“That was the moment I realized, oh my god, I’m not going to lose my family.”
It took a five hours of sobbing on a flight from Vancouver to Toronto for Rishi Agarwal to realize he was done with living a double life. It was time to tell his parents he's gay.
Rishi Agarwal and husband Daniel Langdon.
Channa Photography
Now 35, Agarwal grew up in an Indian-Canadian home in Toronto's suburbs where talking about different sexual orientations was taboo.
"That’s one things that's different about South Asian families — sex and sexuality isn’t talked about openly," Agarwal told BuzzFeed Canada.
"If it comes up on TV, the channel was immediately changed."
But even as a kid, he knew he was different. And as an adult he began to lead a dual life. It all came to a head during a business trip to Vancouver where he had a romance with a man who wrote Agarwal a heartfelt letter as he left. Afraid someone would find it, he threw the letter away before getting on his flight home.
"I can’t believe I threw someone’s heart in the garbage. I don’t want to be this person."
It was 2004, just after Canada Day, when he finally told his parents the truth. He expected his mom to cry and his dad to kick him out of the house.
Agarwal, left, with his dad Vijay.
Courtesy of Rishi Agarwal
"Instead what happened is my mom stayed quiet for two hours and my dad being the engineer that he is, very methodic, just kept asking questions."
Far from being kicked out, Agarwal's dad, Vijay, assured him they would figure this out together.
"He was like, 'Son, this is your home, you’re always going to be our son, don’t ever think otherwise. We love you so much,'" said Agarwal.
"That was the moment I realized, oh my god, I’m not going to lose my family."
They went into research mode, taking out books from the library about homosexuality and driving into Toronto once a month for PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) meetings. They eventually even volunteered for the organization and sat on its board.