A S L. I was 22, M, Guindy. Sometimes, in other rooms, I was also 23, Female, Guindy, so that I could chat with horny straight men. It gave me a chance to imagine myself to be a completely different person. Language can be a very capacious space, if you allow it. It was fun to pretend to be a woman until they asked “cam2cam?” for the fourth or fifth time and grew impatient. Then I’d leave the room.

Dial-up internet connection. When you clicked “connect” two cute little computer icons in the corner of the screen would start lighting up alternately, a little something moving back and forth between both. Things are so different these days! Now, you can find out that your potential mate is 63 feet away. He may not be into you, but that’s a different sad story.

Those little flickers of light appearing in the two tiny computer icons — like the distant shimmer of two stars — were part of the landscape of our desires in those days. Those little green flickers meant that you could take your secret desires, those stirrings that dared not speak their name,  and launch yourself on to a web that some giant spider had cast all over the world.

If those little flickers of light did their work, within a matter of seconds you could be asking, “Have place? Want to meet?” to a man, a stranger, who might then appear on a grainy webcam that shows the paint peels on the walls of the internet center he is at more clearly than his face. But the cam would be clear enough for you to see his eyes darting around to make sure no one around him was watching him, his hands undoing the top button of his shirt to show you his chest hair because, well, you asked to see it. If you liked him, you could plan to meet. Where? That was the problem. Even heterosexual couples had to hide themselves under flimsy umbrellas in the blazing heat of marina beach. They were often chased away by cops, bothered by cheeky little boys who would pester them to buy sundal. But we’d meet anyway. Somehow. Some place.

But sometimes we didn’t meet. That little glimpse of a real person on the grainy, blurry web-cam, seeing him type something there and seeing the words appear on your screen: “You like to suck?” was sometimes just enough. Enough to get off on, I mean. Just the glimpse of a potentiality, that someone out there, perhaps just a ride away on 45B or 23C, who was eager for you to suck him off, was good enough. Or perhaps that was just me. Maybe it was only my sex life that was so pathetic!

Anyway. On that summer afternoon, I was waiting online for a specific entity – TallGuy1890. I had chatted with him a few times earlier. He’d said he was in Hyderabad, so there was no danger that he might as me to meet him right away. I had ended my previous chat with him abruptly, because he had started talking to me about a support group for gay and bisexual men in Chennai, an online forum which also had periodic offline presence. He was a part of it, and he asked me if I wanted to know more. I was both excited and terrified at the prospect. So I ended the chat quickly.

But that week, I was desperate for a sign of hope. I was plumbing the great depths of depression. I was in that particularly painful place where I really wanted to kill myself but did not have the courage to do it. I used to hate myself for that cowardice, but now I think it is the best kind of cowardice. I am very glad now that I used to be that kind of coward.

Anyway, TallGuy1890 entered the chat room, and I pinged him on a separate chat window. I told him I wanted to know about the support group he had mentioned. He told me about Orinam, which used to be Movenpick/MP then. I created a new yahoo ID, with a new fake name, and subscribed to the group.

A lot has happened in the last 14 years since I entered that support space both online and offline. New friendships happened. Some of them fizzled out. Relationships happened. Some of them fizzled out, too. Activism happened. Community engagement happened. Withdrawal happened. But one thing has been constant since I found this community — I never feel alone. I might feel lonely. I think that is part of the human condition. But I never feel I have to encounter life situations alone. And you know what else? Through community, I also learned what it means to matter to others. Not to a whole lot of people. To a handful. It is amazing to know we really matter to a few people, isn’t it?

That’s the greatest gift this small queer world has given me. And I am forever grateful for that.

And, oh, I did meet TallGuy1890 in person.

Did we have sex?

It is none of your business!

Notes:
1. This piece was first shared at Orinam’s Chennai Pride 2018 edition of Quilt: June 17, 2018, and is being published in conjunction with Orinam’s 15th anniversary celebrations on December 25, 2018.

2. Image credits: Author: BSGStudio from all-free-download.com. 

He was stark naked in the bathroom, razor in hand, and had shaving foam covering his entire torso. Blood and the white of the foam together made a royal mess. Even then, with his heart racing at the sight of blood, he could not help but think that it looked delicious in a way. Like someone had thrown red velvet cake splat on Chinna’s chest. To get some ice, he would have to go to the kitchen, but before that he would have to wipe himself clean and cover himself properly. When he poured water over himself and let it wash away all the foam, he could see his chest hair still sticking to him in patches. He had only been half way through the shaving when he cut a nipple by mistake. The bleeding refused to stop, and it stung. He held the breast firmly in his hand, and it only made him bleed more. Without a moment’s thought, he tried to do what he had always done whenever he cut his fingers while chopping vegetable, and much earlier while using shaving blades to sharpen pencils at school.

He tried to squeeze his breast up towards his lips and suck the wounded tip. He couldn’t. However much he lowered his head, pressed his chin to his chest and stuck his tongue out towards his nipple, he couldn’t make them meet. He threw his head back in frustration, flung the razor away, slid down the wall, and cried silently, mouth wide open.

Sharpening pencils was one thing. But is altogether another thing to use the blade to blunt your edges, smooth out the sharpnesses that both mark you to the world and also flip around to cut you from the inside, like a revolving double-edged dagger that, in its great speed, looks like a benign spinning ball of the self. The more you send it out into the world to let yourself be seen , the greater is the vehemence with which it comes back to shred your to smithereens.

In the spacious studio apartment, Chinna stood at the kitchen counter, with his back to Ron, heating milk for coffee. Though they have only been going out for a few weeks now, he was used to Ron’s quiet, unobtrusive presence in the house whenever he came. He usually sat down with some book while Chinna did his own work. Sometimes Ron just dozed off, lying flat on his back right there on the mattress on the floor, with the pages of some open book embracing him over his chest. Looking at him during some of those times, he has wondered if Ron managed to drop into everyone’s life so quietly, without raising a ripple.

But today was going to be a challenge, thought Chinna. It could throw even Ron out of balance. How could I have sex with him today without letting him in on how much I hate my body right now, that I would rather close my eyes and will myself to be someone else? Chinna feared one of two things could follow such a disclosure. A conversation. This perpetual celebration of talking, this belief in clearing things out by talking, as if words ever really had that kind of power – he had no energy for that, at least, at the moment. Or it could be a shrinking back and rejection that he feared. He didn’t have energy for that either.

He felt sex was not such a good idea then, but then he wouldn’t know unless he tried. Usually, he avoided sex when he felt so unsure of who he was.  But it might have to be different today. As he leaned over the counter, he looked down to check for blood stain on his shirt. He had done that the entire afternoon, sitting across from Ron at the restaurant. He was afraid that there might suddenly be a splatter of blood spreading across his chest, giving him away.  No blood.

“Cream and sugar?” he asked, turning around. Ron looked up from the book he had opened randomly in the middle. “Yes! Thank you!” he smiled.

Chinna wrapped a towel around his waist, threw another one over his shoulders and walked out of the bathroom. Before stepping out of the bedroom, he opened the door gently and peeped out to see if his mother, who was visiting, was in the living room, and if he would be bombarded with questions for taking ice cubes from the freezer. She didn’t seem to be around. On the way to the refrigerator, he caught through the corner of eyes his quick reflection in the full-length mirror propped against a wall in the living room. His quick, tiptoed run took him a few steps ahead, but he halted on his track and took a few quiet, slow steps back, turned his head alone to the left and stood looking at himself, in profile, in the mirror. He lifted slightly the towel that lay over his shoulders covering his nipples. When he thought he could not see clearly, he took off the towel completely, but before doing that he looked in the direction of the kitchen to make sure his mother was not around. She didn’t seem to be.

Focussing again on his sideways reflection in the mirror, he thrust his chest out a little and made his nipples look prominent and imagined that they pierced the sky in front of him, making a small tear in some invisible but persistent layer he could one day step out of.  This made the arch of his back pronounced, and his butt too stretched out into a deeper curve, into a bigger bubble. Lifting both his hands simultaneously, he touched himself on both his nipples, felt the alert areola reacting to the recent touch of the blade, he held the curve of his breasts on his palms for a second, and brought his hands down to his waist and took them around his ass.  Then he threw the towel back around his neck and walked swiftly to the fridge.

He could find no ice cubes, but his mother’s ice pack was in the freezer. He grabbed it, rushed back to the room, latched the door on the inside, and pressed the ice pack to the nipple. It hurt like hell. He sat down on the bed and leaned back on the pillows. He removed the ice pack from this chest and took a good look at himself. The right side of his chest was shaven smooth and clean, and the nipple stood clean and poised, while the one on the blooded side stood surrounded by strands of hair. He was disgusted to see patches of hair still on his half-shaven chest. Still, he ran his fingers over this torso, wondering if he could will himself to like his body as it was. He stopped when his fingers reached the towel fold around this waist. He dreaded what was to come. He knew he would be flooded by a massive wave of disgust, but he braved it and undid the towel. Never before did he hate the irrefutable solidity of the body so much. Its stubbornness, it’s utter refusal to be anything other than what it was hurt him afresh each time. He spread his legs a little, and with vehemence pushed his penis and testicles down with his hands, closed his legs tight, and pulled out his hands slowly. It gave him some comfort not to have to feel them with his hands.

Ron was sitting on the mattress on the floor and looking at Chinna pour coffee into mugs. As Chinna walked towards Ron and gave him his coffee, Ron patted the mattress, signaling Chinna to sit next to him. They sat, their backs against the wall, and just above their heads the bottom rod of the blinds over the window beating against the wall in the wind. Ron had his feet stretched in front of him, and the light through the blinds was now casting moving shadow stripes on his feet and jeans. Chinna too felt like putting his leg out to catch the lines of light and shadow on his feet. And he did. “This would make a great photograph,” said Ron, “just our legs and these stripes of light.” Chinna turned to smile at Ron, who had a twinkle in his eyes when he said, “But this light play will look much better on bare skin. We can be zebras.” Chinna did not say anything in reply, but he turned to look at his legs and gently pulled his trousers up to reveal more of his ankle and lower leg. Ron laughed.

Chinna closed his eyes and touched the tips of his nipples gently with his fingers. As he played with them, his erection threatened to spring up from its confinement between his thighs. So Chinna stopped and waited for it to subside. Then suddenly he squeezed his breasts violently and stopped only when he felt the wetness of blood from the left nipple again on his fingers. With equal vehemence, he crossed his legs at the ankles and pressed his thighs together until everything hurt.

They now lay facing the window, with the light through the blinds casting its stripes on their faces and naked torsos. Black and light and black and light. Chinna had one leg bent and the other leg balanced over the bent knee. Like he was sitting, but had only decided to change his plane. To look skyward instead. He looked at his legs and tried to focus on a part of this light play where a strip of shadow ended and a sheath of light began. Though the plastic strips of the blinds themselves were quite solid with sharp edges, their shadows appeared to have lost their confidence. Their corners were blurred and looked even more vulnerable when they moved in the wind.

Ron turned on his side and propped his head up with a hand. “You are awfully quiet today. Even more than usual. What happened?” he said.

“Nothing really.”

“Then it is something not-so-really? Tell me, tell me,” Ron teased, putting his forefinger into Chinna’s deep navel and tickling it.

With his other hand, he touched Chinna on his neck. Chinna lay, with his eyes closed, his legs crossed at the ankles and his thighs held tight against each other. As Ron’s hand glided over his neck, Chinna clutched at the carpet below with one hand and laid his other hand over Ron’s, that was playing with his navel. Ron’s hand moved down to Chinna’s chest and very quickly to his right nipple.

“Nice. Did you get it waxed?” said Ron.

“No. I shaved. Waxing hurts.”

“Hmm. But it looks like you have hurt yourself shaving too,” said Ron, and brought his head down to kiss Chinna on his left nipple. His tongue moved very gently, but Chinna could still feel the sting from the cut. He winced.

Chinna kept his eyes shut and forced himself to imagine his body otherwise. He thought it should be easy. At any given moment, Chinna could not really bring to his mind an accurate vision of himself as he was. He could never clearly remember himself. Whenever he stood in front of a mirror, there was a moment of “Ah okay,” as if he just recognized himself. So shouldn’t it be easy now, he wondered, to see myself as altogether something else? Not with these sad little hairy absences, but full, rounded breasts, with large areolas stretched out with the fullness of the milk inside. Not with what were dangling between his legs, but something else, something that draws inward. But it wasn’t easy. The body was all too real to be thus willed away.

Chinna chose not to force it, not to fight his body so much. He was holding his body so taut that every inch of him hurt. He decided to let go and relax. Just as he began to loosen his body, his eyes still closed, it happened. He got, for just an instant, that vision. He saw himself inside his eyes just exactly how he wanted himself to look; he saw his body as just exactly how he wanted to see it.

Ron’s tongue continued to play on Chinna’s left nipple while his fingers moved down to his tummy. Chinna felt seized at once by pleasure, pain and panic. As Ron’s fingers explored further down, Chinna relaxed his legs and hoped that the miracle would happen again, that he would get to see himself, at least in his imagination, at least for a split second, as he wanted to be, not as what he was. Till today, he doesn’t know what gave him the courage to trust and let go, to not be on his guard. But that’s what he did.

Until then he had held his body taut like a catapult aiming a sharp attack at god knows what. Much like a boy who has suddenly lost interest in his target and relaxed his aim and dropped down the weapon, he loosened himself. His body remembered the time when he once managed to float on the shallow waters of a sea. Seeing one of his friends just lie back and float, he asked to be held while he tried it too, though he couldn’t swim then. In the very first attempt, he had floated, with no hand supporting his back. He dropped his head back and arched his torso out towards the sky like he was asked to do, and he floated. Chinna had thought at that moment about the rules for trust for different things. When people free-fall during para-jumping, they are asked to arch their head and legs in trust and glory towards the sky, if only to give the monstrous, rushing wind the least resistance possible. On the ground, you are supposed to give yourself to whatever surface is beneath you, let your body drape on it and take whatever shape of letting go it wants. And on water, you let your head down backward, raise your bum, thrust your torso up towards the sky that is suddenly all over, more all-over than ever before.

“Just trust it and let go,” his friend had said then. And Chinna had found that an absolutely natural thing to do. For a while after that, he had consciously called on that bodily memory whenever walking on steady ground felt like a shaky proposition. He drew comfort from recollections of floating, of being held and rocked. But like most experiences, it had slowly receded in significance. Until today. He floated again, even if only for just a tiny moment.

He unclenched his abdominal muscles and released his firm hold on the world. Salt water sloshed against his ears and he could hear no more the clack of the blinds against the window or the room heater resurrecting after a brief rest. All that he could hear was the heady whispers of the sky and the water asking him to trust them. One from below and the other from over him. He was being bounced up and down, and he drank some water. It was incredibly salty and made his nostrils burn. His fingers let go of their claw-hold on the carpet next to him and let water buoy up through the gaps between them. Sensing it was not hard ground that could give away under him any minute, he gifted away his weight, opened his eyes to the bright blue sky over him and breathed out gently and for long.

Right then, Ron pressed down gently below Chinna’s navel and stopped suddenly. Chinna was very confused. He opened his eyes and saw that Ron had risen slightly, propping himself on one elbow, and was looking at where his hand was on Chinna’s body, all the while pressing it down gently at the same spot. When he saw Chinna’s perplexed look, he relaxed, but he did not remove his hand. He smiled awkwardly and said, “Sorry.”
“It’s alright. But what happened?” Chinna asked.
“Oh it is really silly,” said Ron, trying to dismiss it.
“It is okay. Do tell me.”
“No, I am sorry. It might be hurtful.” Ron was really apologetic now.
“No, I can handle it. Tell me.”
“Well,” said Ron, “I think it was a moment of hallucination, but when I pressed my hand down there, it felt suddenly like I was not touching a man’s body.”
“What do you mean?” Chinna smiled and rose slightly, propping himself up on both his elbows.
Ron felt encouraged by Chinna’s smile to go on. “I could have sworn that my hand just expected not to find a cock there. Something else. Does it make sense? I am so sorry. I am blabbering,” he said and looked away in embarrassment.
“No, no, no,” Chinna said and turned Ron’s face back towards him. “It makes sense. It so does. Thank you so much.”

“But you are crying,” Ron said in mild panic. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I am sure I was just imagining it. My mind playing tricks on me. Please don’t cry, Chinna.” He sat up looking very concerned and held Chinna by his shoulders as he covered his face with his hands and wept.

Ron moved closer to him and put his arms around him. He sat there holding Chinna until the weeping stopped, and after.

Dear All,

As you know, the brutal gang-rape of a young woman in Delhi earlier this month has sparked off rallies and protests against such violence across the country. We invite you to come to Besant Nagar Beach on 29th December at 4 pm to engage in a protest and conversation on this violence.

The Delhi incident is not unique. Sexual violence, ranging from indecent gestures, abusive language, molestation, harassment to more overtly destructive and hurtful acts is something that children, girls, women and people who are seen as sexually ‘deviant’ live with. These acts are reprehensible as well as routine: family members, neighbours, community leaders, custodians of law and justice, including the police and armed forces have all been accused of such rape crimes in this country, and with solid evidence.

Rape exists as a sign of authority, of the dominant castes over subordinated castes, majority right-wing groups over minority groups, the personnel of the state over citizens that it holds in contempt or fear. While rape can happen to any sexually vulnerable section of the population, the fact remains that by and large it is carried out by men against women.

In this context, it becomes important to ask questions about the nature of this violence:

• What are the factors in our environment that allow men to be violent and abusive? is it the nature of our development process that produces desperation, poverty, and criminality?

• Are rapists a bunch of ‘deranged’ individuals, or do their acts reflect something more? Are they vicious expressions of a more widely prevalent culture of contempt, hatred, resentment and aggression towards women?

• While we are all united in wanting the police and the judiciary to be more accountable in ensuring that justice is done, are we letting off other sections that are equally if not more culpable in endorsing a public culture of non-accountability? What about the media, for instance? How do we see the media’s role in ‘selling’ every kind of sexual allure through its advertisements, sensational stories and coups, its many programmes that uphold traditional and disrespectful and discriminating attitudes towards women?

Please share this invite with your friends.

RSVP on Facebook: HumanChainDec29Chennai

Regards,

Human Chain Organizing Committee
For further details: Sivakumar – 9840699776 | Aniruddhan – 8939609670

Thanks: Sneha Krishnan, V Geetha and Shri Sadasivan for draft and Tamil translation

To help address this gap, Vanavil Foundation, a transgender collective in Tamil Nadu, organized the first of a three-part writing workshop in Chennai for members of the LGBT  communities. The workshop was  held on July 21 and 22, 2012, at the All India Catholic University Federation (AICUF) premises in Nungambakkam, Chennai. The event was supported by Orinam and the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers’ and Artists’ Association.

Twenty seven people people participated in this workshop, which marked the beginning of a several-months long writing process. Participants included those from community groups such as 4G Cluster, Chennai Dost, Erode Aravani Sangam, LesBiT (Bangalore), Nirangal, Orinam, Sahodaran (units 1 and 2), Sangama, SWAM, The Shakti Resource Center, TAI and Thozhi; and some registering as individuals.Vanavil Foundation has planned to support the participants with mentorship provided by Tamil writers and to bring out the results of this process in book form. The two-day workshop was a mixture of talks, sharing, games and exercises.

The workshop began with an introduction by Priya Babu, a well-known aravani activist and writer, also a member of the Managing Committee of Vanavil Foundation. She highlighted the thinking behind planning the workshop – the need for getting our voices out, writing as a therapeutic exercise, to put down in writing our own histories, etc. Mr. Tamilselvan from TPWAA spoke about the power of language to shape thinking and culture. He also emphasized the importance of training and practice and said that workshops such as these could provide exactly that.

In the small ice-breaker exercise that followed, the participants were asked to list out the number of activities that they think could be done in three minutes. Once the list was finalized, they were asked to write a paragraph each in three minutes incorporating at least three items from the list. This activity proved to be a good, humourous ice-breaker.

Mr Saidai J spoke about questions of who writes for whom and how. Interspersing his talk with comical anecdotes, he addressed the need to be clear about whom we are writing for and for what purpose. Aniruddhan Vasudevan shared his experiences as a writer from within the LGBT community in Chennai.

The afternoon session began with a game, facilitated by Srijith Sundaram, a theatre activist, which broke the participants out of stupor. They were then asked to organize themselves into small groups of four or five and were each given a topic to think about pertaining to the issues faced by the identities in the LGBT spectrum. For instance, one group worked on making a list of issues relevant to gay men; another group on issues faced by lesbian women; and so on and so forth. After spending considerable time on making their lists, representatives from each group shared their list and explained their process. At the end of the process, the participants saw that a remarkable number of the issues they had listed out could be grouped under comprehensive topics such as “LGBT and the law,” “Life Story/ Autobiography,” “Social Issues,” etc.

At the beginning of the workshop, the participants had been given a set of written material collated from writings by members of the LGBT community, and allies. At the end of the first day’s workshop, they were asked to read through the material and share the next day about at least one of the pieces.

The second day of the workshop began with a game/ activity facilitated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. In this well-known workshop game, he called out specific gender and sexual identities and their socio-economic backgrounds and the participants made their one call as to whether the particular identity was a disenfranchised one or not. They then accounted for their judgment. After this exercise, some of he participants shared about their readings from the selected written material provided to them.

A bulk of the second day was spent in a writing exercise. The facilitators of the workshop had organized previous day’s lists into comprehensive topics and provided the groups with smaller lists to choose from. Each participant chose a topic to write from and spent the next hour and a half writing.

In the post-lunch session, each participant shared what they had written. Not only had they chosen different issues to focus on, they had also each chosen different forms of writing – poetry, essay, self-narrative, short-fiction, etc. At the end of each sharing, they also made specific requests for guidance and support. These could be in the form of mentorship as well as assistance in the form of providing resources such as books.Mr Arumugam of TNPWAA gave a consolidated feedback about the exercise and urged the participants to cultivate the habit of reading a lot. Leena Manimekalai, well known poet and writer, was a surprise guest at this event. She spoke about the power of writing to ensure truths never go unsaid. Sharing her experiences as a woman writer who had to fight to make language pliable for her use, she said that it is only with a constant engagement with language that we can make it our own, suitable for our purposes. Manu from Vanavil Foundation thanked everyone for their participation and involvement.

The workshop ended with a commitment on part of Vanavil Foundation to keep the momentum going by checking in regularly with the participants on the progress of their writing work. Moreover, Vanavil has also taken the initiative to collate the reading resources needed by the participants. On 4 August 2012, one group of participants met at the office of Sahodaran to receive further reading material and to discuss what they were working on.

For more information, contact Vanavil Foundation:

• phone Manu at +91 97890 23157 or Thenmozhi at +91 98414 45583
• email vanaviltg@gmail.com
• visit http://vanaviltg.blogspot.com

Of not having loved enough,
but having lived once like you did
and zoning out like a power cut,
Just bang. Gone.
The aftertaste of trying to sing
“I don’t know why I didn’t come.”
It matters not you truly didn’t know
why you didn’t come.
You didn’t come.

You can stand someone up.
You have been stood up.
They refuse to strike each other out
in a game of elementary this for that.
Sweet innocence cannot even be feigned.
This is how love is performed
by some of us who do not know
how it is to be done.

Anyway, it had to happen. I was invited for a performance and workshop tour to Kolkata. The request was to bring audio recordings instead of an orchestra. The time to prepare was very short and so I decided to take some known, tried and tested dance compositions with me. But after days of trying all available recordings in my dance school I ended up with just one decent recording that of the same Charukesi Varnam! I chose to see it as some divine dispensation and set out to choreograph it to suit my mind and body.

At that time, I was a little tired of performing daasya bhakti pieces (pieces that express servitude and devotion to god). So I decided to explore this composition in terms of sakhya bhakti (god as friend). Throughout the choreographing sessions there was a tangible feeling of discomfort. It was probably due to the fact that I was forcing an interpretation on the lyrics. They actually expressed a very dignified form of Bhakti-Sringara (piety-erotic love complex). There was a dilemma. Neither did I want to show a woman pining away for Krishna nor do a pure bhakti piece. My mind, I guess, was looking for something more. At the same time, it did not occur to me that my actual, subconscious intentions behind choosing to treat Krishna as a friend was because I was looking for some expression of male-male bonding. It just did not strike me. I thought the discomfort was probably because I was yet to soak in the piece and it would take time. I decided to leave it to Krishna.

While on the train I listened to the varnam some twenty odd times! I was in love with it! Never before had I had such a personal relationship with a composition. It was exhilarating.

I was performing at an ashram headed by a swamini endearingly called Ma by everyone there. On stage, when I started emoting to the lines “Innum en manam ariyaadhavar pola” [“As though you still do not know my mind”], it suddenly struck me with the force of lightning that I was in love with Krishna. I realized I was not looking for something abstract like grace or blessing, but for this touch and caress. In an epiphanic moment, I realized I had my own ideas of what Krishna will do to me to my mind and, equally or more importantly, to my body. It was a palpable physical yearning. For those forty minutes, I felt in my bones what it meant to be in love emotionally and physically. I could feel each cell in my body throb with desire and in a flash I understood what Radha must be going through in those beautiful pieces from Geetha Govindam. They were a series of epiphanies, I would say. But those forty minutes felt like one, long moment. It felt like I was simultaneously in and out of Time. How I yearn for another such experience! That concert was a defining moment in my search for my personal relationship with my art.

After the concert when I went to do my pranaams to Ma, her foster son remarked to her in Bangla, Ma! Look at this child! What bhakti! She looked into my eyes while she answered him, No! It is more than Bhakti. My friend interpreted it in english for me. I was glad someone understood it and my eyes went watery.

This piece was written originally in January 2006 and was published in the Trikone magazine the same year.

Despite the existence of desi queer collectives and communities here in DC, the responses and reactions of many Americans (both white and black people) to the visible presence of a queer person coming from India (me, in this case) have been a wee bit strange for me. As long as they assume I am a queer from here (the US), the conversation and their interest in talking to me goes one way. The moment they come to know that I am an out-queer living in India, everything changes. Sometimes it feels like a healthy interest, on their part, in knowing how it is to be queer and out in some other cultural, political, religious space. Some other times, they quickly conflate the images and news of punishment and execution of homosexual people in west Asian countries together with their general, relative ignorance about the East  in total, and suddenly I am a whole other person for them.

One person even suggested that a continued US presence in that area will help to kill off fundamentalism and make this easy for you all! First, I really saw in my mind’s eye all Asian countries losing borders, melting and becoming a huge blob that he could conveniently call that area! Secondly, it was a very confusing argument for me: that a queer-hating government’s deplorable attempts at ravaging Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan only in the interests of access to oil resources, can even be validated as something that will prove to be easy on homosexual people in the long run. That opinion was twisted at so many places that it sent me on a dizzy spell! The issue of homosexuality, freedom, war, plundering, imperialism, coercive thrusting of one brand of democracy etc. were all so generously conflated into one single statement that it left me speechless for a while as to which one I take issues with first.

Another interesting experience I have had is when I become the quintessentially exotic Other: dancer, Indian, queer. I exist in this very objectified space for some people especially after performances. Dancing, in itself, is an exercise in vulnerability. To put one’s (gendered, sexed, coloured) body out there in that space and move in ways that call attention to it are, for me, moments when I willingly make myself vulnerable, not to physical abuse, but vulnerable to gaze, identity-framing, and objectification. Then some of them want to know some specifics. If I am Hindu or Muslim? Since I am Hindu, some of them try to know where I stand vis-a-vis the Kamasutra and Khajuraho temples.

The only stand I really have vis-a-vis these two is that I have partly read a cheap (unillustrated!) edition of the Kamasutra and I have visited the Khajuraho temples!

However, without trying to be so obsessively anti-Orientalist, I try to make use of these knowledges (if you can call them that), to talk a bit about the positions that different cultural traditions take towards sexuality. By being hyper-sensitive about how I am perceived, I do not want to lose making at least part of my position clear to such people . My engagement with cultural theories should not only enable me to talk to academics and other people who do theory, but empower me to deal with undeniably concrete realities when I am faced with them. I cannot walk out from such situations saying that people don’t understand that my identity is a free-floating signifier and they are doing huge disservice to the world of discourses! But it does baffle me when I cannot, somehow, afford to be half as ignorant as they are: ‘You don’t know who Mormans are?’ ‘You don’t know what Quesedilla is? what Halloween is?’ ! The expectation of knowing is very unequal.

One day, I ended up going to a meeting of the lgbt chapter of a widely-known human rights organization in DC, with an American friend. There were five people there, including me! My sense of pride in my support group in Chennai and its meetings grew manifold! In that meeting, for this one guy who appeared to me the group chairman or something, I did not exist! We sat around a table in Starbucks. I was like one foot away from him. But I simply did not exist. I am glad he did not place his heavy bag on me thinking that the chair was unoccupied! My friend sensed it, got annoyed and said ‘Aniruddh, why don’t you tell us about the campaign against the anti-sodomy law in India?’ I still did not exist for him, hence I also did not have a voice! The other two were interested and asked questions.

A few days hence, while walking back to my apartment after a late rehearsal, I was waiting at the traffic lights to cross. A very loud black man singled me out for harassment! He walked behind me two blocks yelling, ‘Hey! Are you Paki? You muslim asian? Are you terrorist? You gonna blow up ma place? etc! I felt like I was walking under a particularly unwanted spotlight in that mixed neighbourhood. At the human rights organization meet, there was an attempt at invisibilizing and here in this incident on the road, I was super-visible as something I am not. In this man’s ignorance, I ended up being all that threatens America.

I am not simply complaining. What I am saying is that, I begin to feel that even when one travels for the first time somewhere, that romantic sense of happy anonymity that I used to believe in, is not really there. Perhaps it existed in those times when communities really lived in complete ignorance about one another and occasional travellers (like Hieun Tsang or Fa Hien or Marco Polo) operated as windows to cultural exchange. Now, in spite of the so-called information explosion online, on TV, etc., what we have is not so much as awareness as it is some funny, a priori knowledge about you that precedes you where you go. You don’t really get to go somewhere just as you, hoping that no one knows you, you don’t know anyone. People sort of already know you in a million different ways, most of which constitute a type, and they either verify you against that prototype or simply take you to be that. Even when you concede ignorance about them, the concession becomes one-way sometimes.

It is in these moments that I have been able to arrive at significant cultural understandings. Not about some specific culture, but in terms of ‘difference’,’Other’,’perception of the Other’,’ignorance’,’unevenness of that ignorance’ etc. It is in the face of these realities that my theory and politics have had to play out. I have found my engagement with theory [I mean cultural theory(-ies)] very empowering. I now find this engagement much more interesting and productive than a battle of theories that I often engage in.

An after-thought: I want to say that I am not positing, or subscribing to, a false binary of Theory and Reality or Practice. However, I have come to make a distinction between theorizing simply as a stimulating intellectual exercise and theorizing as a liberatory practice. By liberatory,I mean something that inserts that zone of self-reflexivity between experience and response. It gives a zone to move in where what comes under scrutiny is not just the experience but also one’s sense of one’s self.

This post was written originally in Oct 2007 for Pass the Roti on the Left Hand Side.

One would have expected that all that warning from my queer friends about Vettaiyadu Vilayadu would have braced me up for the actual encounter with the movie. Well, clearly not. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have felt as horrible as I felt in the theater yesterday and wouldn’t have come out as disturbed as I did. I never knew I was so slow on the intake.

It is very unfortunate that the first, open representation or discussion of homosexuality in Tamil movies should happen this way. In the first place, the two men being ‘accused’ of being homosexuals are psychopaths-serial killers who rape and murder women in most gruesome ways and are very expressive of their sexual desires towards women (“enakku ava venum” (“I want her”) sort of dialogues). I do not get this. If I am being dense, someone clarify this incongruence to me.

The whole idea of getting these two men raped by a transsexual (male to female) is horrific and grossly insensitive. Of course, Raghavan (Kamal’s character) later mildly chastises the police officer responsible for this. That does little to set right the damage that they have done to the image of Aravanis.

Let me make my position clear. I am not saying that a gay man can never be a psychopath or vice versa. I am not saying there might be no sex-worker Aravani who ends up having to please policemen or other powerful clients of hers. My objection and protest can be put this way:

• If there already were enough or adequate affirmative portrayals of queer people in Tamil movies, I might choose to ignore this. In the absence of any representation at all, such abominably negative representation is not welcome. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT ANY REPRESENTATION IS BETTER THAN NO REPRESENTATION.

• There is a clear danger of uninformed people beginning to see the representation of these two characters as types – as homosexuality and psychological disorder as being inextricably linked.

As a student of literature and as a performer, I understand that character representations largely fall into two kinds: individualized personas and, what we call, types. In the first kind, the character, the mannerisms, the entire personality come through as one unique individual who does not bring to mind someone we have met in flesh and blood or in a book, play, film etc. In the second kind, the types, the character can be abstracted into something that represents a type of individual. It enables us to relate him/her to someone else. Of course, the boundaries between these two keep blurring. That is what makes writing, acting, directing, performing and even reading challenging. There is a danger that these two villain characters in this movie become types. I will not be surprised (but definitely hurt and upset) if the names “Ila” and “Amudhan” acquire homophobic references in popular Tamil college lingo. If “Chiyaan” can happen, this too can happen.

• To show the villains as homosexuals is not necessary for this movie’s plot. It’s been put there to pander to the insensitive, homophobic galleries and just so that those sick dialogues can be used. Good art will not have anything superfluous. Chee! Silly me! I am talking about Kollywood! Sorry!

Of course, Tamil cinema has a general record (for people who notice it, that is) of trafficking in astoundingly abysmal portrayal of women. This movie is no exception. In Kamal Hassan’s movies, women as a rule, are little more than sex objects. But even when the Raghavan (Kamal) – Aaradhana (Jyothika) relationship is shown as blossoming as a mutually-respectful good friendship from the beginning, it is not devoid of patriarchal ideas of possessing and protecting women – (“Neeyum Maayavum en sotthu” – “You and Maya (the child) are my possessions, property”). Also, totally uncalled for, abusive references to “Ungamma…” (“Your mother….”) while talking to the villains. There were so many such utterances that I saved in my mobile phone!

And friends who think I am overreacting, No, I am not. I am only reacting to something that needs to be reacted to.

In Tamil: வேட்டைக் களமல்ல, விளையாட்டுப் பொருளல்ல

I start breathing.

One chill December morning I woke up with the feeling that this was the day. But I did not want to rush into it because I had this Doctoral Committee meeting looming large over me that day. I decided to finish that and tackle this in the evening. I knew my parents were guessing and wondering, given my sudden change of research area (Queer Literature) and the vehemence with which I was reading up – all those books and articles and sheets of downloaded poems lying around everywhere at home.

The doctoral committee thing, I understand, is usually a mere formality. But my supervisor had warned that mine might not be. And yes, it wasn’t. People on the committee were super-curious as to why I had chosen to work on queer writings. I defended my choice of topic in a way that impressed myself! Came home in the evening with this other task hanging over me like a huge mass of gray clouds, attached by tenuous threads to heaven, threatening to break down on me any time. After my customary cup of coffee, I paced up and down the house, with my knapsack still on me, wondering how to begin and where to. Then I switched on my computer, opened a Word document, and typed out all that I wanted to tell them…in a stream-of-consciousness fashion! I called my folks (mom, dad and sis) to my room. Asked my dad to read it aloud for everyone to hear. He probably thought it was one of my creative compositions that he was being asked to read out!

I could actually see them pale a bit when he read out the word “gay.” At the end of it , there was this sepulchral silence for a few minutes, all three of them looking at me, looking at each other, then suddenly having the air of being about to say something, and then not saying anything. My mom broke the silence: “Are you sure?” I said, “yes, I am.” She: “Ok! no problem. As long as you are sure of it. Well, sorry for taking these few minutes. I was a little unsettled. Though we are very enlightened in this direction, it is a whole new story to have it happen at your doorstep. That’s okay. No problem at all.” My dad: “Yeah. I do not have a problem. It is natural. Why have you even thought of possible rejection (I had, in that “declaration”)? How can we despise you? Nothing will change. Nothing at all.” By this time I was in tears. I generally need the slightest provocation!! Mom and dad opened out their hands, hugged me tight, and kept saying, “we love you, we love you.” My sister looked at me with tear-filled eyes that showed understanding and acceptance. It was such a relief. Such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

My folks have always known most of my friends – queer and non-queer. They now know my friends from my support group, Movenpick (now Orinam). Their demeanour towards these friends and me has not changed a wee bit after the ‘enlightenment.’ Most importantly they have not done the possible mistake of ‘suspecting’ all my friends of queerness. No. They have chosen not to privilege it in any special way.

They have overwhelmed me with their love and understanding. They now read all my creative. They ask questions. They genuinely want to know. They talk to me about safe sex. They now stand by me even as I go through subtle and pronounced harassments from several quarters. In all these months after the coming-out, several things have changed. I feel liberated. I feel free to talk about queer politics at home. I do not have to do anything under cover. But what has not changed is their love for me. I shall forever be grateful to them for that. They remain entirely beyond thanks because of the sheer inadequacy of the word.