New Delhi [India], April 22 (ANI): I grew up in a Hindu household in India, in a home where gods didn't compete--they coexisted. Ganpati smiled from the altar, Jesus hung in my grandmother's room, and the Quran sat on our bookshelf like it belonged there--which it did. We were human before we were anything else. That was the first religion I was taught.
Faith, in our home, was light--literal and metaphorical. Firecrackers at Diwali, candles at Christmas, diyas flickering through power cuts. The idea that religion could divide us? That was foreign to me. Foreign, until it wasn't.
As a boy, I was taken by the pageantry of the Catholic Church. The gold and scarlet vestments, the thunder of the organ, the long shadows cast in stained-glass light. I fell in love with the visuals. The performance. The ritual. Not because I was Catholic, but because it was beautiful. And beauty, to a queer boy with ...
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