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The Rediff Special/N Sathiya Moorthy

The fire burns brightly for Palani lesbian couple

Collector Jeevarathinam of Dindigul district, southcentral Tamil Nadu, recently had an unusual problem. Appealing to him to help them marry were two young women aged 24 and 23. The trouble was, they wanted to get married to each other. Indian law prohibits it, even prescribing punishment for such 'unnatural' sexual relations. But the women were adamant. All the collector could do was advise them, and direct policemen in their village to protect them.

Krishnakumari and Banumathy have come a long way since they became classmates in the sixth standard, in the temple town of Palani. Initially, they were just schoolmates. But when Krishnakumari failed in the ninth standard while Banumathy passed, they realised for the first time that they could not live without each other, having sat side by side in class all the previous years. Both gave up school.

The friendship continued, and no one knows exactly when it became a 'relationship'. But like most secrets, theirs too came out in the open with Banumathy spending hours every day in Krishnakumari's village home in Balasamudram, near Palani, and the elders pulled them up.

It was then that Krishnakumari's parents decided enough was enough. Her father, Muthuswamy -- a state government employee who retires next month -- gave her away in marriage. But Krishnakumari could not stand the marriage, nor her husband -- and certainly not life without Banumathy. She walked out of her husband's home and returned to her parental home, just a month later. The divorce followed in the natural course.

"We can't live without each other," say the girls who now want to live together under the same roof. "Our love for and understanding of each other will not diminish with age. Nor will we regret our decision later, or want a man in our life, a child, or whatever sentiments women develop in old age." Krishnakumari goes a step further, questioning the 'male-dominated' society, while Banumathy re-asserts their faith in god and religion.

It was then that Krishnakumari's parents decided they would rather send the girls away, to avoid the probing questions of inquisitive neighbours. "They were sent to Tiruppur, where they worked in a hosiery unit, and lived together. But soon they lost their jobs and were back home," recalls the father. "And we have come to accept it, for whatever it is worth."

If anything, it was the lives of the two girls that were worth the parental acceptance. Both are known to have attempted suicide at least twice earlier, being saved each time in the nick of time. "When they are so strong and determined, there is no meaning separating them, whatever society's qualms," says the father. But even he has not come to accept their getting 'married' and had Banumathy remove the mangalsutra his daughter had tied round her neck at a local shrine.

Banumathy's father died when she was young, and her widowed mother visits Krishnakumari's house to spend time with her daughter. The girl herself was brought up by her paternal uncle -- father's elder brother -- who too tried all kinds of tricks to separate the two, "as it is just not the done thing". More recently, he has been planning to marry off Banumathy, which is what triggered the girls' latest petition to the district collector, whose predecessors too have faced the same predicament.

For now, the two women feel at home in Krishnakumari's house. Their only grouse is that the state government has no job quotas for girls of "our type" when it has quotas for couples marrying outside their community. Krishnakumari's father has a similar grouse. "With my retirement now due, and the only family income thus stalled, I hope the government gives a job to one of the girls, so that four mouths can be fed."

Incidentally, this is not the first case of its kind in Tamil Nadu. Even before Deepa Mehta's film Fire made news, two women police officers in the state had made it to pulp magazines. Inspector Seethalakshmi and Constable Sheela reportedly had a lesbian relationship, and Sheela released letters written to her by the inspector after being jilted. But as more names of higher-ups in the police force came to be mentioned with each letter Sheela released, it became imperative for everyone concerned to seal the case, as suddenly as it had burst into the open.

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