"It was hard for me to reconcile my sexuality with my Indian identity"

My mother is one of the most beautiful and stylish women I’ve known. Strangers often mistake her for my sister, and wherever she goes, people shower her with compliments on her good looks, her glamorous outfits and impeccable accessories. 

At home, every closet in every room heaves with her carefully amassed collection of designer jeans, Muji basics, Armani dresses, Fendi handbags, countless saris, lehenga-cholis and other regal handmade Indian outfits that make her look like a queen.

Unsurprisingly, she’s also a fashion designer. Her one-woman studio in Bangkok – June Fifth by Bonny – specialises in bespoke Indian bridal wear. The space is an over-the-top parade of rich brocades, resplendent silks, delicate mirror work and hand-sewn embroidery. 

She’s great at her job – meticulous with a flair for the dramatic. I’ve seen brides-to-be squeal with delight in my mother’s fitting room and mothers of grooms thank her tearfully for the carefully coordinated outfits she has produced for the entire family. Her Instagram business page – 23.8K followers at last count – is a running feed of Indian inspiration and aspiration.

It seems like a cosmic joke, then, that this fashionista’s daughter – her only child – is me. 

Rage against the dress

As a toddler, I would lie on the floor and shriek with displeasure when she put me in dresses and stockings. During my tween years, I would mope around at parties in the high-waisted skirts and floral blouses she picked out for me. I loathed the culottes the girls had to wear at my Catholic middle school – my mother refused to buy me the trouser option – and hid inside a sweaty oversized jacket.

As a teenager, I became more willful, insisting on wearing my father’s roomy flannel shirts and leather belts. Every dressy occasion – office parties, Diwali dos, wedding receptions – became a fashion battleground for my mother and me. 

The tension wasn’t just about clothes. And as I grew older, my gender and sexuality became harder to deny. Fashion anguish aside, I had unrequited crushes on female classmates and teachers that my mother knew about, but was unprepared to handle. 

There was no word in Hindi for what I was. There wasn’t anyone like me in Bangkok’s conservative Indian community, where their child’s eventual heterosexual wedding was the dream twinkling in every parent’s eye.

Looking back, I can appreciate how bewildering those years must have been for her: she worried her in-laws would judge her for having somehow created a gay child, that my clothing and unfeminine appearance would make it all too obvious to everyone what I was. She worried what people would think. And of course, she grieved that she would never get the chance to make glittering bridal clothes for her own child. 

To her credit, though my mother struggled to understand me, she never punished me for something that was out of my control. And though my parents once considered sending me away to boarding school – as though that would somehow cure me of my Western notions! – their big hearts and their love of their only child meant they never abandoned me.

Coming out in style

After high school, I moved to the US. In both fashion and romance, I found the freedom I wanted but still couldn’t seem to find the right fit. My whole wardrobe was a collection of safe white, beige or light blue button down collared shirts and generic jeans. I struggled to reconcile the kind of style I wanted with the kind of clothes I could buy off the rack. 

It was hard also to reconcile my sexuality with my Indian identity – both clamouring for their rightful place in my life. My personal freedom came at the expense of distance from my community. I felt I could be queer or Indian, but never both at the same time.

Things came to a head when I moved back from the US to Bangkok seven years later and faced the choice of going back in the closet, or being openly gay in the city where my parents’ Indian community resided. My mother’s bridal business had taken off. She’d become very well-known and was concerned that living with my partner would lead to gossip.

“But we’ll just be roommates, Mum,” I protested. “No one has to know we’re dating.” 

“Oh they’ll know,” she said.

The chasm between what I wanted to be and the templates available to me meant that the nearly three-year relationship with my partner ended. I was devastated – and so was my mother. That breakup was a turning point for her. She saw that her reluctance to embrace me unconditionally was costing me my happiness. She realised that my sexual identity and Indianness could no longer ignore each other. 

More than collide, the two worlds would have to integrate.

That integration took many years but I knew things were changing for the better when my mother stopped negotiating on toned-down Indian women’s outfits for me, and started designing clothes that made me feel good: more masculine sherwanis, Aligarh trousers, fitted Nehru collar jackets in rich prints with silk pocket squares – all tailored to my body, something I would never be able to buy off-the rack.

Eventually, it seemed like the cosmos sent my mother a gift. I met my current partner, whom she says is “beautiful, both inside and out.” On every visit to Bangkok, my mother showered Erin with all the dresses, jewellery and handbags a fashionista mother could give a daughter. 

What divided us previously, now drew us closer. Through the power of her love for fashion and her only child, my mother found a way to help me be “everything, everywhere, all at once”.

Four years ago, when Erin and I decided to register our marriage in the US, I called Mum to tell her the news and she immediately got down to business. 

On the centuries-old steps of Buffalo City Hall, the bride wore a stunning one-shoulder buttercream-yellow dress with detailed threadwork. I wore a matching Indian tunic and trousers with a matching motif. The photos blew up on Instagram.

We were so happy, and d*mn if we didn’t look good.

PHOTOGRAPHY Lawrence Teo
COORDINATION Chelsia Tan
GROOMING Benedict Choo, using M.A.C