Who Is... Sanj Chopra?
Sanj Chopra was born in Mumbai, India, in 1990. Both of his parents were traditional Hindu parents, and they raised Sanj accordingly. Sanj’s father, Sarb, was a colonel in the Indian air force, and had a great hatred of Pakistani’s that he shared with his son. Sanj’s mother was a stay-at-home mother who doted on her son.
Sanj had 4 brothers and 4 sisters, and he was right in the middle, number 5. In fact, there was a remarkable pattern of boy-girl-boy-girl when it came to births in the Chopra family. Sanj always found himself closer to his sisters than his brothers, something his father also noticed and did not care for.
Sanj was a very bright teenager but was having difficulty not due to issues understanding his school assignments, but more so understanding himself and who he was. Sanj was 15 when he realized he was gay. But being a Hindi son to a military colonel was not going to fly, so Sanj kept the secret to himself, although both his parents – while never discussing it with each other – separately harbored the belief that Sanj was a homosexual.
This angered his father to no end, and he treated Sanj brutally, both physically and emotionally. One time his older sister, Sandeep, tried to intervene in one of the beatings and she herself felt the back of Sarb’s hand.
After realizing that he could not beat the homosexuality out of him, Sarb decided that perhaps the army would be the best place for Sanj. Rather than have him join the Air Force, which he was part of, he wanted to keep Sanj close but not too close so he could keep an eye on him and make sure he was getting the “teaching” he so desperately needed.
So at 17 Sanj, at the insistence of his father, dropped out of high school and joined the Indian army. Because he had done extremely well in computers science and networking classes at school (the one area he excelled in as he enjoyed spending time with his male teacher), his father did the last decent thing he would ever do for his son and pulled some strings to get him into the computer intelligence section, stationed just outside of Mumbai.
After three years learning all about cyber security, cyber terrorism, and cyber attacking, Sanj made the mistake of trusting one of his close friends on base with his secret. Sanj had believed that this friend may be gay as well – but if he was, he wasn’t about to risk anything, and when Sanj came onto him one night after a long conversation and too much alcohol, the fellow soldier immediately went to the base commander to inform him of the situation.
Sanj was very quickly brought up on charges and found guilty of high crimes. He was immediately discharged without pay or pension, and his family, now completely shamed by his conviction and the fact that everyone in their extended family knew he was gay, shunned him completely.
Sanj did not know what to do. His older sister, the one whom he was closest to, allowed him to stay with her for a short time, but her husband did not like the situation nor the fact that Sanj was gay, so he had to find somewhere else to live.
At this time, he fell into a deep depression and seriously contemplated suicide, something his father actually urged him to do when he was expelled from the army to help save face for the rest of the family. Sanj wanted to die but had no idea how to kill himself. So he decided to call a realtor to see an apartment they had listed that was on the 27thfloor of a building near downtown. Once he got in to see the apartment, he went to the deck with the intention of jumping.
But Sanj didn’t jump. The realtor came in and was telling him about the people who owned the unit and why they were moving. They were moving to the US, he said, because there was so much freedom there and so many good paying jobs.
It struck Sanj that this was his destiny now too.
He contacted his sister and asked her to help him get to the US. She gave him a few thousand dollars, enough to get there but then he would be on his own. He wasn’t sure where in the US he wanted to settle, but for some reason, the cheapest flight he could get was to Salt Lake City, Utah.
When he landed, he could not believe the difference between Mumbai and Salt Lake. But different, at this point, was good. He found a cheap little apartment in the basement of a rundown house and began his search for a job.
It was surprisingly easy for him to find work. With his extensive background in IT security, he quickly found a position with a major pharmaceutical company right downtown. The pay wasn’t great, but it was enough to live on and it allowed him to find a less crappy apartment downtown. He was even able to go out and enjoy life as a single, gay man.
As much as he could anyway. Sanj had always been, and remained, a very shy individual who had a difficult time opening up to strangers. But then there was the hockey game.
Sanj was intrigued by hockey – he had never in his life ever even heard of ice hockey before arriving in the US. But he loved the coolness of the arena, the speed, power, and pure physicality of the game. He became a huge fan of the local National Women’s Hockey League team, the SLC Saints.
One night, after a game, Sanj decided to head out to a bar near the arena. There he immediately recognized the goalie for the Saints, Patricia Lafleur. Sanj summoned up all his courage and went to Lafleur’s table to ask for an autograph. Pascal couldn’t have been nicer, and asked Sanj if he wanted to join her.
They very quickly became good friends as Sanj could sense there was something extremely different about Patricia. After several months of getting to know each other, Patricia told Sanj that she was transitioning to become a man, and hopefully soon she would be Pascal Lafleur.
Sanj was enthralled. Patricia, however, was unable to afford the costly operations that would be required to complete the transition. So, Sanj offered to do what he could to help. His salary at the pharma company wasn’t anywhere close to enough, so he started to moonlight as an IT guy for a local private school, J Robert Oppenheimer Academy.
Yet even working two jobs, it wasn’t enough to get all the money needed. It was at JROA, however, that Sanj met Bob, Matt, and Steve, parents for kids at the school, and Bob had sensed that Sanj was feeling alone. Bob invited Sanj to their CLS on one random Sunday, and Sanj accepted – not just to take a leap and get to know Bob (who had a reputation for being a brilliant business leader in the community), but also because he figured it would be great “fuck you” to his Hindu family if he were to join the Mormon Church.
After spending more and more time with the guys, Sanj let down his guard with Bob and told him about Patricia / Pascal and asked for Bob’s advice. Bob said there was a project he was working on, and his timing was perfect if he wanted to provide some IT security for this project.
Naturally, Sanj said yes.
Season One Begins At This Point In Time