Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (37 page)

‘A Single Girl at a Gay Party’,
Island
, February 1992.

145. Kushalrani Gulab, ‘It’s Raining Men’,
Times of India: Bombay Times
, 23 July 2001.

146. Shobha Dé, ‘The Power of Pink’.
The Week
, 26 September 2004. http://www.the-week.

com/24sep26/columns_home.htm

Also

see—

(
a
) Gaurav De, ‘The Pink Rupee’,
Indian Express
(Bombay), 12 November 2000 and (
b
) Vishwas Kulkarni, ‘Gay and Abandoned’,
Mid-day
, 31 August 2004. http://ww1.

mid-day.com/entertainment/news/2004/august/91248.htm

147. Personal conversation with Ashok Row Kavi, Bombay, India, 24 August 2004.

148. ‘Star-TV Suspends TV Show After Row’,
TeleSatellite Magazine
, 14 May 1995. http://

www.funet.fi/index/esi/TELE-Satellite/TS950514.html

149. Cadre members of the right wing political party, the Shiv Sena.

150. ‘Sena Men, Gay Activists Spar on Live TV’,
Times of India
(Bombay), 26 June 2004.

151. ‘Jassi Forges Ahead with a Bold Step’,
Hindustan Times
(New Delhi), 4 December 2003.

152. The advertisement appeared in the
Times of India
(Bombay), 20 July 1991.

153. Arvind Kala,
Invisible Minority: The Unknown World of the Indian Homosexual
(New Delhi: Dynamic Books, 1991).

154. Pedro Menezes, ‘On Gay Street’,
The Daily
, 5 July 1992.

155. Kajal Basu, ‘A Closet View’,
India Today
,
15
June 1992.

Media Matters
215

156. The author prefers to use this expression as he feels that in India, like with several other non-Western countries, concepts of ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’ may not be applicable to men that have homosexual intercourse.

157. Ruth Vanita, ‘Introduction: Modern Indian Materials’, in Vanita and Kidwai (2001), op. cit., p. 212.

158. Ratti Rakesh (Ed.),
A Lotus of Another Color: An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and
Lesbian Experience
(Boston: Alyson Publications, 1993), p. 15.

159. See—

(
a
)
The Golden Gate
(New York: Random House, 1986).

(
b
)
A Suitable Boy
(New York: Harper Collins, 1993).

160. See the short story ‘Artha’ in
Love and Longing in Bombay
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1997).

161. See Firdaus Kanga,
Trying to Grow
(London: Bloomsbury, 1990).

162. Vanita and Kidwai (2001), op. cit., pp. xxiv.

163. Maya Sharma,
Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India
(New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2006).

164. Bina Fernandez (Ed.),
Humjinsi: A Resource Book on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights in
India
(Bombay: India Center for Human Rights and Law, 2002).

165.
Human Rights Violations Against Sexual Minorities in India
(Bangalore, India: PUCl-K, 2001). Accessible on the World Wide Web—http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Gender/2003/

sexual-minorities.htm

166.
Human Rights Violations Against the Transgender Community
(Bangalore, India: PUCl-K, 2003).
Report summary accessible on the World Wide Web—http://www.pucl.

org/Topics/Gender/2004/transgender.htm

167. Eliot Weinberger, ‘Introduction’ in J. R. Ackerley (2000 reprint)
Hindoo Holiday: An
Indian Journal
(New York: New York Review Books [1932]), p. xii.

168. J.R. Ackerley, op. cit., pp. 239–240.

169. Shakuntala Devi,
The World of Homosexuals
(New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1977), p. vi.

170. Ibid.

171. Ibid, p. 16.

172. Ibid, p. 20.

173. Ibid, p. 17.

174. Ibid, pp. 1–10.

175. Ibid, pp. 127–142.

176. Ibid, pp. 105–106.

177. The Queering Bollywood website (http://media.opencultures.net/queer/) is an excellent resource for articles, reviews, web resources, and list of Indian films with queer possibilities.

178. Hoshang Merchant (Ed.),
Yaarana: Gay Writing from India
(New Delhi: Penguin India, 1999), p. xxiii.

179. Shohini Ghosh, ‘The Closet is Ajar’,
Outlook,
30 May 2005. http://www.outlookindia.com/

full.asp?fodname=20050530&fname=GShohini+Ghosh+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1

180. See—

(
a
) Gayathri Gopinath, ‘Queering Bollywood: Alternative Sexualities in Popular Indian Cinema’,
Journal of Homosexuality
(New York: Haworth Press, 2000) Vol. 39 (3/4) pp. 283–97.

216
Gay

Bombay

(
b
) R. Raj Rao, ‘Memories Pierce the Heart: Homoeroticism, Bollywood-Style’,
Journal
of Homosexuality
(New York: Haworth Press, 2000), Vol. 39(3/4), pp. 299–306.

(
c
) Ashok Row Kavi, ‘The Changing Image of the Hero in Hindi Films’,
Journal of
Homosexuality
(New York: Haworth Press, 2000), Vol. 39(3/4), pp. 307–12.

181. For example, T. Muraleedharan and his work on male bonding and desire in Malayalam cinema. See—

‘Disrupted Desires: Male Bonds in Mohanlal Films’,
Deep Focus
, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2001, pp. 65–75.

‘Crisis in Desire: A Queer Reading of Cinema and Desire in Kerala’, in Gautam Bhan and Arvind Narrain (Eds),
Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India
(New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005), pp. 70–88.

182. Categories like ‘first’ are often contested and ambiguous. I am aware that
Badnam
Basti
(‘The Infamous Neighbourhood’, 1971) had a bisexual gay lead character and an ambiguous ending, which suggests that he might have had a ‘happily ever after’

with another man. Likewise, the 1983 Hindi film
Holi
touches upon the subject of homophobia in a boys college, where an effeminate boy is driven to suicide by the violent harassment by his dorm-mates. However, I consider
Mast
Kalander
as the first film with an explicit gay character—and it opened the door, even if slightly, for others to follow.

183. Gayatri Sinha, ‘Bollywood Goes Gay With Abandon’,
Indian Express Magazine
(Bombay), 21 April 1991.

184. See Rashid Kidwai, ‘Real Cheer Dims MLA Jeers’,
The Telegraph
, 18 May 2005. http://

www.telegraphindia.com/1050519/asp/nation/story_4758092.asp

See ‘Eunuch MP Takes Seat’,
BBC News
,
6
March 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/

world/south_asia/668042.stm

185. On
Fire
—

See Praveen Swami, ‘Furore Over a Film’,
Frontline
, 19 December 1998–1 January 1999. http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1526/15260430.htm

‘Sainiks Spew Venom Against Dilip Kumar for Backing Fire’,
Indian Express
, 13 December 1998. http://www.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19981213/34750024.html

‘Firepariksha—Replace Radha with Shabana’,
Indian Express
, 14 December 1998.

http://www.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19981214/34850474.html

Suhasini Haider, ‘What’s Wrong With My Film? Why are People Making Such a Fuss?’,
Rediff.com
http://www.rediff.com/entertai/1998/dec/10fire.htm Sonia Trikha, ‘Since Cricket Issues Didn’t Work, People Picked on Fire, says Deepa’,

Indian Express
,
6 December 1998. http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19981206/

34050764.html

For various academic debates about
Fire
and its reception, see—

(
a
) Geeta Patel, ‘On Fire: Sexuality and its Incitements’ in Vanita Ruth (Ed.),
Queering India: Same-sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society
(New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 222–233.

(
b
) Monica Bachmann, ‘After the Fire’, in Vanita Ruth (2002),
op. cit.
, pp. 235–243.

(
c
) Shohini Ghosh, ‘From the Frying Pan into the Fire’, in
Communalism Combat
(Bombay, India: Sabrang Communications), January 1999, p. 19.

(
d
) Ratna Kapur, ‘Cultural Politics of Fire’, in
Economic and Political Weekly
(Bombay, India), 22 May 1999, p. 1297.

(
e
) Jigna Desai, ‘Homo on the Range: Mobile and Global Sexualities’, in
Social Text
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002),
Vol. 20(4), pp. 65–89.

Media Matters
217

On

Girlfriend
, see—

‘Sena Turns the Heat on Girlfriend’,
Times of India
(Bombay), 15 June 2004.

Srinivas Prasad and Sujata Anandan, ‘Gay Groups Join Chorus Against Girlfriend’,
Hindustan Times
(New Delhi), 16 June 2004.

186. The characters in the film are not really gay, but only pretend to be so, much to the disapproval of Kantaben, the housekeeper. The actors playing these two characters camped it up as emcees of the annual Filmfare Awards in 2004—a show that was broadcast to millions of viewers over television. Gay viewers I have spoken to, as well as the Internet discussions surrounding the film and the awards function have been polarized—some people saw these as stereotype indulging and mildly mocking, others found them to be liberating.

187. See Ziya Us Salam, ‘Bold But Clichéd’,
Hindu
, 18 June 2004. http://www.hindu.com/

thehindu/fr/2004/06/18/stories/2004061801190100.htm

Parul Gupta, ‘Bollywood Rocks, Both Ways’,
Times of India
, 15 September 2003.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?msid=183143

188. Message posted to the Gay Bombay Yahoo! Group by Vgd67, ‘Gay Reference Audit for Bollywood (GRAB)—Seeking Volunteers’ on 22 May 2007.

189. ‘
My Brother Nikhil’
,
Outlook
, 11 April 2005. http://outlookindia.com/showtime.

asp?fodname=20050411

190. For example—Priyanka Haldipur, ‘
My Brother Nikhil’, Deccan Herald
, 27 March 2005.

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar272005/mr1.asp

Mayank Shekhar, ‘Film Review—
My Brother Nikhil’, Mid-day
, 25 March 2005. http://ww1.

mid-day.com/hitlist/2005/march/106267.htm

191. There could be several reasons for this lack of moral panic this time around. The fact that this was a ‘multiplex’ film (released to a select urban audience), the fact that the gay relationship was completely avoided in the promos enabling it to slip under the cultural police radar, the conjecture that because the film was about the men and not women, it was less threatening to the morality brigade and finally it’s promotion by a phalanx of celebrity cricketers and film personalities, as an AIDS-sensitive goody-goody type of film.

192. ‘Gay Lord’,
Asian Age
(Bombay), 10 January 2004.

193. See—Jerry Pinto, ‘Cinema Comes Out of the Closet’,
Times of India:
Sunday Review
(Bombay), 26 January 1997.

Shibu Thomas, ‘India Finally Enters Gay World’,
Asian Age
(Bombay), 31 January 2003.

194. I am only covering films made in India here—there have been several films made by the Indian diaspora, mainly in the US and UK…for a list of some of these, see—

http://web.mit.edu/cms/betweenthelines/summaries.html

At the time of writing this essay, one notes that NRI (non resident Indian) film makers seem to have been bitten by the same-sex bug. There are at least three projects under production that have gay or lesbian characters that are central to the story—Soman Chainani’s,
Love Marriage
, Manan Katohora’s,
When Kiran Met
Karen
and Shamin Sharif ’s,
Can’t Think Straight
.

5

Straight Expectations

Interviews, Interpretations, Interventions

In this chapter, I have clustered the responses of my interview subjects around key themes that pervade this book and which I will further address in the concluding chapter. I conducted 32 interviews, of which, seven were conducted exclusively online, five were conducted both online and offline and three were begun online but completed offline. The remaining 17 were both arranged and conducted completely offline.

Individuals interviewed for this book comprised professionals and students from different fields (law, academia, medicine, media, stock trading, engineering). The age groupings were as follows—13 were between 20 to 29 years of age, 11 were between 30 to 39, six were between 40

to 49 and one was in his fifties. Half of those interviewed had graduate degrees (either Masters, postgraduate diplomas or Ph.Ds), 25 per cent held undergraduate Bachelor degrees and the others were continuing college students at either the undergraduate or graduate level. Five of the respondents were located out of India (in the US, Canada and UK).

The others were from within India. Of these, most (80 per cent) were located in Bombay and the others across other metropolitan cities like New Delhi, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Six respondents were members of Gay Bombay’s managing committee—the
core group
, while seven respondents were actively involved in activism or gay organizations other than Gay Bombay, which included the Humsafar Trust and
Bombay Dost
magazine, protest rallies, workshops, legal activism and documentation.

The remaining respondents were not directly involved in organizing Gay Bombay community events or activism at large.

Two thirds of the respondents declared that they were single. Of the others, seven were in same-sex relationship while three were in heterosexual marriage relationships. Half of the respondents were
selectively out
Straight Expectations
219

(mostly to close friends, but not family and or at the workplace). Of the remaining, three were
closeted
; the others were completely
out
to their families as well as at their work places. Over half of the respondents classified themselves as Hindu. Among other religions represented were Islam (three respondents), Christianity (three respondents), Zoroastrian-ism (two respondents), Jainism (two respondents) and Buddhism (one respondent). Three respondents declared that they had no religious affiliation whatsoever, three considered themselves to be atheist and one person declared himself agnostic. I think that my ethnoscape is reasonably diverse on most counts; however, it may seem weak in terms of the number of married gay men interviewed (only three) and those who consider themselves completely closeted (three). I found it very hard to find willing interviewees in both these categories, either online or offline.