An Open Letter To ‘Kranti Wala Pyaar’

Feminist spaces have always been a collection of radical love for me but little did I know that I will  actually find the love of my life in a South Asian Feminist Course. It is a love story which started from Nepal, travelled back to Karachi (Pakistan) and New Delhi (India) and travelled together to Bangkok (To cross borders for each other and explore infinite reason to love and touch the reality we still dream to acquire) and ended in Batla house,Delhi and Sir Syed Road, Karachi (To be better apart).

This is my love story, the love which revolutionized me and today I am not going to share the communal hate I face in my country and discrimination I encounter in my daily life due to my gender and religious identity. 

My first queer love story and may be the one I will always keep close to my heart, it is going to reflect on my face in my eyes when I smile back while dismantling systematic oppression. Personal is political so is my love, a love story which needs to be told to generations to come, so that they hold hope close to their hearts. You, my love, hope I embody my soul.

She was breathtaking from the very first gaze we had, it brought resistance within me. I resisted the idea of her but ended up building a life with her. She called me Inquilab in Urdu and I called her Kranti in Hindi both these words means the same revolution, our worlds merged into one another soul when we confessed I can still feel her gaze into my body, her hands encircling on my body even without touching me. I remember the chilly night, pin drop silence in that cosy room of Kathmandu and her eyes, her deep damn eyes! irresistible lips ! calling mine to entwine that beauty mole on her cheek and her dimples playing hide and seek. 

She is full of potential and possibilities I can never touch and know. The depth she carries is something can’t comprehend. She left my body craving and shivering for revolution within me, words of Right and Justice and beliefs full of hope have filled my heart with fire of joining the resistance. I never tasted liberation like this before, fell so liberated after experiencing love without borders, the freedom teasing my spine and her gentle embrace was testing my strength. 

We met, loved, worshiped and cried rivers for our collective liberation. We shared virtual windows to our worlds and it definitely brought us closer but challenged our faiths in the system, made us pray for collective liberation.

The systematic oppression was more clear, the patriarchal borders had so much power over our realities. As I was here travelling in the mundane life of metro and sharing my world with her with noacknowledgement and understanding of how privileged I was with my accessibility to her and suddenly I started weeping for her lack of access to equal opportunities and daily commute. Commute the world of opportunities which she never had. It is very devastating to see a brilliantly talented queer person having no equal space like you, and this hits harder especially when it is someone you love as burning of houses only impacts us when it’s our house. You know it hurts more when you watch it happen to you.

Personal is political and watching this statement play in our shared realities gave us more clarity around deep rooted. These shackles of patriarchy and masculine idea of patriotism are. How toxic masculinity is not only in my home and country but the world is suffering from this. 

Like how my Kranti and many more incredible people similar to them can have bright futures but because of borders they just can’t, what a dumb reason not stay in the past when at the same time half of the world is in the future. Borders has literally forced me to waste my ability to love her so deeply but the patriarchy won’t let my love reach her. Borders create a deep impact on our daily realities, resources, food, accessibility, right to live freely and until or unless you love someone, become friends with the world you can’t see it. Friendship is the new beginning of ending generational historical oppression.

I was able to see everything clearly when the line between borders and hate became blur, a virtual window of love opened up for me and I saw with my eyes wide open that we both don’t share same realities, how my person can literally die if their Gender identity is revealed and how I am safe to be me. 

This is so sad I can’t write their name here but scream about my gender identity openly. Thus I realised how systematic oppression is snatching our possibilities to be happy, how capitalism has captured my will to live freely. 

Not only through borders but religions as well she was a Shia muslim and I am a sunni muslim divided by communal hatred but yet we found a loop hole and created a world where no can touch the sacred sculpture of our love and us existing together in that moment. We spent a lot of time learning about our generational trauma and the atrocities women and queer people around us experienced. The resistance from extreme hate helped us understand the generational history our bodies carry. 

The funny yet tragic thing about all of this was she was a minority in her country and I am a minority in mine and despite all of these complexities we knitted a blanket of grief, love, comfort and loss of our communities and covered our naked bodies with it. We realised the solution to all of our problems was to keep working against Patriarchy through our revolutionized love our Kranti wala pyar, as it is the biggest tool to dismantle as change happen when we chose to love, share kindness and make friends beyond borders. Love is the bridge I will use to build to conquer borders, no guns, no wars but endless opportunities to love and spread kindness with obviously smashing patriarchal borders. 

Coming back to my love Kranti, we imprinted each other’s bodies and souls in a way that there is no going back to the same old heteronormative lives we had before. We both became truth together, one we want to continue living. They chose a life of liberation and more kinships, I chose liberation from self hate. 

To be honest no matter how little it look to anyone in this world that how can love, friendships and kindness be a bridge to borders but it is beyond anything practicing radical acceptance and kindness is going beyond the binary of patriarchal borders and what capitalism is constantly asking from us, the overconsumption of hate will stop and spreading love can become a tool to heal the world we want to live in.

I am obliged how love changed my perspective around borders and was lucky enough to witness the magic take over my life. Thus I start to vision a world with no borders centring abolitionist care. Abolitionist care comes in different shapes and definitions but for me any collective and community thrives when it is full of tenderness and care. Where we don’t need to agree but share the same love, land and resources in a sustainable way such as native people did, they knew from the start the fundamentals of care and loving nature of humans will save us from us.

Surrounding care with sustainability, where Kranti and Inquilab continue staying together and don’t have to worry about the borders between them as the physical distance and lack of accessibility changes realities and leaves a longing which can suck the life out of anyone. The waiting to be saved by some miracles become starvation from hope. When all along we were the ones we were waiting for. I am going to write this here and everywhere. I will exist as part of the resistance against deceit, extremism, deception of capitalism and I reject any  other way of living to be productive in life, my worth doesn’t exist through validating patriarchy and feeding capitalism.

I will consciously choose to produce love as I am full of it and I will love shamelessly, spread radical kindness and care beyond borders. It will come through my revolution of being receptive to the world which has been hurt and exploited by power through putting people against people and the abuse of power, delusion of finding worth in worthless material will not hold me back anymore. I will love shamelessly, I promise, existing in love is my birth right and I will claim it loudly, today, tomorrow and always. 

Channelling love from within to dream a world full of kindness and Kranti wala Pyaar ( Revolutionary love)

Yours Queerly, 

Kinza Jamal