole night. The next day we drive an hour to the city and it's a grueling march. Okay. You have to be there at like eight in the morning, get in line, and you're standing on your feet the whole time.

ARVIND KUMAR:

The parade doesn't start like 11 and San Francisco can be very cold in the morning and very warm by noon. So you are braving the elements, but eventually the parade starts and you're marching down the street. For me, it was a phenomenal success because instead of just two people, me and my partner Ashok, we had six people. What was nice was that there were Indians

ARVIND KUMAR:

watching the parade on the sidelines and they saw us and they jumped the barrier and they joined us. So we were not the only ones, there were lots of us out there. They didn't have a focal point to congregate at. It was one of the best days of my life, going to the parade, that first parade and at the end of the parade, there's a big rally and there's booths. We had a booth and we sat at the booths. People came, talked to us an

ARVIND KUMAR:

all of that, I remember packing up at line 5:00 PM or so exhausted, just completely burnt out. But I was on such a high because my universe had changed from being this closeted gay man for 27 years or something like that. No. How old was I? I was 30 years old at that time. Okay. I was an old man by then to a point

ARVIND KUMAR:

where I can be marching in the street with a banner saying I'm gay and people are applauding. People are not booing or hissing or complaining. People are actually cheering for you. It's a wonderful, wonderful feeling. That's how Trikone started.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I have tears in my eyes. That was very moving. Thank you. Something I wanted to ask you

LUCY MUKERJEE:

is that over the course of our lives, of course, we have to come out to people in many different contexts. I'm wondering if you could talk about if you're comfortable talking about your initial coming out experience in the workplace and also how you told your family as well.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Coming out is something that was very, very important for me. I had lived in the closet

ARVIND KUMAR:

for so long and kept my feelings private for so long. I felt like I was killing myself, where I was dying inside from the hiding, and to be happy to look at the people I met at Stanford and see that they're perfectly normal, healthy human beings, contributing members of society.

ARVIND KUMAR:

They're not perfect, but they're human beings like anybody else, gave me such a sense of confidence and moral support that no amount of reading books could have done. For me, being truthful with my family, with people near and dear to me, was very important. I was also very aware of

ARVIND KUMAR:

dependence on my family. When I was in India, my father paid for everything, my uncle and my father paid for everything. I came to the US and for the first year or so, my brothers paid for my tuition. I had a partial tuition scholarship, but there were still expenses. My brothers paid for everything. It wasn't until I came to Palo Alto, I was truly economically

ARVIND KUMAR:

independent, not a burden to my family. For me, it was important to be independent. The second thing was I did not want to live a life of compromises. I guess I have my parents to thank for those ideals. For all their shortcomings, they were also people of

ARVIND KUMAR:

principle and they lived by those principles and they would not fold in the face of adversity. It was very important for me to also live a life of integrity that I could feel comfortable about and coming out was part of that. From day one, when we started Trikone I did not want to use a pseudonym,

ARVIND KUMAR:

and there was a risk actually at that time, you could be deported from the United States for sins of moral turpitude. If you look back at the language in the immigration laws at the time, and there were people who were actually being deported at the time for being gay. We were taking a risk,

ARVIND KUMAR:

both me and Ashok, who I'd met by then, we were taking a chance that we would be sent back to India because we were not citizens at that time. But I was not going to make that compromise. I was prepared to face it. If that's where it came down to, I would go back. So I approached coming out in this same way. And for me,

ARVIND KUMAR:

it started with my brothers. So they would visit me in California every so often. So I think this was in '83 when my third brother came for a visit, he used to travel a lot. I had him down at the airport and I said, I have something to tell you. I think I'm gay. And the only concern he had was he said, are you sure? I said, yes, I'm absolutely sure because I've waited so long thinking I would change,

ARVIND KUMAR:

but I'm not changing, and I don't see any problem with it. He was fine with it. He never asked me about, are you sure after that, he's been the most supportive brother. Brother number two in Ottawa - same story. When I came out to him, completely accepting, no problem at all. Brother number one is very traditional. He reminds me a little bit of my grandfather. He likes structure, order, patriarchal,

ARVIND KUMAR:

so he had the hardest time. He also was the one who was still in India. He lived in India. He had real hard time with it. They were all very nice to my partner, Ashok. But in terms of accepting me and telling people, my brother is gay, no, my eldest brother would not do that. It took some time

ARVIND KUMAR:

It took some time for him. My mother, I told the last. Actually, I told my dad through a letter and you know, Indian fathers have a way of precipitating things. When you come of age, they start fixing your wedding, your match for you. In India, the way it works is parents of eligible women will send pictures and a resume of their daughter to

ARVIND KUMAR:

my dad. My dad will forward it to me. Once I was in California, my dad started sending me pictures and resumes. And I was just horrified because I had absolutely no intention of entertaining any such request. But I was also a bit empathetic towards the girl and parent in question that they're holding out hope.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I did not want to give false hope at all. I put a stop to it. I told my dad, I'm not at all interested in marriage right now, so the photos stopped coming. But at a later point, I told him in a letter that I'm interested in men, I would like to meet someone and I would like to marry him someday. I think he understood at that point and he stopped bothering me about marriage. My mother, I waited till she was visiting

ARVIND KUMAR:

me face to face. I told her. She was ballistic. She was just so upset. She was "Oh, you can't be like that because your nose is not red." I said, "What do you mean my nose is not red?" "Oh, I know how to tell gay people apart. I look at them on the TV and their noses are always red." I had to disabuse her of that notion, that red nose doesn't mean someone is gay.

ARVIND KUMAR:

My mom took a long time. It was a very slow process. It took years and years, she would try to -- So this is how social dynamics work in India, if your child doesn't listen to you go ask your child's friend to convince me or dad to convince me, indirect, bring pressure to bear from all friends. My mother's way of doing that was

ARVIND KUMAR:

me and Ashok in the same room, she would talk to Ashok, "Why don't you tell Anup to get married?" Not cognizant of how disrespectful that is to Ashok and to our relationship, and Ashok is raised in India, he understood,

ARVIND KUMAR:

so he didn't blow up at that. Let's put it that way. He understood what was going on, so he just ignored my mother. She tried that for a long time, she would say things like, and my mother, who's a woman of principle and honor and truth, she's telling me why don't you try it? Get married, if you don't like it, you can get divorced. I said, and "What about the girl?" For no fault of hers, she goes through a divorce,

ARVIND KUMAR:

a marriage and a divorce, what are you saying? She was all over the place. At one point, I told her, look, mom, I've tried to give you books to read. I've tried to talk to you. I've told you TV shows to watch, whatever, but it looks like you have to do some work yourself. I'm not gonna try anymore. If you have any questions, ask me, I'm here, but I'm not gonna try anymore. Oh, she was

ARVIND KUMAR:

so hurt. She was so hurt by that because she just wanted to be in that space of being on the throne and the supplicant son trying very hard. When I said, no, I'm not gonna do that anymore. Now you have to do some work, I think that had an effect. Finally, 10 years after I met Ashok in 1996, we had a family gathering in Toronto, actually

ARVIND KUMAR:

at my brother's house. Four brothers were there, spouses were there. It happened to be my eldest brother's 20th wedding anniversary or something like that, celebrating that, and it actually turned out to be our 10th year of being together. My mother had told me in months prior, you've been with Ashok for so long, you should get married.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I said, "Will you conduct a ceremony?" She said, "Yes, I will" because she was a Sadhu, she knows how to conduct the rites. We got married in Toronto at my brother's house in front of his fireplace. We lit a little havan. We did saat phere, seven times around the fire with him leading three times, me leading four times.

ARVIND KUMAR:

We were married Hindu ceremony conducted by my mother and with my family present, immediate family. That's a happy ending to my mother's homophobia.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

What an evolution that was. Wow.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Yeah. I think it was harder on her than it was on me. I think it was. But she got there, she still was not about public displays of

ARVIND KUMAR:

affection and all of that, but in her own way, that was her way of saying, okay, I'm good with this. I give you my blessings.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Okay. I just wanted to say you're doing so great. Don't change the thing. It's been wonderful to hear everything that you've shared so far.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Thank you, Lucy. Thank you for listening. You are making me recall things that I haven't thought about in

ARVIND KUMAR:

a long, long time. If I appear emotional, it's partly because of that.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That happens every time it's quite normal. As long as you're comfortable, we're comfortable, and we can always pause if you need to. I thought that we could start back by taking some time to talk about Ashok.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I think, obviously, as the most important person in your life, we should spend a little bit of this interview getting to know him. What drew you to him and what qualities does he have that continues to brighten your life?

ARVIND KUMAR:

Well, I have to tell you the story of how we met, because it's a story in itself. So remember when we started Trikone, we were sending

ARVIND KUMAR:

newsletters and stuff out to local gay publications. I wrote a letter to the editor, letter to the editor of Advocate, talking about myself, being a gay South Asian and how there are so few of us around and so on and so forth, and why life is unique and difficult for us in our own way. They printed the letter -- and I was very smart --

ARVIND KUMAR:

at the bottom of the letter -- it was a PR thing -- I included the PO box address for Trikone. "If you wanna get in touch, join this group, please write to PO box 50356, Palo Alto, California." They printed the whole thing unedited. Of course, we got a lot of responses from ... Not many South Asians, but we got responses. The group

ARVIND KUMAR:

was getting going. One of Ashok's boyfriends who was in Los Angeles at that time saw the issue, read the letter and had to call Ashok on the phone. "Hey, Ashok, there's a letter here that you might want to read." Ashok doesn't subscribe to The Advocate. He would've never seen the letter. His boyfriend, Scott, is telling him, look, it is from this guy.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Ashok just takes down the PO box address over the phone. Then he writes, he sends a letter to me because the letter is signed by me. So he knows my name. In beautiful handwriting, he writes a letter on Indian note card, okay, with Indian patterns, just a very pretty looking thing. In the letter, he writes,

ARVIND KUMAR:

"I read about your letter in The Advocate. I live in Santa Clara and me and my brother are gonna visit my gay friend in Lancaster, California. Would you like to join us?" I don't know this guy from Adam, he could be a serial killer, right. He's asking me to join him and his brother to visit a gay friend in Lancaster. I must be crazy to say yes,

ARVIND KUMAR:

right? I said, "No, thanks. But talk to me when you get back." He gets back. He doesn't call, but he gave his numbers, so I call back. His brother answers, he says, can't come to the phone right now. Do you have a message? I said, yeah, let him know Arvind called. He knows who I am. So I'm like two marks

ARVIND KUMAR:

against him, right? Is this weirdo who wants to go with his brother to visit a gay friend? And now he won't take my phone call. Turned out he had dental surgery that day, he couldn't talk. Eventually we met. Our first date -- Our first meeting, rather, wasn't a date. First meeting was at the Stanford Coffee House where he had gone to Stanford as a student. He was familiar with the campus and we both

ARVIND KUMAR:

agreed the coffee house was informal enough to meet. We go there, meet at, I think maybe 8:00 PM, 8:30ish or something. I get there and I come around this one brown man sitting by himself at the small table for two, in the corner, looking very out of place, and that was him. I joined him and we ordered some

ARVIND KUMAR:

snacks with coffee, whatever. We sat and talked for four hours. We were the last to leave the cafe. They had to kick us out, "Sorry, we are closing." What was remarkable to me about him was that his family story and my family story is like a carbon copy. He's one of four brothers,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I'm one of four brothers. He grew up in Bihar, I grew up in Bihar. He went to IIT Bombay, I went to IIT Kanpur, and we are working in the Bay Area at the same time. We are roughly the same age. He's two years younger, roughly the same age. And we are in the same geographical space. What are the chances? Just talking about growing up,

ARVIND KUMAR:

what's more interesting about him as a person was that when he met me, he had come out to his parents and his brother, was comfortable about himself, and he was looking to meet other gay South Asians, which is the space I was in. I felt like we were equals in a way that no other human being I had met until then

ARVIND KUMAR:

could have been. We kept in touch. I was soon without a home because I was living with my cousin at the time, and my cousin had just gotten married. His wife had to wait a year before she got a visa to come to the US. That year was coming to an end, and my cousin had moved out

ARVIND KUMAR:

and got his own apartment for him and his newly wed bride to live in. I couldn't continue to stay in this place by myself, so I was basically homeless at that point. It turned out that Ashok and his brother were about to move from their place in Santa Clara, rent a bigger house, not an apartment, a house which had three bedrooms, and

ARVIND KUMAR:

they were looking to sublet one of the bedrooms because that would reduce their rent. I was that third renter, so we became housemates. At first, we were, before we got romantically involved and I got to observe him and I got to meet his brother and see them day and night in

ARVIND KUMAR:

close quarters. He had a very nice habit of reading before he went to bed. I guess my way of flirting was I would go read on the floor. I would sit on the floor in his room and I would be reading my own thing. I developed a level of comfort with him that I had not had with other people.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Then one morning he surprised me. I was not even awake, he crawled into bed with me. That's how it started.

Speaker 3:

That's very romantic.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I'm glad you think it's romantic because it felt anything but. We've been together ever since '86, so you do the math.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

At what point did you decide to make a home together? Can you describe that step in your relationship?

ARVIND KUMAR:

One of the nice things that happened to both of us was that first year we rented that house, our families came to visit. His mother and father from India came to visit and the house was enough. We had to sleep in bags on the floor, but there was room. In an apartment, there's no room. We had enough room

ARVIND KUMAR:

to host his parents for a month or so. Then my family, father, mother, brothers, everyone came to visit. They all got to see Ashok and me living in a home, and likewise his family. As Indians, we are very well behaved. If we have homophobia,

ARVIND KUMAR:

we don't let it show, so they were very sweet and nice to Ashok, and his parents were just fine with me. They're not very expressive, but in their own way, they were accepting of me, his mother, particularly, he was very close to his mother. His mother liked me from day one. She was okay with me, didn't see me as competition, anything like that, and I never

ARVIND KUMAR:

saw his mother's competition. You cannot win that competition, right? You cannot compete with your partner's mom. You are not your partner's mom. You don't want to be your partner's mom. I got along with his mom just fine. My mother was the more difficult one. This is a funny story: the first night she came,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I've given her my bedroom, I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag in the living room. She said, "I don't want you to be sleeping with Ashok tonight. Can you sleep with me in my bed?" And this is a thing we have in our family, my mother will cuddle with all the grown sons. Okay. Not unusual. Thanks to the Stanford gay group and marching in the parade and all of this that I done by that time, thanks to

ARVIND KUMAR:

all of this, and my self-awareness. I told my mother very sweetly, I said, "Mother, I will be with you in your bed for as long as you like, but when I'm ready to sleep, I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to go to the living room and I'm gonna crawl into the sleeping bag with Ashok." I made it very clear to her what the boundaries were of my duty as her son versus

ARVIND KUMAR:

my duty towards my partner. I will not allow her to come between us. I think she got that eventually, but she would try any trick. That's the story of how we lived. We lived in that rented home for, I think it was two years, almost three years.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Then we decided to buy a house together. By then, Ashok's brother had got married and his wife had come from India, so that old house was too small. Initially, only Ashok and I were going to move out and buy our own house and Mahesh would figure out his arrangements. Then

ARVIND KUMAR:

the two brothers, Mahesh and Ashok thought, why don't the four of us buy our house together? That's what we did. We moved into a house, four of us. This is a five bedroom house and it was plenty of space for two couples.

ARVIND KUMAR:

But I think our commitment was in the early days of our dating. I used to joke with Ashok, I would tell him, "Let's make the best of it because who knows how long we might be together."

ARVIND KUMAR:

Let's-have-fun-while-it-lasts kind of jokes. He listened to those jokes for some time, but at one point he said, "You know, Arvind, I don't find that funny. I don't think you should tell those jokes." That was his way of showing that he thought the relationship was more serious than I thought it was.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Then he showed his commitment in many other ways. One thing we haven't talked about is that, remember we started Trikone in 1986, and Trikone was done on laser printers, copied and pasted, markup all of that stuff, and photocopied, stapled in the corner. It was just a newsletter, But I got familiar with things like word processing and

ARVIND KUMAR:

editing and layout and so on and so forth. I cut my teeth on these technologies, putting the Trikone newsletter together. A year later, I quit my job at HP and we started a local Indian magazine called India Currents, which is still publishing. India Currents was to be a free rag about Indian cultural activities and events in the Bay Area.

ARVIND KUMAR:

It was modeled after the many freebie weekly rags that you find in many metros that are about, local events and big calendar sections, lots of advertising, et cetera, et cetera. But it's usually an alternative point of view. It's the point of view you don't get from the mainstream newspaper of that town. The occurrence was meant to be sort of this alternative

ARVIND KUMAR:

Indian monthly Publication. The first issue was like eight pages, but I learned technology at that time, desktop publishing was new. There was a program called Ventura publisher that Xerox had produced. We used Ventura publisher to put out India Currents magazine. Basically, when I quit my job

ARVIND KUMAR:

between the two of us, Ashok was the breadwinner and he supported me in the early years of India Currents. We were buying a house together. I had no income and all of that. It was his income that kept us afloat in those first few years. He demonstrated his commitment in many ways. Like his parents, he's not verbally expressive, so words like,

ARVIND KUMAR:

I love you, and all of that, they come at very fixed time intervals, predictable time intervals. I'm more emotionally needy and expressive. We are a mismatch in some ways, but we make it work.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. That was lovely to hear. I'm glad that you brought in India Currents.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I'm wondering if we could talk about Legacy and when you look back and think of the work that you've done with both magazines and the visibility that you've created for queer South Asians, you've had such an impact on so many people. It's very profound to think about that. I wonder if you could comment on how that feels.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I don't dwell on that very much. I think one time, one of my brothers, my second brother said to me, you should be really proud that many things you've spent time on have made a difference in the lives of people. He was talking about Trikone at that time, and about India Currents.

ARVIND KUMAR:

For the last 20 years, I've kind of retired from those activities and I've been volunteering for the California Native Plant Society. It's a well-established organization, but it's close to my heart because it is about the environment and about native habitats and clean air, clean water and how it's all connected.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Plants are the bottom of the food chain, if you remove the plants, all the living things at up the food chain are impacted, so these are my serious Interests. I have a full-time job. I work as a software engineer. Juggling the two

ARVIND KUMAR:

is always a challenge, but I think I'm most happy about Trikone being able to be there for people at a time when there were few outlets. And it really stems from my own personal experience of feeling so alone and alienated

ARVIND KUMAR:

and all locked up in my head for so long, for 30 years or 27 years, I lived that life. I didn't want young people growing up at that time to feel so constrained. I wanted them to be able to look at my life and say, okay, there's a guy who walks upright, who walks without limb, or who can talk and who can be

ARVIND KUMAR:

a productive citizen society, and he just happens to be gay. I wanted people to know that there is life as an out and openly gay person, and I'm a very private person. I'm not the kind who would stand up in a room full of people and command the audience. It takes a lot for me to get out

ARVIND KUMAR:

in the middle of the street, hold up a banner and march down the street. But what makes me do it? What makes it possible is the conviction and the belief that someone out there watching is gonna be helped. I think that Trikone was able to do that in the early years. One very wonderful thing that happened to us was we got coverage in the Western press.

ARVIND KUMAR:

But the Indian publications in the US, India West wrote a very nice article about us. India Abroad was the biggie on the east coast, and they wrote a piece which was not very long and not very detailed, but they did carry a picture and it was like a cut and paste news report. But what happened was one of their other reporters

ARVIND KUMAR:

is a gentleman, by the name of Arthur Pais, I'll never forget him. He was freelancing for India Abroad and many, many other publications. He decided that this story was fit for Indian publications in India, so he persuaded a gossip rag in Bombay called Society, which is full of movie stars and models and stuff like that. He convinced Society that

ARVIND KUMAR:

this is a hot story. This will create a lot of interest and they gave us a two page spread. Arthur Pais wrote up a story that came out in Society magazine. As it so happened, the cover of that issue was one of the heartthrobs of India at the time, Aditya Pancholi, in a towel, sitting down.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Very, very attractive cover, if I may say. That issue of Society was read by every gay man in India, I'm convinced, because at end of the article, there was the PO box again, and we started getting letters from India to Palo Alto, California. And these letters are not only from the metros,

ARVIND KUMAR:

the major cities. They were from Pune and they were from Patna and they were from Ranchi and the small towns and people there were reading Society magazine and Arthur's article and seeing the pictures of the parade and pictures of me and Ashok. It was quite a game changer for the group to suddenly get this visibility in India.

ARVIND KUMAR:

We couldn't have planned this. We didn't know Society would be open, Arthur made it work right. But what it did for the group was that it gave us a reason to exist, to continue to produce the newsletter which we sent all over the world, postage paid, nobody had to pay for the newsletter. There was no subscription. We sent it to as many Indian, Pakistani, Bangladesh,

ARVIND KUMAR:

addresses as we had. It was a reason to continue to publish the newsletter. It was a reason to coalesce the group in the Bay Area because it was work. The work was, I would go pick up mail from the post office box and we had sacks of it. Once a month, we met in our living room down the stairs and there were --

ARVIND KUMAR:

By then the India Current office had expanded, so we didn't have a living room anymore, it was full of tables. We met in the India Currents office and we opened mail and we processed the mail. Some of the ones were requests for the newsletter. Some of them just needed to be replied to even if it was a short handwritten note.

ARVIND KUMAR:

That mail processing took the better part of two, three hours with 5 to 10 people in the room, and we are not here to party. We are actually doing work. At the end of the party was a potluck dinner. So then we moved to the dining nook and we ate and relaxed over there. That was our life doing Trikone.

ARVIND KUMAR:

It was probably one of the happiest times of my life. I felt needed, wanted, useful. I was hanging out with people. We were there for a goal. Some kids came to party, they just wanted to hang out and sprawl on the floor and make chitchat. I was not doing that. I was upright in the chair.

ARVIND KUMAR:

We had a database system, names and addresses being entered, labels being printed, there was work involved. I met wonderful people through Trikone and some of whom you might have heard of Sandip Roy. Sandip was one of those kids in Calcutta who saw the Society article and wrote to us,

ARVIND KUMAR:

he was in college at that time. Then he came to the states for grad school. He kept in touch. Then he got a job in the Bay Area and we got to meet him. And Sandip turned out to be a godsend because he was literary. He's a great writer, but he's also very gentle,

ARVIND KUMAR:

very empathetic. And he essentially became a leader in the group without aspiring for leadership. He saw that Ashok and I were having trouble putting out the newsletter regularly. We are often late. We're supposed to do it every two months, and sometimes we'd only do it 4 times a year or 3 times a year. He agreed to take over

ARVIND KUMAR:

the Trikone newsletter. Under him, Trikone became a magazine with staples, fold out pages and so on. It was not a newsletter anymore, it was actually a respectable looking thing and the quality of writing and input and all of that suddenly paneled. So you are asking about legacy. I feel like

ARVIND KUMAR:

Sandip is my kid or something because I've watched him blossom. He's today a widely respected journalist and writer in India. He's moved back to India to be with his mother. His partner is also there in Calcutta. I have no idea whether he will return to the years or not, but it's okay. He is doing

ARVIND KUMAR:

important work where he is. He writes frequently for Indian media. He also has a radio segment on the local radio station, San Francisco. He's everywhere. And his association with Trikone, I couldn't be more proud of that. I have to tell you that he also contributed a great deal to India Currents.

ARVIND KUMAR:

At that point in time his salary was being paid by his software employer. He was able to contribute to India Currents, in general, the Indian culture community in the bay area. Sandip is one, one example, there are other people that I met through Trikone

ARVIND KUMAR:

that have gone on to bigger and better things, but being able to meet them in a gay South Asian men's group created a bond that that's really strong.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That's lovely. Thank you.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

It must feel quite remarkable that in the past decade you've seen

LUCY MUKERJEE:

two triumphs with the historical landmarks of both prop eight in California, and section 377 in India being overturned. Did you ever imagine that these victories would be possible?

ARVIND KUMAR:

I never thought I would live to see the day. I mean, it is like my wildest dreams come true. There were ups and downs. First, marriage became legal in the state or

ARVIND KUMAR:

in San Francisco, and then it was overturned and then went to the Supreme court and became legal again. And in India, the same story, the Delhi High Court, decriminalized homosexuality, and the Indian Supreme court decriminalized it again. And then after years of activism, they finally had a final ruling that legalized it again. It's really quite remarkable.

ARVIND KUMAR:

What I think is amazing about the Indian achievement is that it was not a stroke of the pen by someone in power. It was hard fought by activists in India. We in the West had nothing to do with it really, it was the people in India organizing

ARVIND KUMAR:

and people from all walks of life came together. It is really, really astonishing. There's still work to be done in India, and I think it'll happen. India has many things that it needs to work on, but this is one of the happy stories for sure. In this country, again, I'm just

ARVIND KUMAR:

amazed that today, two gay men or two lesbians can go and get married and get a certificate and have all the rights and privileges mat money stuff, they, stuff of our nightmares that, I'm in the hospital and Ashok could be denied visitation. So it's a very good feeling.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

How has American culture influenced the person that you are today, do you think?

ARVIND KUMAR:

Oh, in a big way, if I have to be objective about it. Subjectively, I feel like I haven't changed. I'm very Indian identified, et cetera, et cetera, but there's no question that I have done the things I've done, I've thought the thoughts I think

ARVIND KUMAR:

because of the American freedom movements. It starts with the sixties with the civil rights, with the immigration reform that allowed people like me to come to the country, but also the gay liberation movement in this country, starting with not just Stonewall but this long history of it. But by the time I arrived in California,

ARVIND KUMAR:

it was California, the Bay Area, particularly, was a very welcoming place. Remember, I had spent three years in Rochester, Upstate New York by that time. And while it's a wonderful state, particularly upstate, the degree of warmth and acceptance that I felt in California cannot compare. When you watch television, California, even in 1982,

ARVIND KUMAR:

you would see brown faces, you would see black faces, you would see Asian faces, you would see white faces, you would see society reflected back on television, not so in Rochester. I instantly felt at home in California. Joining Hewlett-Packard, working with the group that I was in again, Japanese Americans, white Americans, Indian Americans, people of different ethnicities,

ARVIND KUMAR:

all American. I was sort of the first generation immigrant. Mostly American born people, but working together in a way where your race, your ethnicity, your cultural background was not a barrier to participation, that really changed me as a person.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Going to Stanford, discovering the gay group there was life changing for me. Going to San Francisco and watching the first Pride Parade from the sidelines, oh, I can't tell you what an impact that had on me because there were, what? Half a million people there on both sides of the street

ARVIND KUMAR:

and they were not booing, they were cheering. They were applauding every small group that went by. It's just an incredible feeling. You cannot experience that and come out unchanged. America is a big part, I think, of who I am as a person, how I think. When I think oF equality and I think of justice is a big part of that.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I can't say that America always lives up to its ideals, but there's enough of it in the culture for someone like me to pick it up and build on it. So definitely Indian American, a hundred percent.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Well, thank you. It seems like from the outside

LUCY MUKERJEE:

that you were very intentional about creating the life that you wanted for yourself. I'm wondering if there's any advice that you would give to folks who are still looking for their path, but haven't yet found their calling.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Well, it's interesting that you say that because I've never thought of myself as knowing what I will do in five years' time,

ARVIND KUMAR:

it's always been, next day, next year, on like that. But I think for young people today they have new challenges on the one hand technology and Google and Tinder and all these things are making it easier than ever to meet. I don't think technology is gonna cure the basic issue of homophobia, of bigotry, of bias, of prejudice,

ARVIND KUMAR:

those problems are human problems, they will always remain with us. What I wish for the younger generation is really that they become aware at an early age, that there are people like them. That there are support groups, that there are professionals that can be called upon to render resistance if needed. I'm including therapist in there. Not because it's a disease you have, but really

ARVIND KUMAR:

you're faced with issues that society is throwing at you. Therapy can help you figure out to respond without destroying your sense of self-worth. I would not want anyone growing up today to suffer the kind of silence and keeping it to yourself and thinking there's no one you can go to.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Sometimes it is the person you don't think of, it might be your parents. It might be a neighbor, it might be a classmate, it might be a school teacher. But if a young person is having issues, I would say, seek out help wherever you can get it. If you know someone who's

ARVIND KUMAR:

clearly not supportive, stay away. If you can, don't go there. There's nothing wrong with you. You just need to find the right source of support for yourself. Coming out is always gonna be an issue because this is a quality of our character, of our personality, that we all get to discover ourselves internally.

ARVIND KUMAR:

The world doesn't tell, we can't look in the mirror and say, I'm gay, like black hair or brown eyes or whatever. It's something that we discover internally. What I think we need as a society is really to have messaging around young people that says it's okay to be different. Everyone is different. This idea of normality

ARVIND KUMAR:

or that there is some kind of norm and there's deviation from the norm is all BS. We are all unique and individual and different in our own way. If you think you are alone, reach out, make a phone call, go to a website, send an email, whatever it takes, but cultivate that network of support around you. When I got that

ARVIND KUMAR:

through Trikone, and later in life, those problems just went away. I could focus on other aspects of my life. I don't want young people today to waste their time and their energy battling something that doesn't need to be battled, that needs to be ignored. One of my role models today is Lil Nas X. He is just this kid

ARVIND KUMAR:

from Atlanta who doesn't ever engage with bigots, but he shows up bigotry in the most clear way possible. People are dancing around the words, nobody wants to be called a racist, but you're exhibiting racist behavior. Lil Nas X is able to just tell them right on the spot, "Hey, you are being racist," but he does it in a way that

ARVIND KUMAR:

everyone gets it. Same thing about with him being gay. He's not engaging with people who are bigoted about gay people. He's basically showing a mirror to all the bigots out there. Look, this is what bigotry looks like. Young people today, if they see hate coming at them, just reflect it back. Don't take it in

ARVIND KUMAR:

because there's lots of people out there like you who will like you and love you just the way you are.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. I'm so pleased that you reference Lil NAS X because his music videos are really like the most groundbreaking thing that I've seen this year.

ARVIND KUMAR:

He's just awesome. He's just awesome. I wish him a long, long, and happy life and career.

ARVIND KUMAR:

He's just a kid, and to have such awareness and facility with communication and just marvel at that.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I agree. I'm coming to the end of my questions. I have what I like to call the quick fire around where it's just a few quick questions that we ask everybody who does these interviews. When we come to the end of those,

LUCY MUKERJEE:

we can touch on anything else that you might want to include.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Okay.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

All right. The first one here is what do you think is the quality of LGBTQ people?

ARVIND KUMAR:

Well, I'm biased, right? I think that we are more empathetic. I think that

ARVIND KUMAR:

because of our life experience, what we have gone through, we are more capable of feeling other people's pain and being understanding of it, and not causing it. We are not perfect and we are not all the same, but it's a degree of inner awareness

ARVIND KUMAR:

that perhaps non-LGBT folks don't have because the world is designed for them and they don't have to think twice about holding hands in public. When you're in the closet, you have to restrain yourself, even though your heart wants to hold hands, you have to hold yourself back. We've gone through that and we've come out the other side

ARVIND KUMAR:

with our self-worth intact. I think it makes us more sensitive to other people.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Absolutely. Why is it important to you to tell your story?

ARVIND KUMAR:

I don't want anyone growing up now or in the future to suffer like I did.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I don't want anyone to waste time, to lose time. You are good and great the way you are. You don't need to change. I say this to heterosexual people too. I want differences to become normal.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I rebel against the idea that there is a norm. I think the more varied expressions of gender, sexuality, clothing, dressing, speech, there are, the better we are as a society and as a race. I want a culture that is not just tolerant, but celebrating differences because we are different.

ARVIND KUMAR:

For me, I want people to know that there's life after coming out, after Trikone, after India Currents. These days, our life, Ashok's and mine,-- his parents have lived with us for 20 years. And my mother in the last two years of her life,

ARVIND KUMAR:

she lived with me, downstairs. We are now sort of preoccupied with caregiving, with installing grab bars in the house and taking care of his parents. Ashok's mother just passed away two weeks ago in this house. That's a life responsibility. We were very happy to have had her for 20 years, but also

ARVIND KUMAR:

take care of her to her last day. Everyone doesn't have to do this, but Ashok wanted to do this, and his mother wanted it. She wanted to pass at home and she did pass at home, surrounded by her children, and that's a good way to go. Through life and your priorities change, but we never stopped being gay.

ARVIND KUMAR:

I never stopped being Indian. I'm still American and Indian and gay all of these things. I helped Ashok look after his parents as he helped me look after my mom when she was passing. That's the job we took on, so it's okay. I don't know if I got to answering your question, but there you go.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

No, that was perfect. You said it all, very, very articulately. The last question that I have here, again, it's one that we always ask at the end of these interviews, so whatever comes to mind is perfect. What is the importance of a project like OUTWORDS, an archive for queer stories?

ARVIND KUMAR:

I think it would be very important for people to look back at the history of gay, lesbian activism and how we've come to the point where we've come to. I played a very, very minor role in the broad overall movement of gay liberation and

ARVIND KUMAR:

an archive like OUTWORDS will really help us understand the history. Also, I'm hoping that younger generations will be able to see things that I have not been able to see in my lifetime, because they will have taken today's atmosphere for granted because this is their baseline. I think the archive

ARVIND KUMAR:

is very important to preserve the history. I think the video format is also particularly engaging because there's only so much you can get from written material, even though there's a lot of it. I'm very honored to be asked to be part of it.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Thank you.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. This has been wonderful. You've been a wonderful speaker and I've been so engaged in everything that you've shared. I know others will be too. Thank you so much.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Thank you, Lucy. It's been a great honor. I look forward to seeing your work sometime when I am able to travel and

ARVIND KUMAR:

you are doing some remote festivals too, right?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That's right. Yes. And there's a film that I played at a couple of festivals that I think you might like. I can send you via email where you can find it, but it's called Seven Days. It's about a man and a woman who are told by their parents that they have to go on a date

LUCY MUKERJEE:

and then lockdown happens and they're stuck in the same house together for a week. I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but it's made by a remarkable gay Indian filmmaker who is actually a doctor. In his spare time, he makes movies.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Awesome. I would love to see that. Yeah.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Great. It's really fun. I'll send you a link so that you can watch it.

ARVIND KUMAR:

Yes. Thank you.