Love, actually

As modern relationships buck convention, queer people are redefining the idea of family

FINDING HOME

Ever since I came out as a gay man at age 22, I learnt that lesbian love stories were hard to come by. There’s a list that most of my queer women friends could recite immediately: Blue Is the Warmest Color, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, I Can't Think Straight, Imagine Me & You, Carol, among others. But, these films are mostly downers, loaded with the struggles of coming out, conversion therapy, the murmurs of ostracisation and the need to bottle up the idea of self-exploration. Lesbian love stories rarely, if ever, have storylines with uplifting conclusions. But, when I recently interviewed Haima Simoes and Shruti Venkatesh, I realised there are always exceptions – love stories that are so heartwarming that it’s a shame they don’t get documented on celluloid. “We met in college. Haima was my senior. We were fortunate to be part of an extremely liberating experience as our college was very queer-friendly,” says Venkatesh. The women, who have been together for over three years now, work as programme coordinators for One Future Collective, a feminist youth-led, not-for-profit organisation that works on building compassionate youth social leadership in India, and are occasional models.