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Whistling in the Dark: Twenty-one
Queer Interviews THERE haven’t been too many books, documenting the real issues and lives of gays in India. One of the first anthologies was Yaarana, published by Penguin India in 1999. Some of the other books on the topic are Facing the Mirror, an anthology of lesbian and bisexual women edited by Ashwini Suktankar; Same Sex Love in India by Ruth Vanita and Salim Kidwai; Queer by Arvind Narain, Because I have a Voice by Gautam Bhan and Narain and Loving Women by Maya Sharma. Also notable are Sexualities, a collection of essays edited by Nivedita Menon and The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India edited by Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya.
That’s actually not a whole lot of writing or research on the alternate sexuality options exercised by a hefty percentage of people in the vastly populated India. The numbers add up when one factors in the following statistics. The number of gays, lesbians and transgender individuals in India are 70 million, according to an estimate by`A0the Humsafar Trust and the estimated percentage of sexually active males in India who have had sex with men at least once are 25 per cent of the total male population in India, according to a National AIDS Control Organisation health survey. Recognising the issue is a beginning in conservative India, where same-sex relationships are illegal and almost sacrilegious. The 145-year-old colonial Indian Penal Code clearly describes a same sex relationship as an "unnatural offence" and so coming out is a very hard option for people who live in a conservative and traditional society. Most of these men and women suffer from extremely low esteem and even feel that something is gravely wrong with them. Their homosexuality is regarded as an illness that needs to be cured by doctors or quacks. R. Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma believe that homosexual rights are an incredibly pressing humanitarian concern and through the book, seek to create an environment to change the present scenario and grant these rights. The interviews challenge people’s deeply held cultural beliefs and also create an environment to mobilise support groups, which play a "yeoman role, both socially and psychologically, in eradicating the misery that characterises the life of an average gay person." R. Raj Rao also wrote The Boyfriend. He has faced obstacles as an educationist and writer, is professor in the Department of English, University of Pune. Dibyajyoti Sarma wrote his M.Phil thesis on the "Western Queer Theory" and how it differs from the Indian gay experience. Whistling in the Dark is a series of interviews which focus on issues like sexuality, sexual identity, marriage, gay marriage, heteronormativity, gay utopia, gay activism, gay bashing, police atrocities and the archaic laws. The editors have carefully chosen their interviewees so that we get an account of a cross-section of society. So, readers meet university professors, gay rights activists and students as well as rub shoulders with blue-collar men such as office boys, auto-rickshaw drivers and even under-trials who have served prison sentences. The narratives in the book are a result of the incisive questions put to the interviewees by the editors. They open the reader’s eyes and minds to a world that is so different to theirs yet all around them. While the book would be a must-have for gay activists and organisations working in the fields of sexuality studies, feminism and alternative literature but at the same time, it has a much wider appeal than just those. In the book we get a peep into the private lives of Sushil Patil, "a common, middle class, Maharashtrian person, born and brought up in a taluka in one of the state’s most backward areas, and who is a college professor"; 25-year old Manish Pawar, who works as a ward boy in a private hospital in Kopargaon and came to terms with his sexuality after he read an "agony aunt" column and Mauree Mootoo, the student of literature from Mauritious, who believes that coming out of the closet is important, "we should be what we are and assert ourselves for what we are." Then there is Thomas Waugh, the Canadian who teaches film studies at Concordia University and has definite views on same sex marriages (legal in Canada). There is also the HIV positive Narendra Binner who just could not resist the glamorous men in uniform; the uber masculine Avinash Gaitonde, who finds it "a bit disgusting to sleep with women" and Darius Ankleshwaria, a musician and pianist who was accused of paedophilia with a 12-year-old boy. Not just a dry-as-dust series of interviews, these are real-life stories of real people, living all around us, yet feeling separate from the mainstream. A few of them break out but the majority lives two lives, and can give expression to their true self only sporadically and in a clandestine manner. This book gives them a voice.
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few books on gay fiction have come up every now and then. Whistling
in the Dark is the latest and studies the gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender people as well as those with confused sexualities. It deals
with the struggles that have gone through to be able to fulfil their
sexual requirements.