At a virtual support group, I met my (now) friends and found family as we all gathered to process the weight of identifying as aroace. We were grappling with the amorphous shape of our desires, which has been unhelpfully labelled as “absence” of sexual and romantic attraction, while imagining meaningful lives around it. The vocabulary of desire — elusive sparks, tingling sensations, hurried connections for intimacy, and a never-ending search for “the one” — is alienating. For us, desire is an expansive, overarching light which kept us warm through vulnerable and intimate friendships. Or as Audre Lorde writes in her seminal essay Uses of the Erotic: “The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” 

For us, desire was rooted in the erotics of intimate friendship and companionship as the foundation of our aroace selves and building our worlds rooted in chaotic platonic love. It is meals on the table and the joy of cooking together. It is coming together and momentarily forgetting we are “lacking” desire, basking in the glow of food, love, and belonging.

Plentiful, Gentle, Tender, and I lived in Bangalore and quickly became embedded in each other’s lives. It all started with a meeting at Plentiful’s house one rainy evening. Gentle got elaneer payasam, which we poured into small paper cups and drank. Plentiful had just moved to the city, still setting up their space, and none of us could anticipate at that moment how their various houses would become the anchor of our togetherness. Plentiful was good at giving, and one might mistake it for them having plenty. It was their hunger for being witnessed that ensured the door to their house was always open, food always ready to be heated, their bed always available for a nap.

After shared meals, we all head to their room, lie down in their cosy bed with purple bedsheets, and rest together. Desire on the table is not a prelude to the main act but a fulfilled meal in itself. Our bodies next to each other, we fall asleep in the safety of our presence while joking about “sleeping together.” Existing in those days felt as light as breathing. In our support group meetings, for the first time in our lives, we asked each other: What would be the shape of our lives if we prioritised each other?

***We started to live this question by showing up for each other. Our support group went into a tizzy as Creative and Protective — our mutual friends from the support group — announced their impending marriage in Mumbai. Tender, Gentle, Plentiful, Enthusiastic, and I would travel in from Bangalore, and Sprightly was joining from Pune. Wonder and Kind were already in the city, waiting to welcome us. Wonder had opened up their home to us in Mumbai and welcomed us with freshly squeezed watermelon juice and sliced watermelons.

You can live a moment or know what it means, I thought, as we sat around Wonder’s living room and reminisced about earlier meetings, sharing collective surprise at being in each other’s lives for five years. Our greatest fear as aroace people was the lack of imagination for a future since all structures that prioritise and legitimise relationships are built around sexual and romantic desire. Identifying in the spectrum of absences is exasperating, as it is met with skeptical discomfort within the heterosexual and queer communities. It would have been so easy to never have met them at all. It is magical that we came together at all, and then became indispensable in each other’s lives.

We showed up for Creative and Protective, too. To start the celebrations, Plentiful and Wonder curated the Epic Ace Food Trail of Mumbai to familiarise us with the sights, sounds and tastes of the city. Wonder dissolved into childlike excitement as they narrated the history of the city and their fascination with the public transport system. Plentiful, our resident navigator, and Wonder, local Mumbai expert, planned the day and warned us of the extensive walking, running, stair-climbing, and the humid heat. We experienced Mumbai in all its glory, packed with fun-filled activities and, eventually, exhaustion.

Our first stop was Haji Ali, where we guzzled freshly squeezed fruit juice to withstand the heat. Then we headed to Aram Vada Pav, where Plentiful spilled an entire bottle of kokum sharbat, putting our phones and bags in jeopardy, and after accidents were successfully managed, we all had our spicy, garlicky vada pav, thaleepeth, sabudana khichdi, misal pav, kokum sharbat and kairi panna. Plentiful excitedly recollected the time they spent in Mumbai as a student as we explored bookstores and headed to Jimmy Boy to drink their famous raspberry and ice cream soda. We ordered a plate of chicken berry pulao that had the most decadent, layered flavours, chicken koftas, and tangy berries, which we devoured. We next visited Café Military for cold coffee, mutton cutlets, and caramel custard.

The ease of our togetherness was connected to long threads of vulnerable moments, epiphanies, and learnings we had together. All of us carried the ache of lost friendships and love that didn’t quite fit the boxes. By the time we met, we were well-versed with loneliness. In one of our support group meetings, we explored the themes of loneliness, and Plentiful, in a vulnerable moment, said they just wanted an intimate witness to their life. We had experienced friendships in the past as brittle, seemingly solid, but prone to crumble under the weight of our revelations.

With each other, we found that friendship isn’t just flimsy and fragile but a firm and tenacious ground. I experienced the strength of this ground when I was grieving loss of support systems and said out loud: Who will be there to care for me? Gentle, without missing a beat, said: I will, as if it had been the most obvious answer all along. Being with each other was so easy, an ease we had collectively arrived at by showing up for each other with home-cooked meals, being a quiet presence on sick days, and even things like taking a half day off to accompany each other for a doctor’s visit. If any one of us were visiting each other’s city, everyone living in that city showed up, houses opened, beds made, menus planned meticulously to account for diverse food tastes, and then hours spent in silence, laughter, and banter — chopping and peeling vegetables, sautéing onion and garlic, blanching spinach and a host of other culinary activity carried out with studious precision. All of this to collectively scream, yes, you matter to us, we matter to each other and togetherness is a tenacious thing built through messy and sticky platonic love. This shared history of tenderness allowed us to frolic around Mumbai, unencumbered by the weight of our identity and the losses that have accompanied it.

The day ended at the famous Leopold Café, where we tried their all-meat sandwich, pasta, chicken biriyani and kababs, polished off with chilled beer. We wore our aroace identities comfortably wrapped around us without being suffocated by the weight of them. We were friends, just having a great day, praying for a cloud or two for some respite from the merciless heat. Friends who are also aroace, love ice cream, drink raspberry and ice-cream soda together. Friends who dream of living together under the warmth and protection of these friendships.

***Weddings have always been a sore topic with our respective families as we explored different terrains of togetherness. Gentle had waged a long battle in their household to dismantle the expectation of marriage, a battle they continue to wage. Tender, well into their late thirties, has stopped entertaining conversations about their prospective marriage. Plentiful ignores their parents and quickly changes the topic when the conversation shifts to dating and romance. Kind would use the defence of career growth to stall prospective conversations around marriage. I had to disappoint my family repeatedly to drill the message that matrimony isn’t for me and this isn’t going to change. Despite this barbed personal history with marriage, we all showed up to the pre-wedding festivities and cheered for Creative and Protective. The question of friendship and companionship has lingered with us, overshadowed by the stability of romantic partnerships, where friendships are often viewed as a fragile substitute.

Sara Ahmed in Queer Phenomenology describes orientation as turning “toward certain objects, those that help us to find our way. These are the objects we recognize… so that when we face them we know which way we are facing.” Marriage is one such orientation that we have been taught to recognize. But we turned away from marriage and towards each other as our anchoring points, committed to finding our way to togetherness and belonging. Wonder, Kind, and Enthusiastic grouped to get mehndi on their hands. Plentiful and I went to sample the desserts and found delicious mochi ice cream in blueberry and strawberry flavours, indulged in Calcutta Malai Toast, and joined Gentle, who was waiting for their aloo tikki chaat.We gravitated towards each other as I fed shammi kebab, veg spring rolls and Amritsari fish tikka to Wonder, Kind, and Enthusiastic as they waited for the mehndi on their hands to dry. The music was starting to get louder, and the world of marriage was shifting to take on a new shape as we turned towards each other, formed our circle in the crowd, and danced to the beat of Bollywood songs.