An open letter to Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju

Dear Heroes,

Thank you. You mean so much to me on nights where I question my dreams, you mean so much to me when I think how things aren’t going as I planned, but more than anything, you mean so much to me because you made my eighteen-year-old self believe and grow.

I was in my first year of college, had folded the dream of studying law pretty well somewhere far away from where it didn’t make me feel small; I was living in a different city by myself for the first time and was extremely homesick. Things seemed pretty dull and lonely at times.

However, I owe you so much. On 6th September for the first time, I saw my college with so much love. Everywhere I saw were happy smiles, songs and slogans and in the most cliché way it wasn’t just love in the air but a redefined love. A love, that Justice Rohinton Nariman termed, ‘The love that dare not speak’, had finally spoken.

You can never understand what all you did for this girl who for the first time saw Delhi for its possibilities, its celebration and its people. Not only was I a bit too overwhelmingly love struck by the Capital and Campus, but this was also the very first time I was speaking to people who were so assured in their identity where on the other hand I had barely tried to understand or establish mine. There were kids who were smiling, crying, laughing, but mostly they were admiring the beauty of that moment that you gave to us.

I sometimes wonder if I would ever forget this, would I ever lose out on my emotions, the sparkle in my eyes and the goosebumps I get on my arms while talking about it, I wonder if I will be able to convey to my kid how much this moment mattered to all of us collectively. But if I can’t, I promise you it will be a real shame. Everyone, especially when you are young and a bit lost, need something to believe in and that day, that feeling all around, the smell in the air and your smiling picture right outside the Supreme Court gave me so much to believe in.

Not that I haven’t fangirled enough, but I really learned to not be overtly aggressive about the things and causes I believe in from you. There need not always be the right time to raise your voice and beliefs, not every resolution might come out of a protest. You taught me to first know my arguments well, to wait for the right time to speak and to hear and to bring the changes I want, by myself.

You made me fall back in love with law way harder than I had before, and this time I was not leaving, for now I have been taught better, to dream and persist.

There are days that I imagine what it would have been like during the proceedings of that case, what it would have been to be a closeted queer female and in law, I imagine everyone in that courtroom hearing those four final judgements, the feeling to have been able to do that, to walk out of that courtroom that day knowing that you are finally partners before the law and not criminals under Section 377.

I never really as a kid liked comics, never found a favourite superhero, never had a conversation regarding it with group of friends, with references and inside jokes or trivia, but I am so glad because my ones exist right here. They aren’t bulked up in muscles or wearing a cape or striking some signature action pose. Rather, my heroes restored my faith in myself, a new city and a new college at a time I needed it the most, they got me my dream back and made millions of kids aware of their right to love, in just a single day with mere words as their weapon.