Secret city and more

Before I go any further, let me wish all my readers a very Happy New Year with the fervent wish that 2024 erases all the misery, tensions and violence that ripped apart 2023. Let us not forget the number of elections that are going to take place this year because they will ignite the hate, anger and frustration of those who will lose. Already, Bangladesh, that will hold its national election today, has seen the curious case of its Nobel Prize winning economist in jail. Mohammad Yunus, widely hailed as the person credited with bringing Bangladesh to its present level of prosperity with his work on micro-finance, is today considered an offender by the Sheikh Hasina government, for reasons difficult to fathom.

Matters are no better in India. Half our Parliament is empty of its elected representatives who belong to the Opposition benches, and each party feels threatened by the ruling party as several political leaders face the Enforcement Directorate or the CBI. In the US, Donald Trump, who leads in the popular ratings, is also at the receiving end of judicial probes… The list of vendetta politics can go on and on. And all this while, more and more of West Asia is being dragged into the Israel-Gaza conflict. Europe has reached a terminal level of fatigue with the Russia-Ukraine war and Biden is no longer able to motivate his western partners to keep doling out aid to Ukraine. So, there is a lot that can make 2024 even worse than 2023, but let’s pray that better sense prevails.

Let’s now move to a brief trip I made to Panchkula a few weeks ago to participate in a lit fest hosted by the Bhavan Vidyalaya there. The event was to honour the memory of an old friend, Sardar Kulwant Singh, who raised the funds to set up this fine institute. When we lived in Chandigarh, almost 30 years ago, Panchkula was a satellite town in the process of developing. We only passed it on our way to and fro the railway station or to spend time at the Mughal Gardens in Pinjore. So, imagine my delight at discovering that it is now a flourishing town with a vibrant life of its own. Sadly, we did not visit Chandigarh at all this time because Panchkula kept me busy. I would have loved to visit The Tribune office and surprise the people there but will have to make another trip to meet them and the old friends in Chandigarh who I missed meeting. However, I was so chuffed to meet some readers who said many kind things about my column. After years of writing it, believe me, it is a big boost to my ego.

I want now to write about a topic that we in India seldom talk about: homosexuality, or same-sex love. Is it not curious that whereas we all have some personal acquaintance with people who are gay, we shy away from publicly acknowledging the fact if it is someone whom we are related to or have a close social relationship with? As I look back at my life, I can now clearly see some uncles or cousins who were gay but were unable to come out of the closet because there were such strict taboos then about even speaking of it. They were either objects of ridicule for being effeminate or avoided at social celebrations. In fact, there was not even a proper word or term (such as LGBTQ+) prevalent then to describe those who had a different sexual orientation other than the vile gutter language that was used also for genitalia. When you consider how open our ancient texts were and how such characters appear naturally in our religious texts as well, we have to admit that colonialism may be a reason for this prudery.

Victorian and Edwardian England set the rules for ‘polite’ words, so we either have highly Sanskritised terms for homosexuality, or gutter-speak from pornography. Incidentally, the most repressed societies, our own included, are the largest consumers of pornography. This is why the decriminalisation of homosexuality needs to be hailed, despite what the prudes have to say. I must recommend to you a recent book that a friend from our Punjab days has written, titled ‘The Secret City’. The author, Robin Gupta, was a part of the IAS and one of its most gentle, well-mannered and urbane members. His book, which I presume is semi-autobiographical, is about a community forced to live a secret life. In Delhi, I was aware of some parties held at private farmhouses of the rich, where such celebrations were described by straight-laced people as ‘orgies’, sniffing disapprovingly as they said so.

However, it is the poorer sections that bear the worst form of mental and physical cruelty for not being ‘normal’. Gupta’s book gives us an insight into both these groups and into the savage brutality that was unleashed by the police when they rounded up such ‘deviants’ from the Central Park in Delhi’s Connaught Place, where gay people meet under the cloak of darkness. ‘The Secret City’ is a sensitively-written novel about Delhi’s unnamed city, its dark self. The book is based on real characters, according to the author, and so has an authenticity to what is possibly the first book on Delhi’s gay world. Read it to see a disturbing reality.