Queer and Tired (Excerpts)

Gurpreet Kaur

It was a mug.

It was bought from a queer book shop in Toronto.

The first ever queer book store in the world, called the Glad day book shop.

I saw this cute quiet mug sitting somewhere in a corner in Glad day. It said “Queer & Tired”. It was an orangish shade, an orange moving towards yellow shade, near the boundaries of the letters, giving them nice shadowy shade. Not the Sanghi orange shade thankfully. Orange and yellows that were queerly coming together. There were also small hearts residing quietly in the rounds of ‘R’s, the ‘D’ and ‘&’.

I instantly knew I needed this. Because yes, I am ‘queer and tired’.

I brought this back to Delhi, even as I left many clothes that I couldn’t carry back. I said to my sister, “I cannot cannot leave this”. And she wondered about the ‘objects that I would like to take back from a foreign country, apart from our memories together’.

I drank my orange green tea in this mug. I was never a very regular green tea drinker but whenever it was had, this mug had to hold it. The mug held the warmth of the green tea and the calm of the mountains. It held my queer self.

How could a mug hold it? I wasn’t sure.

I felt seen through this mug very strangely.

I was tired and exhausted. Emotional exhaustion have held tight gears. I was also a quiet queer, often absent in the usually loud pride, queer community events and spaces. This mug quietly said, “you are seen, you are queer, you are accepted and yes you are tired”.

Maybe like I was closeted from them, I wanted to closet this mug too, from them. It kept sitting cornered in the back of the drawer and was used only for flavored or green teas, and only by me.

“How, like how, would they get to know through this mug.”, my head yelled at me. “My middle-class parents wouldn’t get to know. They do not know what ‘queer’ means.”, I quietened myself.

But maybe I DID want them to know through this. I wanted them to know what “queer” means, to know what I desire, to know what I am.

Even as they don’t see me as a queer lesbian woman. This mug sees me as one and therefore they cannot sip chai from it.

This mug allows me queerness, allows me personhood, allows me fatigue. And it just simply says- ‘Queer & Tired’.

This mug opens up so many possibilities of being and of seen.

And therefore, maybe it is time for this mug to come out from the corner of the kitchen drawer, find a place on my desk, even if it just sits there, stares at me, stare the world.

*********

Objects of Our Affection is a series exploring our connections to the furniture and objects that make our spaces home. Through stories of tables, chairs, and that odd-shaped thing only you love, we celebrate the inanimate pieces that hold memory and witness our lives.

If you'd like to contribute your own story to this series, we'd love to hear from you. Micro-essays, poems, reflections, and fragments welcome. Write to us at hellothadi@gmail.com. Word limit 400.