Trigger warning: Mentions of suicide

“Papa, can a boy and boy get married?”

“Yes, of course! Daddy and I are married.”

“How about a girl and girl?”

“Yes.”

“Do you both love each other?”

Srivatsan looked through the rear-view mirror in the car at his husband Saravanan, and said a resounding “yes”, as did Saravanan.

“I’m glad you both are married,” said their son Sendhan.

This seemingly nonchalant conversation was the only one that six-year-old Sendhan needed, to understand the relationship between his fathers. There were no follow-up questions!

“Kids don’t have inhibitions and they are not judgemental. Sendhan accepted us with open arms. He even painted a rock with the words, ‘My dads rock’, and presented it to us,” Srivatsan, based out of Toronto, Canada, tells The Better India.

Anecdotes like this make one wish that adults, too, were as simple as children and understood that it’s completely okay for two men or two women to fall in love with each other. Wouldn’t life be much simpler if adults started thinking the way children do? It would have definitely made the lives of these two men easier as they embarked on a journey from Chennai to Singapore, finally settling in Toronto in search of a society that accepts them for who they are.

It would have also made it easier for them or any other gay couple who wishes to adopt a child from India. But this couple wasn’t going to let any challenges deter them from living their best lives and adopting their son, who they now call “the light of their lives”.

Srivatsan and Saravanan went through a year-long process and spent over 60,000 Canadian dollars to legally adopt Sendhan as their son.

What was the journey like for 45-year-old Srivatsan? How did he come to terms with being gay and navigating life when his parents wanted him to marry a girl, no matter what? From trying to take his own life to being out and proud, here’s his incredible story.

‘Choosing myself helped me’

From his early childhood, Srivatsan knew that he was different. He felt more comfortable with his cousin sisters than his brothers. His first crush was on a blue-eyed boy with curly hair. “I hated playing cricket in the hot sun, especially fielding; this was my first clue. Also I just always knew that there was something different about me. I couldn’t relate to the........

© The Better India