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Ive tried my best, to fit in as I canIn crowds of rust and
wrinkled old masks:Ive dotted all the is and slashed all the
tsSmiled just so, and wore what I must,
And nodded all day at players on stageWho rant their lines and
paint in the airAnd vomit into wind all verbiage of drossSeeking
yet still all statues of gold
With glass-loaded eyes and dimples of graceThat wrench in the
entrails with force,Questions of unacknowledged spleen.
But what would be the point of it all?What would be the point,
if betel-smeared lipsRuminating hard, with greasy little palms,Pick
out that meat from yellow-coloured teeth
And slaps on my face Later, we will see?
Festooned in parti-coloured papers I lieA papier-mch puppet of
academic dye.
Tight, more tight; the buckles still loose Mine too the
distempered causeOf Lilliputs in Brobdingnag cloaks.
Could I have known that things would be thus?Could I, after all
the books and medals and praise,Smiles in the hallways and pats on
the back,Could I have known of backstabbing movesIn petty little
cliques of inflated selves
Where we make ledgers of insult and gainAnd deck up as straws
with leather-lined coatsTattooed with love on eczema-tic necks?
Down in dreams of unforeseen woodsMine are the paws that
pounce.
Yet still I glance at mirrors and mendWrinkles and crease and
entangled curlsAnd rehearse in mute my silly little linesTo flatter
that him or cajole that her
And speak as cats might purr.
Listen to the band Checking their set and wired for blast Hours
on end of stereophonic drugs!
Dont get me wrong I am not a drudge;When the lights darken and
songs are unleashedI too will join the headbangers gang
And trample into puddle with insistent feetThoughts thatll never
be discreet.
Think this is why, Ive dwelt so longOn tigers in wild or eagles
in flightOr poured over Eliot at midnight and more?
Questions now clutter, and pile up in vainAs these do I sweep
and broom into binsAnd burn into ashes of unholiest grain.
The wind in the west now halts and waitsAs evening expands its
tentacular stepsAnd strangles all glimmers of twilight in
spring,And spreads for us all, its bountiful shroud.
Clocks ticking down to that auspicious timeWhen more and more
puppets, with finery and glazeMarch into halls with punctilious
pomp
And wine and dine with calculated blahSprinkled with mergers and
shares and dates.Here do I wander and cling to those coats
Which I have hope will show me some threadsTo weave into being
my pocket full of dreams.
O, do not ask what they are!Cramped in pockets for years on
endBurdened with gallons of yessir and nosir,I no longer know what
creatures they are
And pickle them blind with fear.
Who knows what ropes have stalled my feetAnd choked my dreams in
quicksand of filesWhich others elsewhere have quickened into
life!
Now theyll leave and stagger into carsAnd leave still a trail of
mobil and rumThat others might smell or speculate and sell.
Ive smelt them out. Ive smelt them out!
Enough of that, enough!I dont have the guts to be Lear in the
heathNor do I dare to be Job reborn.I am just a cog that turns as
is turned
And leaves all the rest to time and placeAnd hopes for a dose of
rather good chance.
Judge me as you will, why should I care?Rocked in the desert of
cactus and bonesOurs are ships without shores.
POSTscriptJ U L Y 0 8 , 2 0 1 2
SEVEN SISTERS
NELitreview
3
ipenABIN CHAKRABORTYKOLKATA
PAWAN DHALL
FRENCH Sahib is a storyof love between twomen, one French
and
the other Indian,that seeks totransgress the boundaries ofgender
and sexual norms, po-litical geography and cultur-al holy cows.
Pradeep Rao, acomputer whiz kid fromChennai living in Paris, is ina
relationship with PhilippeDelcourt, son of a Frenchpolitician.
Philippe hasstrained relations with hisfamily. His father may
lovehim, but he accepts his sonssexuality only when he sens-es a
political advantage in it.Ever unloved, Philippe smellsfresh hope
with Pradeeps en-try into his life. A trip to In-dia with Pradeep
convinceshim that living in this seem-ingly all-embracing land
willbe the antidote to the nar-row-mindedness back home.He bel
ieves that Radhika Rao,Pradeeps mother, will final-ly accept him as
her sonsspouse. But Pradeep is ea-ger to return to France, to
hisfather-in-law, whose polit-ical campaign he has beenhelping with
the creation ofa website. Another reason forPradeep to be in
France, how-ever, is to escape the pres-sure of marriage at home
andbe able to live without sup-pressing his sexual orienta-tion. It
is inconceivable forhim to tell his family aboutbeing gay because
that is notthe system in India. A tragi-comic turn of events
inPradeeps home forces himto change his mind and stayon in India.
His mothersquest for a cure for him ismisunderstood by her
chil-dren, who believe that she isvisiting the family doctor
be-cause she has cancer.Philippe is secretly happy thathe and
Pradeep wont be re-
turning to France in a hurry,
and insists that this could bean opportunity for Pradeep
to come out to his mother.But Pradeeps rebuff reflectsthe
dilemma that many Indi-an lesbian, gay, bisexual andtransgender
(LGBT) peopleexperience in the context ofcoming out. Ironically,
aftera short trip to Kanyakumari,Philippe resolves not to ap-proach
every situationthrough western eyes. Butthe double (Indian?)
stan-dards in the Rao householdare such that they know aboutthe
relationship and yet dontknow! Radhika Raos effortsto cope with the
knowledgeof Pradeeps sexuality evokelaughter, irritation and
angerby turn. Her intermittentphone calls to her
onlydaughter-in-law, Ammu, el-dest son Suneets wife, whois a
psychologist, add to thedrama. Ammus psychoba-bble is not the only
elementadding to the Rao house-holds cacophony. Pradeepsvivacious
sister Brindas wit,the family dogs, servantSatishs foibles,
Pradeeps en-tanglement in a case of hack-ing into the US NASA
web-sites (just for fun), the dev-astating tsunami of 2004 alllend
interesting angles to thestory, making it crowded likea typical
all-things-in-one In-dian street or market.
The family matriarch, for allher strenuous but vain effortsto
wish away Pradeeps sex-uality, had in her time done
what the bold and the beau-tiful or desperate housewivesdo to
get their love. In many
ways, the book is more aboutRadhika Rao than Pradeepand
Philippe. For isnt thatthe case with many LGBTpeople, or even other
social-ly marginalised individualsrevealing their secrets? Whilethe
person coming out sure-ly has a story to tell, many in-
teresting stories lie beneath
the reactions of those who areat the receiving end of thecoming
out. It is as if a childscoming out as gay or lesbianforces a
parent to recollectand confront their own hap-py and sad
experiences ofgrowing up. The book is alsoa commentary on the flux
thatIndian society currentlyseems to be in. While anIndian is shown
to have the
wherew ithal to hack intotightly guarded US govern-ment websites
and evencontemplate same-sex mar-riage with a Frenchman, the
yoke of casteism refuses to goaway. As Philippe points out,much
to Pradeeps indig-nance, even when it comesto the 2004 tsunami
relief,discrimination against Dal-its is rampant.Well-intentioned,
the book
is genuinely humorous inparts. On one occasion, Rad-
hika Rao gets a haircut at the
Honest Hairdressers, whosename is in direct contrast tothe
situation of denial pre-vailing in her home with re-gard to
Pradeeps relation-ship with Philippe. In anoth-er situation, it is
RadhikaRaos harried state of mind
when she struggles to priori-tise between a shortage ofonions
and a shortage of fi-ances for her son, Pradeep,and his brother,
Abhi, who issingle as well and seems in-clined towards an
unmarried,spiritual pursuit in life. Someof Brindas digs at her
moth-ers predicament about herson Pradeeps sexuality alsomake for
light but meaning-ful reading.
In one place, Brinda tries toprovoke her mother that sheis
lesbian and will marry a
woman, rather than any suit-able match she finds
throughmatrimonial advertisements.In another, Brinda confrontsher
mother that it is no usedenying the fact that Pradeepand Philippe
are going to getmarried. In fact, among allcharacters in the story,
it isBrinda alone who brings Rad-hika Rao close to admittingthat
she knows exactly whatthe relationship betweenPradeep and Philippe
means.
There are some areas where
the book distracts a little.
While most character s ar ewell fleshed out, Satishs fakeidiocy
seems to jar a little,particularly his constant run-ins with
Radhika Rao ondogs, cooking and otherhousehold matters. Thenagain,
in the case of Pradeep,one wonders if he is not con-nected at all
to any of the bur-geoning LGBT networks inChennai or elsewhere
inIndia. It may not be essentialto the story, but for a com-puter
nerd in the time in
which the s tory is s et, thiscould have been a
strongpossibility. Instead, it isBrinda who is often foundchatting
on the Net withher friend about her brotherand Philippe.
The book would also havebeen a much more engagingread were it
not marred byproofing errors and somewhatdisturbing syntax in
places,possibly the result of some nu-ances being lost in
translationfrom French into English.Whether it can be indexed
as gay literature or queerwriting, this fiction is a newaddition
to the growing bodyof writing that confirms theundeniable existence
ofsame-sex love in India, in itsliterary history, artistic
her-itage or as is the case with
French Sahib, even in its up-
wardly mobile, holier-than-thou middle-class milieu. For
many people, parents in par-ticular, who are following
thetrajectory of the more-than-a-decade-old public
interestlitigation against Section 377of the Indian Penal Code,
firstin the Delhi High Court andnow in the Supreme Court,the
topicality of the book maylie in the dilemma faced byRadhika
Rao.
Fortunately, at least 19 In-dian parents have had nodilemma in
filing a petitionin the Supreme Court in sup-port of the 2 July
2009 rulingof the Delhi High Court. Thisruling had read down
Section377, decriminalising same-sex relations among con-senting
adults in private. TheSupreme Court recently fin-ished hearing
arguments bothfor and against the Delhi HighCourt ruling, and is
expectedto announce a verdict in thecoming months.
The story doesnt quite endwith a fi rm or definite de-nouement.
It seems likely thatPradeep and Philippe will con-tinue with their
relationshipand may even get married.Radhika Raos opposition tothis
move seems unchangedas well. But the end has somethought-provoking
lines: Andthe truth? When would it everbe possible to tell the
truth, allthe truths, even the inconve-nient ones?... No. Never.
Sometruths are never meant tocome to light. Not even whenone is
very old. One hopesthat such will not be the casefor LGBT people in
India. Onesincerely wishes the truth oftheir existence, needs
andrights will not be belied or con-tinue to be buffeted by
theperennial social tsunami thatkeeps trying to stifle their
as-pirations, even if the courtsrule differently in the currentsaga
of decriminalising same-
sex love and LGBT people. T
Some inconvenient truths
RR RR RRTG
THIS work of fiction is a new addition to thegrowing volume of
writing that confirms theundeniable existence of same-sex love
inIndia even in its upwardly mobile, holier-than-thou middle-class
milieu
FRENCH SAHIB
Pierre FrhaShonu Nangia (trans)Roman, 2011$24.95, 293
pagesHardcover/ Novel
WE all knew about hisstrange love for Akka Ma-hadevi. We had
heard him
narrate the unusual story of thatmedieval saint-poet several
times.This spirited Veerashaivite poet,
who had passed away when she wasonly 20, had stood before a
gather-ing of men, and shedding all herclothes, thundered Is there
a realman here, before whom I wouldblush with feminine shame?
Theseare all inanimate, lifeless objects
what shame does one feel beforeinanimate objects? He had
fallenin love with this 500-year old
woman, but surprisingly, that day,he had insisted, thickly I
wantMahadevi to seed in my womb. I
want to feel her grow in my womb.When she was about to
leave,Maitreyi had held my hands tightand asked, "What sort of fire
is this?Do you see it? True, it was fire. But,blowing through the
funnels of fleshand blood, fate had not just lit thisfire in his
body. In the smoke leap-ing from the fire in his body, his soulhad
burnt too. And far more intensethan the fire inside was the
mali-cious smoke-ridden fire outside itchased him endlessly to
destroy him,and choked his skies with poisonousvapour. On the
streets and in the al-leys, whispers mocked him the ex-aminer on
the interview board didnot see his certificates and numer-ous
research papers he only sawthe silver bangles on his hands and
the ring in his ear. Unlocking hisdoor, he had seen his books
and fur-niture scattered and excrement onthe floor. There were
missiles ofanonymous letters in his letterbox-es threatening severe
punishmentfor his crime of corrupting our purepristine culture.
That was the time
when Sanjay had started living withhim. How happy he looked
thosedays! So calm! Like a patch of skyreflected in the still
waters of a lake.
As if the blue of the sky and the blueof the water merged,
melted andmultiplied into an infinite sea ofblueness. Everything
around himseemed to exude happiness. Thecumin-cardamom scented
kitchenair; towels, vests and bed sheets onthe clothesline flapping
in thebreeze, eagerly waiting to be soiledagain. But a time came
when San-
jay too had to leave. One day San-jays father had visited him.
This in-cense-and-match factory ownerpleaded with him with folded
handsto free his only son and heir, andenable him to perform the
sacredduty of perpetuating his family line.That very day, ushering
Sanjay on
the path of freedom, he puffed cig-arette after cigarette on the
benchin the railway station, grinding thenight into ash. The night
was almosthalf-burnt, when he had heardstrains of the khanjuriand
mridangfloating from the Ramlila in the Har-ijan basti. Gradually,
as if in a trance,he had followed the railway line to-
wards the Ramlila. As he picked hisway through piles of
plastic-scrapsof paper-sacks-bottles-discardediron, through the
haze created bythe drunken scent of poppy-min-gled bhangthat
elbowed aside theraw stench disgorged by the sewageplant drain, he
had felt somethingpenetrate the small of his back, rightthrough his
spine. Something sharp,cold and piercing.
Later, with what glee had he nar-rated that experience! How he
hadcrawled on, after the invisible as-sailant had stabbed him,
snatched
his wallet, watch, silver bangles andearrings, and had thrown
him onone side of the railway line. How,inspite of his body growing
cold andhis uncontrollable shivering, themridangcontinued to
reverberateinside his head ta jhum ta jhum...that smell from the
Gangaghathadassailed his nostrils corpses liftedon pyres was that
poppy-mixedbhang or Afghan charas thatstrange odour, mixed with the
scentofgutimaliflowers, that spread allaround! That odour had been
hisinseparable companion in the two
years he h ad sp ent in exile on adamp, cold floor of a shack on
theGangaghat. His exile had started onthe day that Chitra deserted
him.Chitra whom his family had wel-comed, against his wishes,
with
Vedic chants and thehom fire. Chi-tra had left and to punish
himself,he had chosen the self-imposed ex-
ile. Throughout the exile, his com-panion had been that strange
odour!
As strange as the manner in whichChitra had left him. One
evening,back home from work, he had dis-covered that the house was
empty.Totally empty. Barring his clotheson the hangars and books
and ter-racotta images on the floor. The dho-biof the
neighbourhood, sitting onthe steps, told him thatMaijihadgifted him
all their furniture every-thing she had brought with her beds,
chairs, tables, shelves andalmirahs and had gone awaysomewhere.When
we had shared drinks and
talked about things dear to us, hehad asked me over and over
again,I had never invited Chitra into thisbarren relationship.
Never! But Iknow I am responsible for this ter-rible accident in
her life and I cannever forgive myself for this. But tellme, dont
you think she should haveat least told me that she was leav-ing?
Why did she not bother to saygoodbye In the time that we
spenttogether, Id never hurt her! Lookedafter her like my own
sister Whenshe had fallen ill, I had made turmer-ic paste for her.
I had sat by her bed-
side and read Mahadevis poems toher throughout the night
Howbeautifully I had drawn a lattice printon the ends of her sari
To tell youthe truth, the night when the homfire had burnt,
secretly and surrep-titiously, I had carved a boat of mi-mosa wood
On my wedding night,
when I stretched out my han d toChitra, I had heard that mans
breathin the wind the breath of the manrowing his boat of mimosa
wood tothe third bank of the river.. Talk-ing to me or perhaps to
himself, hehad risen unsteadily to his feet. Hehad opened that huge
mahoganyalmirah, had come back to me withsomething clenched in his
fist andhad forced it into my hand. On mypalm rested a coin of
clay, modelledon the ancient seals of Mohenjo-daro and Harrappa. A
coiled bluesnake had been carved into the coin.
A snak e, sw allowin g its own tai l!Here, this is my seal. When
youshow it at my doorstep, my doors
will automatically open for you. Ha,ha, ha! When I had descended
thestairs, clutching that clay seal he hadso painstakingly made I
had leftbehind a living story, to reign in avast empire of
solitude. T
(Extracted from Tritiyottor Golpo, SadinPuja Special, Oct
2005)
Moushumi Kandali is a creative writer,art critic and
translator
Atreyee Gohain' s translati ons from A s-samese into English
have been publishedby Penguin India and Sahitya Akademi.She has
also worked as an editor with RupaPublications and Aleph Book
Company
A tale of thirdness
CLOSE READING
iNKPOTMOUSHUMI KANDALI
TRANS: ATREYEE GOHAIN
Theswansongof
AbinashCHalder
RR RR RRTG
ON the streets and in the alleys, whispers mocked him the
examiner on the interview board did not see hiscertificates and
numerous research papers he only
saw the silver bangles on his hands and the ring in hisear.
Unlocking his door, he had seen his books and
furniture scattered and excrement on the floor
