I had never sought to be a hero, and if today I am one among a small but strong segment of my people who hold on to liberal beliefs, it was because I stubbornly stuck with what I felt was the basic fundamental right of any living being, but which, for some reason, my people were afraid to be vocal about.
The basic fundamental belief I am talking about is the choice to choose one’s faith - in addition to practice one’s sexuality which is one of the, or if not THE, strongest drive in any living being.
Perhaps it was because my society was too small and too tightly knit, and people were just afraid if change, even a little bit of it, might upset the whole system.
“Dare I disturb the Universe?” was a question I grappled with ever since my teens - ever since I read the inspiring book “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier.
By the time I spent more than a decade in the media, mainly in newspaper publishing, and I was entering my late 20s, I just became fed up, just like that, because nobody was opening up, nobody was speaking up, for the rights of those who held minority views in my society. My country was gradually leaving behind its constitutionally implemented secularism. My country was not respecting the religions of the minorities.
But secretly, I wondered whether it was that brief and first homosexual affair I had with a waiter at a restaurant that brought my downfall as a human being.
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