Written by: Prashraya Shrestha - 26014, Grade IX
Posted on: 30 June, 2022
In an average Nepali school, studied a boy named Aryaman. Aryaman was a brilliant student who always scored good grades, had a good relationship with his friends, popular amongst girls, and was an overall good student but on the other hand we had Akankshya. Akankshya usually got bad grades, got into trouble a lot and had a bad relationship with her teachers. Aryaman and Akankshya were completely opposites of each other. At the start of the school semester their grade teacher Ms.Tulsi kept them together, in hopes of Aryaman turning Akankshya into a good student. Over the months Aryaman had a good relationship with Akankshya. Often Aryaman used to save Akankshya from the teachers and lecture her afterwards. Soon the friendliness drew Akankshya to Aryaman and she started developing a crush on him. They grew closer to each other and Akankshya started performing better to impress Aryaman. One evening Akankshya was in detention for not doing her science homework as it was raining, she was stuck at school. Luckily for her Aryaman was staying after school to learn mathematics. They both shared an umbrella and walked home. On the way home Akankshya started getting closer to Aryaman but Aryaman showed no interest and took it as a friendly gesture. Over the months Akankshya would try more things to get closer to Aryaman but always failed. One day she had enough and planned to confess about her feelings on the school field trip coming saturday. The day came and Akankshya had a speech ready. She held Aryaman’s hand and pulled him to a place far away from where anyone could hear them. She read out the speech and at the end whispered “I love you”. Aryaman’s voice started shaking as he was not expecting it. After a while he took a long breath and said “Look, Akankshya you are a really nice girl but I am not interested in you or any other girls” he stuttered for a while and in a low voice said “ I- I am gay”. Akankshya’s mind went blank and simply ran away. During the time, LGBTQ+ communities were a pretty new topic to the general public of Nepal and Nepali constitution did not recognize any members of the LGBTQ+ community so, Aryaman being gay was a pretty new topic for Akankshya. Her mind was filled with hatred not only towards Aryaman but also towards the members of the LGBTQ+ community. The next day she shouted “Aryaman is gay, he likes guys” followed by many homophobic slurs and all the students bursted out laughing. For the following months Aryaman got bullied every single day for being gay and as time passed he started skipping school, his grades eventually got worse. Ms. Tulsi showed concern but was too afraid to help because she knew if she did her colleagues would call her out behind her back. One day, Aryaman jumped off the window from the 6th floor. The crowd surrounded his body and he was soon taken to the hospital. In the hospital he went into a coma but survived. After hearing the news Akankshya was devastated. After that she stopped using homophobic slurs and started openly respecting people from the LGBTQ+ community. With the help of Ms.Tulsi she started writing articles upon articles and soon those articles turned into books, Now, after 12 years, Akankshya has written 6 books about gay rights and thousands of articles on LGBTQ+ communities and visits Aryaman every saturday. In the month of June Akankshya was on stage speaking about the pride month wrapped in the pride flag around her. Mid performance she got the information that Aryaman opened his eyes for the first time, She rushed to the hospital with tears rolling down her eyes when she reached Aryaman was breathing his last breaths, seeing Akankshya wrapped in the pride flag Aryaman smiled and the vitals went blank. Later, The same year Akankshya released a new book titled “Aryaman”.
