But the high spirits and tender moments were shortlived. The Bandstand was also a preying ground for thieves and thugs, as well as a popular target for police raids. There were frequent reports of money or watches being stolen and of men being bashed in the dark lane at the rear of the park. My early skepticism about these claims was soon eroded, particularly after the night I met Shanti, a tall 25-year-old Gujarati dentist, in a shadowy corner of the maidan. After brief introductions, we retired to a nearby café where he told me his story.
‘It was really horrible. I didn’t realize what was happening at first. I was sitting alone on a bench at the Bandstand, eyeing the crowd. Out of the blue, two men came and sat on either side of me. One produced a knife and demanded that I empty my pockets. They took my watch and wallet, then raced off. I wanted to scream, but what good would it have done? No one would have noticed or cared. The worst part was that they found my business card. I started getting threatening phone calls demanding money. There was no way I could pay, so I finally went to the police. A fat lot of good that did! They only wanted their cut too. When I refused, they contacted my family and told them the story. I had shamed our family’s good name. I thought my father might throw me out of the house and disinherit me. Instead, he demanded I undergo electric shock treatment to cure me of this terrible disease.’
‘You didn’t give in to his demands, did you?’
‘What could I have done? You are a foreigner. You don’t understand what it’s like to be an only son in a Hindu family. It’s okay for you to say I should have refused the treatment. Try stepping into my shoes and see what it’s like.’
I didn’t know how to respond. Instead, I slipped my right hand under the table and held his left hand.
‘I must go now,’ he said, catching me off guard. ‘Maybe we could meet again some time.’
I made my usual excuses about not having a place of my own but this didn’t deter him.
‘You have a pen?’ he asked.
I produced an old ballpoint and he scribbled down an address on a scrap of paper.
‘This is my dental clinic. Come after 8 pm any night except Sunday.’
I folded the paper and slid it in my pocket. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait to visit a dentist.
* * *
On nights when the Bandstand didn’t offer much interest, I would scour the maidan for parts where I was most likely to run into other young men with similar interests. Although some sections were lit by streetlights, others were well secluded from public gaze—not just dark corners or along the stone walls abutting the park, but even the midfield.
I discovered this one Friday night. This was no ordinary Friday night, although to the majority of Indians it would have been. It was Good Friday, celebrated only by the country’s tiny Christian minority. But it was a special day for me. Due to an exceptionally heavy workload in the previous couple of months, our staff had decided to take time out. For several days, we were left to our own devices, a rarity in our regimented lifestyle. Because this was a last-minute decision, I had time on my hands I wasn’t anticipating. My first thought was how to meet other young men. I flipped through my ever-expanding address book, trying to decide whom to call. But my first challenge was finding a place to stay.
Within five minutes’ walk from our staff quarters was a Jesuit-run men’s hostel that offered rooms at moderate rates. It also included a dining room for breakfast and snacks. I had learned of its existence from others at the Bandstand and had often passed it by, but had never ventured in. I had reservations about it though. It was so close to home that I might run into colleagues. Also, it was designed primarily for young Catholic men from out of town as a place to stay until they found other accommodation. The first issue I could handle by being doubly alert while entering and leaving the building (although I would later discover how misplaced this confidence was). The second matter proved trickier.
Armed with a small overnight bag, I headed for the hostel. When I reached the registration desk, I noticed that the cost per person diminished as the number of occupants grew.
‘Yes?’ asked the wiry clerk with double-thick glasses.
‘Do you have a room for the next three nights?’
‘Which room is it you are wanting?’
‘A double room, please. I’m expecting a friend to join me tomorrow.’
I noticed a sign on the counter advising that guests are issued with a pass they must carry with them at all times.
‘No doubles. But I have a triple for two nights. After that, I am not knowing.’
‘I’ll take it.’
‘Sixty rupees and sign here,’ he said, pushing a gigantic register towards me.
He eyed me like a hawk as I wrote the address of our staff residence in West Bengal.
‘You are from Calcutta side, isn’t it?’
His gift for stating the obvious impressed me. It was now my turn to watch as he filled out my pass. His elegant longhand flowed from the gold-tipped fountain pen onto the white card. It was only while spelling my name that he stumbled a bit.
‘Here is your pass, Mr. Boor-bid-gay,’ he said, spitting it out syllable by syllable. ‘And what is your friend’s good name?’
My mind swung into overdrive, trying to conjure up a common Bengali name, since my imaginary friend would most probably be coming from Calcutta too. I coughed and cleared my throat to buy myself some time.
‘Sunderjit Chatterji,’ I declared.
As soon as I had said it, it occurred to me that I should have probably given a Christian name rather than a Hindu one. But the clerk didn’t seem fazed by it. After noting it down, he slid both passes towards me along with the room key.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘No mention.’
I hurried to my third-floor room and unlocked the door. I couldn’t believe how spacious it was. I hung my few clothes in the leaning armoire and spread out my writing materials on the desk by the window. It was late morning, so I tried phoning several guys, hoping to arrange an afternoon or evening rendezvous. Two didn’t answer and one call resulted in an abortive attempt to communicate with a family servant. Since I couldn’t leave a number for any of them to call back, I decided to try again later.
The rest of the day passed pleasantly, as I visited my favorite bookstore, watched The Great Escape for the third time, and enjoyed spicy mutton dhansak at a Parsi restaurant. After returning to the hostel early in the evening, I tried phoning again. This time I got through to my dentist friend and we arranged to meet the following day. But I still had no date for the evening. Frustration was beginning to turn to irritation. For once I had a place of my own but no one to share it with. That seemed like nothing short of sacrilege. But I still had one more option. I hopped on a bus and headed for the maidan.
When I reached, the last slivers of daylight were fast disappearing through the fronds of coconut palms that bordered the maidan. I did several rounds of the perimeter but found little activity. Beginning to despair of my luck, I sat down on the grass and scanned the open space. After a few minutes, I heard a noise behind me.
‘Skiskiss.’
There it was again, a kind of hissing sound. I looked in the direction it came from and squinted. About 10 meters away from the shadows of the ivy-covered fence emerged a young man. He summoned me with a bent hand. The first time I had come across this gesture in India I had thought I was being shooed away, when in fact it implied the opposite.
I hesitated. Prudence told me to get up and walk a few paces so the streetlight would give me a better view of him. I did and waited to see if he would follow. Within seconds he was alongside me. He didn’t appear to be rough trade, but I was not willing to take him back to the hostel. My need for immediate gratification had been simmering all evening and was reaching boiling point. I didn’t bother with the usual preliminaries.
‘Shall we go and sit in the middle?’ I suggested.
‘Yes, but down the other end where the ligh
t is not so much.’
Was this a genuine attempt to find us more privacy or was he setting me up? Did he have a couple of accomplices lurking over there, ready to fleece a gullible foreigner? I decided to take a chance. We wandered across the maidan and sat down in the center of the field. The grass was slightly damp, so my companion took out a red gamchha and placed it on the ground beneath him, as I’d seen many Indians do on trains and buses. I found this custom quaint at first and silently ridiculed it. But like many things Indian, I gradually warmed to it. It seemed to be a way of claiming public space as one’s own, as much as protecting clothing.
I moved my body close to his and bent one leg at the knee, in an effort to screen our activities from curious eyes. At the same time, I searched the field to see if anyone was approaching. Since he was facing me, he could keep a watch on the other side. Satisfied that we were undisturbed, I gently pulled his shirt out of his unbelted trousers and directed my hand towards his crotch. He reached down and unzipped his pants. The invitation was impossible to resist. As I leaned over to grasp him, he did the same to me. Within minutes we had driven each other into a frenzy.
A sharp thwack across my back told me that we were not alone. A stinging pain shot through my body as I jerked my head around to find a khaki-clad policeman leering over me, a wooden lathi gripped in his right hand. He smashed it down onto my companion’s shoulders while hurling a tirade of abuse. Red lights flashed in my head and self-preservation kicked in. I jumped up, twisting to dodge another blow from the flailing lathi, and ran. Shouts of ‘band karo’ didn’t deter me. Dredging up my last ounce of energy, I tore across the maidan towards the exit. A sharp whistle blew. I expected a flurry of cops to join the fray. As I belted through the gate into the open street, heads turned and voices rose from the crowd on the pavement. I darted around the corner, sped down the street, and headed for the main road. Gasping for breath, I held out my arm to flag down a taxi.
‘Byculla Bridge ke paas. Jaldi, jaldi!’ I gushed, before quickly getting in and collapsing in the back seat.
As soon as my back made contact with the vinyl seat, I yelped with pain. It was only then that I realized how bad the wounds were. I was worried that blood might stain my cotton shirt, but tried not to think about it as the taxi sped down Mohammed Ali Road. When we were within a block of the hostel, I asked the driver to stop, slapped a bunch of rupees into his hand, and jumped out. As I entered the hostel and mounted the stairs, the night watchman gave me a cursory look and returned to chewing his paan. I went straight to the bathroom, took off my shirt, and examined my injuries in the mirror. Several welts had formed where the lathi had bruised my skin. I returned to my room, dropped onto the bed, and cried myself to sleep.
The next morning, after a shower and breakfast I felt a little revived, but the pain emanating from my back reminded me of the ugly events of the night before. I sat at the desk, opened an aerogramme, and tried to pen a few words to a friend in New Zealand. I had written to him several months ago, daring for the first time to reveal my newfound sexuality. He was the one person I had decided I could trust. Not only had he known me for many years, he was also a religious brother, who I knew would treat such news with discretion. For weeks I had waited anxiously for a reply, but none came. Then, a few days ago while flicking through my mail, I noticed Jeremy’s unmistakable handwriting. I tore open the envelope and held my breath.
With each sentence I read, I uttered a sigh of relief. His words were affirmative and his tone supportive. His caution about taking risks in a strange country with different rules and potential misunderstandings rang true, but in an abstract kind of way. Now I was faced with the embarrassing task of telling him exactly how I had ignored his advice and the price I had had to pay for it. I stared out the window and pondered how to begin. Then I happened to glance above the door. Every room in the hostel probably had one, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before—a painted effigy of Jesus nailed to the cross. This familiar symbol took on a whole new meaning for me. I picked up my pen and began to write.
I dared not discuss these things with my colleagues and my Indian gay friends wouldn’t have been able to grasp the strange world I inhabited. But thanks to Jeremy, I had at last begun the dialogue about my sexual identity. It was such a huge relief and in retrospect, a giant first step in acknowledging who I was. A favorite saying of one of my colleagues rang in my ears—an experience is never complete until you have reflected upon it. The reflection had begun and no doubt would continue, but it wouldn’t deepen without more experiences to feed it. I sealed the envelope, popped it into the mailbox outside the hostel, and went to buy antiseptic cream.
* * *
While parks and gardens were popular meeting places for men seeking sex with other men in India, suburban trains and railway stations were also fertile ground. Bombay’s notoriously overcrowded trains lent themselves to all kinds of mischief, not least the infamous ‘Eve teasing’ women were subjected to. But at rush hour, in particular, opportunities for interpersonal contact abounded. I soon learned that certain carriages on certain trains were renowned for their furtive sexual activity. ‘Adam teasing’ I called it. Whenever returning home alone from an appointment, I would ferret out these carriages and try my luck. It was a game of Russian roulette. If it backfired, I could be in serious trouble. But as I graduated from bumbling amateur to sophisticated pro, the temptation to add another prize to my collection of diverse sexual conquests outweighed the risks.
My initiation into the wild ways of train sex happened most unexpectedly. Several weeks earlier I had met a young man who said he performed classical Bharatanatyam dance in hotels and clubs. He invited me to a performance, so one afternoon between appointments I decided to take up his offer. Posing as a hotel guest, I wangled my way into an auditorium at the Taj Palace Hotel and sat in the back. I’d always harbored a secret passion for dance but had never pursued it in the heavily macho society in which I grew up. So in a place where such expression by men was culturally acceptable, I felt like I could indulge my fantasy. I watched mesmerized by the elegance of his twirling arabesques and the pounding stutter of his feet. After he came off stage, I intercepted him on his way to his dressing room. His face was dripping with perspiration but his eyes lit up when he saw me.
‘So you came! I never thought you would. But I’m so sorry. I can’t stop now. Can you come to my house Saturday evening? I gave you my address, isn’t it?’
I promised I would go. All week I could think only of meeting him again. By the time I boarded the train at Byculla station on Saturday evening, I was already turned on. I pushed my way into a carriage of wall-to-wall people and wriggled through the sea of bodies towards the rear of the car to avoid the crowds that surged through the doors at every stop. I reached up and grabbed a handle hanging from the ceiling to steady myself. Once it picked up speed, the train swayed with a gentle lilt, causing bodies to press against one another in a rhythmic motion. I stood trapped in front of a thickset young man, our legs touching each other. As the train moved and I rubbed up against him, I could feel myself getting hard. At first I was embarrassed and hoped my rising excitement would abate. Then I noticed when the train slowed and stopped swaying, the pressure between us didn’t decrease. Far from objecting to my presence, this guy was encouraging it. I threw him a quick glance and he raised his eyebrows.
As soon as the train pulled out of the next station, he reached down, undid my fly, and slipped his hand inside my trousers. I was terrified other passengers would notice and sound the alarm. But another part of me was cheering him on. It didn’t take long for him to claim victory. As the train began to slow for the next station, he gently withdrew his sticky hand from my trousers and made a halfhearted attempt to zip me up. His audacity floored me. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. Apparently my accomplice had acted just in time, since this seemed to be his stop. As he started moving towards the exit, he looked me firmly in the eye and cocked his head, urg
ing me to follow him. I was sorely tempted but decided I would not renege on my dancer friend, who promised even greater rewards. As he melted into the billowing crowd on the platform, I wondered what this stranger thought about our encounter. For me, it was another one for the trophy room.
I soon learned that railway stations were also places of heavy activity for men looking for a quick release or a casual pick-up. Rumor had it that particular stations, even particular platforms on particular stations—and particular times of the day and night—were white-hot centers for contact. The focal point of activity was the men’s urinal. At Dadar station, where the two main north–south lines converged and trains came and went by the minute, activity was brisk. This was certainly the case in the men’s loo on number two platform, which one of my gay friends affectionately referred to as ‘the temple.’ Between about 6 pm and 11 pm any day of the week, waves of devotees could be seen entering its sacred walls to pay homage to the great god, instant male sex. Unfortunately, police officers also made regular visits, so I tended to give this shrine a wide berth.
However, other stations, purportedly less risky, did arouse my curiosity. One was Bombay Central, a major station on the suburban rail network as well as on the national grid. One evening returning home late, I decided to stop at Bombay Central to see if I might enliven what had been a rather dull day. The station clock registered 11.15 pm and the platforms were quiet. Trains came and went at growing intervals. As my train dribbled to a halt, I skipped onto the platform with the aplomb of a born-and-bred Bombay-wallah. After a quick reconnoiter, I made for the overhead bridge and descended to the middle platform where there was a men’s lavatory. Something about the situation disturbed me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Perhaps it just lacked the normal frenzied activity I’d become accustomed to. The echo of my own footsteps on the stone platform was strangely unsettling. I slowed down as I approached the toilet entrance, in half a mind to turn around and call it quits. But knowing when to walk away from a situation was something I’d never been good at.
The Boatman Page 6
