Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (14 page)

Joining my avert-eyes-from club is Dr Champak, who has his clinic at Fort.

I go to him with a toe injury while in the first year of college. He asks me to
lie down on his examining table and proceeds to tap my feet with a small
rubber hammer. He then moves up to my knees, thighs and finally my crotch,
asking me very considerately, to tell him if it hurts. Since I am too dumbstruck
to respond, he assumed he has my consent to masturbate me.

I feel sorry for the doctor. He is smart, reasonably good looking and
a charming conversationalist. I wonder why he would need to molest his
male patients to get off. It is not difficult to find out information about him.

I learn that he lives with his sister and mother in a flat nearby. Their father
died recently and now, they are looking for a suitable boy for the girl. But
how desperate can you be, if you are willing to risk your entire professional
life, career and reputation by wanking off a patient on your examining
table? On the other hand, is he really risking a lot? What man would file
a complaint with the cops, alleging that his male doctor had fondled him?

Besides being a direct affront to his masculinity, it would be a laughable
matter for the cops and of course the doctor would completely deny it.

Dr Champak becomes a stalker. He manages to get hold of my number
and calls me up at random hours. Follows me to college one day and begs
me to come back to his clinic for a good time. Lands up at my house at
midnight asking to be let in. I am not frightened, just utterly disgusted.

ETHNOSCAPE

My ethnoscape is the landscape of persons who constitute my world of inquiry—the online or offline inhabitants of Gay Bombay. They are physically
located
not just in Bombay, but in other cities in India and the rest of the world. They flow in and out of the different Gay Bombay spaces as per their needs and situation. I conducted formal interviews with 32 individuals from this ethnoscape over a period of two years, both From this Perspective…
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online and in physical Bombay. (See the appendix for detailed interviewee demographics). Informally, I chatted with several other individuals over the course of three years that I spent on this project. Naturally, these informal interactions have influenced my analysis too.

This ethnoscape did not suddenly emerge out of nowhere; Gay

Bombay was simply the latest addition to an already thriving existing gay scene in Bombay. From my discussions with some of my older

interviewees and archival research, I have constructed a brief history of this scene from the 1970s to the 1990s, which I present below, followed by the origins and history of Gay Bombay from the late 1990s till the present date.

I am providing this origin story for two reasons. First, I want to resist the trap of researchers who willingly grant local affiliations like
kothis
and
hijras
histories and identities but do not do the same for those who profess a gay identity in non-Western locations ‘and talk instead of “globalizing influences” and the “borrowing” of Western models’

(Jackson, 2000)7 for such people; as if to say that they have simply emerged suddenly and without any local back story. Second and on a related note, I want to avoid a simplified and linear relationship between the economic liberalization that I discuss shortly and the emergence of gayness. My argument is that the 1990s were important because they enabled gayness to be articulated above the ground—but this would not have happened unless there was already a foundation to build upon and Gay Bombay has built upon this foundation in a local and situationally specific way. So the group
does
have a back-story and it is
both
global and local.

∗ ∗ ∗

Ashok Row Kavi (1999) writes,

Bombay in the 1970s and 1980s was ripe for a gay sub-culture. A distinct class of salaried professionals had a firm grip on the city’s cultural life.

A corporate work ethic had finally evolved….8

Indeed, there was a rollicking time to be had for those in the know; popular cruising spots included the Chowpatty beach, the Gateway of India promenade, certain public gardens and train stations and of course, train compartments. There were female impersonators who
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danced regularly in elite restaurants like Talk of the Town. Bombay’s first gay hangout was a tiny bar called
Gokul
located in a bylane behind the 5-star Taj Mahal Hotel in South Bombay. The availability of alcohol at affordable rates and the bar’s convenient location resulted in it attracting a wide range of patrons, from advertising executives who worked in the office district nearby to Navy officers, stationed at South Bombay’s Navy base a stone’s throw away. Saturday evenings at
Gokul
’s become a regular event on the gay social calendar of Bombay in the 1980s.

From the beginning of the 1990s, private dance parties began to catch on. These were either hosted at the homes of rich volunteers, in rented bungalows on the beaches of faraway Madh Island or even in school premises over weekends. The private party phase coincided with the decline in the popularity of
Gokul
and the rise of Bombay’s second gay hangout—Voodoo, a dance club, once again located in South Bombay’s touristy Colaba area. Unlike
Gokul
’s casual and conversation oriented atmosphere, Saturday nights at Voodoo were loud, brash, noisy and for all practical purposes, standing only—an appropriate metaphor for the post-liberalization spell that urban middle class India was undergoing at that time. One of my interviewees, Kabir, described it as his own ‘mini Stonewall’ that ‘marked a whole explosion on the scene….’.

KABIR: GAY PEOPLE WERE MORE CONFIDENT AND DID NOT JUST WANT

TO BE MEETING IN A DINGY BACK ROOM OF A BAR ON A SATURDAY

NIGHT. WE HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF BEING MONETARILY AFFLUENT AS

WELL. WE HAD MONEY TO SPEND AND WANTED TO PARTY.

While Voodoo continues to be popular even today, the large private parties came to a halt, largely due to what is now known as the White Party fiasco of 1999. The White Party was billed as the biggest gay party ever to be organized in Bombay. The organizer—an heir to one of the country’s large business empires—had cut no corners to ensure that his outdoor event was ultra luxurious, with firework displays, exotic flower arrangements, ice sculptures, floating water bodies, hundreds of scented candles and a male strip tease performance as the grand finale.

Unfortunately, the police raided the party in large numbers just as the strip tease was in full swing, after having received a mysterious tip-off.

The organizer was arrested and while his family pulled enough strings to ensure that the media reportage of the police raid made no mention From this Perspective…
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of the fact that it was a gay party, the fear and humiliation experienced by all those present at the venue ensured that nothing on that scale was ever organized again in the city.

Parallel to the social scene, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city witnessed the growth of political and sexual health oriented activism, largely symbolized by the Ashok Row Kavi led
Bombay Dost
9 magazine, established in 1990 and the Humsafar Trust10 (1991). These grew in tandem with and often, in close interaction with diasporic south Asian groups like
Trikone
in the US and
Shakti
in England. Humsafar’s gravitation towards an activist and health focussed agenda did not find favour among a certain section of Bombay’s gay identified homosexuals—their sense of alienation and quest for a purely
social
interaction space, together with the fortuitous arrival of the Internet led to the birth of Gay Bombay.

When the Internet began in India in 1995, several gay men in India began to subscribe to an email list called
Khush-
list. Founded in 1992, this list (which continues to exist today) was then the oldest and most established online discussion space for LBGT identified South Asians.

However, due to the location of most of its participants, the list predominantly discussed issues that were related to the lives of diasporic Indians from India and the UK, something that its subscribers located in India could not relate to. A few enthusiastic Bombay-based members of this list decided to create a separate list, modeled on
Khush-
list, that would discuss India-centric issues and thus Gay Bombay was launched on 31 December 1998.

The founders of the list had not planned for the group members to interact offline. However, most of the list’s initial members were from Bombay and some of them decided to meet weekly on a trial basis. Many of these members had previously attended events organized by the Humsafar Trust and had either found them threatening or too stringent in their tone. They saw in their Internet-organized weekly meetings, a possibility of creating a social space that was non-threatening and also non-HIV focussed, as they felt that Humsafar Trust was beginning to become. Initially, these meetings were conducted over tea at the homes of some of these regular list members, but it was soon decided to open them up to the other list members as well. They followed a system of first assembling at a restaurant11 and then moving on to the official meet venue. As the meetings continued, one of the group’s
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expatriate American members, who was soon to leave India because of the completion of his posting, offered his spacious house to the group as a party venue. The experience was so good that the group members demanded an encore.

Due to the networking and organizational skills of one of their new members (a food and beverages industry professional), the group managed to host another large party at a centrally located abandoned warehouse in the city. It was decided that the party would be free, with a voluntary contribution to be accepted at the door, and subsidized by some of the group members, who chipped in with a thousand rupees each.12

The huge success of this party too, along with a cash surplus from door collections, led the group to realize that they had a good thing going.

The next step was to have an event at a more public space; a small bar located in the central Bombay locality of Dadar agreed to let its premises be used. The Group and other bars and nightclubs started following suit soon, once their owners realized how successful these events were becoming. Today, the Gay Bombay parties are a regular fixture on the city’s social scene, taking place every fortnight at well-established trendy nightclubs.13

The different facets of Gay Bombay have grown in different ways over the years. The list, described to me as ‘the pillar of the community’

by its moderator has over 5,000 members (January 2007) and gets a healthy average of 450 postings per month. People who have newly joined the list first have their messages moderated. They gain direct posting privileges once the moderator deems it fit, usually, a few weeks after they join. The list has strict rules that the moderator follows diligently.

For instance, no pornography and no classifieds. Some of the most common threads of discussion according to the moderator are those that deal with the topics of safe sex, relationships, married gay men, jokes, parties and cinema. Many times non-gay issues get discussed also.

The Gay Bombay website is India’s main website relating to information on gay issues. Depending on their popularity or necessity, various sections have been added (like Gay Bashing and Coming Out Stories) or dropped (like
Ghar
, aimed at people who were looking for gay flat mates) over the years. The most popular sections are the Calendar and Events sections.

From this Perspective…
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The film festivals started off slowly—the venue for the first event was a hall in the distant western suburb of Kandivili and about 50 people showed up. However, when the venue was shifted to more accessible halls and college-based auditoriums the attendance more than doubled and currently, all screenings here are houseful. The films screened are mostly Western films, full and short length features and documentaries, without explicit frontal nudity and sex.

Special GB Sunday meeting events with themes related to marriage or the family, useful events like those relating to financial planning, or the much-awaited parents’ meets garner a good attendance of between 40 to 80 individuals or so. The regular weekly events usually manage to have about 20 individuals attending them. The group also sporadically organizes different outings, like hikes to historical caves, kite flying events, food expeditions, etc. and so forth. Attendees at the GB events include a cross section of gay men living and working in Bombay city as well as out of town visitors. At the cost of seeming repetitious, I will say once again that what I constitute as my ethnoscape—that is English-speaking, upper middle class, largely gay-identified men—represents just a fraction of the larger queer population in Bombay city. There are several other queer communities, like
hijras, kothis
and lesbians, each with its own rich past and complex present.

As it stands today, Gay Bombay is not a formally registered entity.14

While participation is encouraged from all, direct administration of the group’s activities are carried out by a small number of members that currently call themselves GBAG (Gay Bombay Advisory Group) or the Core Group, whose genesis lay in the original bunch of people who had contributed for the first dance party. Over the time, some of these original contributors dropped out and currently, membership comprises 15 individuals all of who reside in Bombay. This residency is a prerequisite to be considered for admission into this inner circle. Other requirements include a deep interest in the work of Gay Bombay and an ability to get along with all the other members. The members have spread out the various tasks among themselves based on their personal preferences.

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Gay