NEW | Book Review | Rainbow Warriors of India | Parasu Karimbattil

Cover of the book 

 

 

 

Rainbow Warriors of India by Hoshang Merchant and Akshay K. Rath is a first-of-its-kind book even 

in its very conception. It gives us brief sketches of the life and contributions of twenty-two gay and 

lesbian individuals in modern India, who have, with courage and creativity, contributed greatly to making 

life more livable and self-expression more feasible for Queer people in this country.

Starting with the introduction, we notice certain things that set the book apart from other works in the corpus of Queer and Queer-related writing in India today. One feature is the constant awareness of the linkage between the gay/ lesbian individual and their context; i.e. the Indian nation. Hoshang starts with the proclamation early on that, “I have matured as a gay person, but the nation has not matured in the way it treats its gays.”

This linkage between the individual and the national context is iterated throughout the book. The reading down of Section 377 by the Delhi High Court in 2009; the repeal of the reading down by the Supreme Court in 2013; the eventual irreversible repeal of the section by the same Apex Court in 2018; nationalist Indians fighting the British but constructing a predominantly patriarchal, heterosexual, monolithic nation based on the Orientalist rediscovery of the Hindu past; Independent India’s highly qualified acceptance of gay artists despite their tremendous contributions to the nation; the prevalence of masochistic protagonists in popular Hindi cinema; the four ashramas or stages in the Hindu trajectory of life that give a wide berth to father-son conflicts of any kind; the castigation of feminine wisdom in Indian traditions; the rediscovery of such wisdom by lesbian warriors and the big- city Indian nightmare lived by call centre workers in the post-globalization era, all these find mention in the book. Indeed, none of the points of intersection between gay life and the life of the nation seem to escape Hoshang’s roving, piercing eye!

The book is divided into three parts: Part I, titled ‘Forerunners’ gives us essential knowledge on early gay heroes like Ram Gopal (the dancer), Sultan Padamsee and Giti Thadani; Part II, titled ‘Contemporaries’ is about path makers like Ashok Row Kavi, Ruth Vanita, Saleem Kidwai, Rituparno Ghosh and Onir, who took forward the project of making the Queer visible in the national artistic and social sphere and Part III, titled ‘The Future – Past’ throws light on activists like Mahesh Dattani, Amruta Patil, Navtej Johar and Manvendra Singh Gohil, who established Queer as a byword for excellence in diverse spheres.

As in the case of Yaraana: Gay Writing from India (1999), Hoshang’s pioneering work, the introduction takes in a majestic sweep of history and is a veritable constellation of quotable insights, of which I will share just a few:

“When both gay and straight populations of the nation negotiate, collaborate and mend India, then it will be truly be called a liberated nation.”

“The learned judge said gay – rights legislation currently around the world does not apply to India. What does India’s Mars Mission, initiated by the West, matter to India or modern technology?”

“There are approximately fifty million gays in India. That’s not a minority.”

 

“As sex is both for procreation and recreation (and since we have had enough procreation with 1.3 billion Indians and counting) let’s have a little recreation since we are celebrating a new India with its rainbow warriors.”

“The dishonesty of the closet, which makes daily living easy, comes with a price. [It] imposes an unbearable psychological burden on the closet gay, which dissipates itself in homophobia.”

“We go mad when we deny our true nature. Of course, the victimizer is ultimately the most pathetic; at least, the victim has a chance of spiritual redemption through suffering.”

It is also important to note that Merchant and Rath refuse to be judgemental either about closet gays or straight people. This book is marked by the fresh breath of empathy and the gracious acknowledgement of the generous: from Indira Gandhi’s Padma Shri to Bhupen Khakhar to the Indian media’s liberal approach to LGBT+ issues, although wry references to the free market’s desire for the pink dollar driving global capitalism’s acceptance of Queer people indicate that this acknowledgement comes from grace but not naïveté. Indeed, if there was one word that could be used to characterize this book, it would be “generous.”

                                                                        

The editors 

The first statement I have quoted above shows the authors have a collaborative approach, not just in the production of this book, but also in the liberation of the nation and the human race; in making the human common integrate the world with love as the true end of the celebration of plurality and diversity. This is reminiscent of Hoshang’s statement in his introduction to Yaraana, where he expresses enthusiastic agreement with Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and diplomat, who said that human liberation is the ultimate precinct of art.

Some have criticised this book for having too many warriors from Mumbai alone. Some readers may point to other limitations. The authors anticipate these objections and meet them with honesty:

That our icons are upper class, upper caste, Western or convent educated is not an accident. It is so out of necessity. The persons with a stigma grave enough to mark them out but not grave enough to cast them out of the pack to face scarcity will act on their innermost sexual desires and express them on their fields of activity [ . . . ] A woman or man who does not set store by the future can alone gamble with her/ his present.

Yet there are statements in the book that make it clear that this currently unavoidable bias in the selection of icons need not be forever. People without icons and without a history can always create and make these things. The authors have not failed to notice the importance of a person like Ashley Tellis, whom they have elevated to the status of icon only on the grounds of his nay-saying and courageous living-by-and-for-resistance.

All in all, Rainbow Warriors of India is one of the must-read books to come out into the world in 2024, for the wealth of information it gives us about gay icons in an orderly manner, for its highly readable writing, for its numerous penetrating insights not just about gay life, but also life in India as a whole and for the generosity of spirit that informs every page of it. Future editions of this book could be more expansive, accommodate a greater number of warriors and have a more pan-Indian representation. 

NEW | Poetry | Transmigration & Other States | Lina Krishnan

Dawn, by David Boyle

 

Deathwatch Beetle

As the breath fails, the hold grows

Aaj chutti hai? Is it your day off, she asks

Our presence at this hour is unexpected

But for her to have noticed, equally so

 

These night watches have their own rhythm

Conversations begin and dwindle

But the voice seems more lucid

Than it has been for weeks

Memories crowd the mind

Of past energy, activity, zest

 

A mother packs so much in a lifetime

More than her children will ever know

Her son now gives her water, spoon by spoon

 

The young nurse, off duty, plays war games on the phone

Youth is mercifully unaware, of the battle in this very room

She has fought this for days

Now the hours take over

What will the morning bring?

 

 

Epiphany

 

No one depends on me today

I can sleep

I can write

I can plan a trip

Why then, do I feel so bereft?

The hand I held, held me

 

Transmigration

Punarapi jananam/punarapi maranam goes the song

The cycle of birth, then death, then birth again

The ideal state is nirvana; no rebirth

To be rid of existence itself

 

In nature there is no such quest

All happens as it should

The leaf dries, then a new red one is seen

It turns green, lives gloriously, withers

And a new leaf arrives

 

Whence our particular restlessness?

 

Lina Krishnan is a poet and artist, based in India. 

New | Poetry | Stephanie V Sears

artwork by David Boyle

                                     Discreet Romance

 

The cathedral waves a bell

Like a handkerchief

To a new warmth

In a blue ordained sky.

 

People wiggle like puppies

Across Munster Platz

With their arms full of windows,

Houses watch bicyclists

Bump over cobblestones.

 

Tramways reach out

Green across bridges

With a come hither stare

From bank to bank.

 

The streets have begun

To manufacture early Spring.

 

Yet down below,

In the Rhine’s misted throat

A smell of feather and steel

Claims all at once

A flow and a stillness:

 

 

Lorelei’s embrace

Of life and death,

And time’s desuetude

Through her fluvial hair.

 

A chapel at an alley’s end

Blinkered with cypresses,

Gone mute, floats silver

By grace of cloudlets

And an allegory breeze.

 

Feel death beside you

Clinging to a scent of secrecy,

 

That you too, may rise

Above the clamor

Like this flower-box city

And evaporate

Into a synod of spirit.

 

 

 

 

                  High Places

 

Antwerp wears grey felt to play winter.

Close by, the mercury swing of the sea

responds to the city’s merchant ardor,

laps through alleys and squares.

At the train station, billowed with Monet steam,

Antwerp does not wonder at me, nor am I startled

by the engineered rotations of pickpockets,

trains and clock innards, and their nimble tricks,

turned cosmic for these star-driven eyes.

I dive into the daguerreotypes of streets

harnessed with gold, whetted by prosperity.

Where fog errs, detachment proves seductive.

Gavroche minces hearts for fun,

invoking delights of pain.

Fomented by the Scheldt River mist,

superstition raises dampness

to a mood of remembrance.

The bone structure of tall facades

has twilight enclaves, garrets of mystery:

Nordlich, del norte, septentrional

Where love is an absence,

a draft of angelism throughout.

The body is forced to evaporate

in ways it is unused to,

up to slippery places of lost and found,

 

to under the gables,

sigils of eternity,

while below, a passerby stirs

a cold pang of abandon.

 

New | Poetry | Jobeth Warjri

                                                              

Photo: Arshi Zama

When the Coffee Table is the Only Thing That’s Stationary

The only difference between us

is that you live in a house whose tentacles

I have coveted and wished to make my own

 

I break commandments 10/10 to avoid feeling lonely

stow away the broken parts among my clothes

then blame my mother for her audacity to glue

 

them back together into something sensible:

a heavy downpour during the monsoon, maybe.

Sometimes, a face stares out from the arterial roads

 

of a mirror above the bathroom sink

I choose to keep my head down for fear of what

might greet me through the countenance of possible futures

 

I nurture their unsightly stems in white pots

cast a fishing line into their rippling waters…

I look to my cats for the wisdom of living in the moment.

 

Permanence is something I cling to, in my own way:

I plant my feet across from you on our coffee table

 

with my back resting against a shaky plastic chair.

 

 

Absences

It is not that the curtains miss

the hand that pulls them apart

or the rim of a cup the

lips that drink its content

 

It is not that there is a depressed

space on the bed where the cat sleeps

or that the laundry folds in awkward

positions than what it is used to

 

It is this and so much more—

the rearrangement of thought, of body

around a territory filled with only air

the counting of things as they should be

 

the strangeness of what was home.

 

The Quiet

(for the women in Manipur)

You need to be quiet in order to write.

You need to hold the pauses between breaths

and exploit them for what you know they do not say

poetry is breathing when the musician plays a note

that just about touches the threshold of sound

and, in so doing, awakens the mind to silence.

 

 

Today, a woman mourns for her daughter.

You just about catch the wind in her cry

enough to hesitate calling it poetry.

 

The Nation is a Construct

It’s about the Spirit and in whose body it resides

I know this because father said so

 

our hands clasped together after fumbling

for words through onion-skin pages

 

we learned of Abraham whose descendants now

etch streaks across the desert to contain their souls

 

then I met you and thought, for a moment, how you

and yours proclaimed freedom over lands

 

within the borders of a woman whose

milk tasted of bitter turmeric and spices

 

you called her MATA, elsewhere an

acronym for keeping out undesirables

 

I dreamt of the progenitors of this law,

white and absolute in their claims to rule

 

so I asked who is this for: the earth,

the sky, the seas, the soil on which I stand?

 

maybe, being mortals, we place

limits to what is actually eternal.

 

The Paradox of Nothingness

To write about it would mean

to give to it what it is not:            

the magic swirl of letters across

a page that swallows universes

the many loops that mean only to

hang tender adjectives through a hole.

 

The Japanese have turned it

into an art eating under

pink blossoms that, decades

ago, adorned fighter jets.

These same petals shroud our air,

makes the quiet between us riotous.

 

We watch children release

its helium-filled symbols

into a dispassionate, blue sheet;

their curly lines receding into wind. 

While biographers among us arrest its

sense over and over with black ink.

 

We grow inarticulate

trying to capture its mood

among a singer’s lyric, claiming

her intonations as our own:

in the backseat of a car, her

heartaches are hers no longer.

 

Maybe, we could solve

its arithmetic by drawing 0s

where our breath should be

only that would imply life

imperilled though it may be

to the soul of a poem

 

that says and means nothing.