desbianherstory:

“So ­­we don’t have a lot of time but one of the things that, if something is going into an archive like this, I feel like the person I should mention about why I feel I have the courage to come out, or I have the courage to live the life the way I wanted to, was my dad. My dad was, I’m gonna mention him by name, was [Rathin Ghosh?], he was a wing commander in the Indian Air Force, a man with a great sense of social justice. And he’s the person who encouraged me to be myself all my life.

And I’ve always was [sic] a tomboy, and in India being a tomboy means you’re gonna get teased. And he never, I remember I would come home crying because any time I walked up out of the house and you know, I’d be in shorts and a t­shirt, or I’d be in jeans a t­shirt, or jeans and a shirt, and boys would tease me. And they would tease me by not talking to me but talking to each other loud enough that I could hear them. And the question was always, is she a boy or a girl? And they would say it in Bengali. And I would come home, I couldn’t walk down the street without somebody saying that.

And I would come home and I would be crying and I remember my mom, I guess my mom wouldn’t want me to be teased, so she would tell me, “Well, you should just dress a little more femininely, why don’t you wear a dress?” And my dad would say, “Let her be.” And then he would tell me, he says, “Don’t worry about these guys. You need to be who you are.”

And so I feel like that, I want to give tribute to my dad for giving me courage to be who I am and to come out and you know, today I was leaving the house and I’m sixty years old, and Meggie my partner says I’m dressed like a ten year old schoolboy in my shorts and my t­shirt but it’s where I feel comfortable, but I have the courage to do that today because my father told me to be who I am, and I just feel like, someone told me I was gonna cry here, and I didn’t believe them, but you know, it’s because you don’t think this guy who’s an air force officer would be this social­­—I’m thinking social justice. The point where he said to me, “Be who you are.” And it stayed with me my whole life, and it allows me to say what I think and what I do and sometimes that gets me in trouble, but mostly it lets me move forward so I want to just give him tribute for that.”

—Dipti Ghosh, interviewed in 2015 as part of the Dragon Fruit Project [x]