The Boatman

by John Burbidge

  I would have also been foolish and naïve to assume that all my non-Indian coworkers would welcome my news with open arms. I discovered this when one of my Chicago colleagues informed me that a foreign member of our Bombay staff was antagonistic towards my homosexuality. It pained me that this particular person had this attitude, since we had known each other from our early days in the organization in Australia and I respected him a great deal.

  In late 1982, while on assignment in Calcutta, my colleague’s concern about my increasing absences from our residence drove him to broach the subject with Sandy.

  ‘I’m quite worried about John,’ he revealed. ‘He’s out so much of the time. I wonder if we may have lost him. Do you think he is visiting the ladies?’

  Even though Sandy didn’t know as much about me then as she did later, of one thing she was fairly certain. ‘No, definitely not the ladies,’ she replied.

  The following year, when the emergence of a gay and lesbian group in the organization was becoming common knowledge, I heard that this colleague made it plain he was not in favor of the idea.

  While I was saddened by my colleague’s opposition to my sexual explorations, it didn’t bother me in the same way that Henry’s more overt antagonism to me did. Since our conversation in the garden, I had suspected Henry’s motives with every decision he made that affected me. When he arranged for me to go to Australia on a fundraising trip for the exposition, I questioned his real agenda. On the day of my departure he made a quip about curing me of my wayward habits. Little did he realize that this actually spurred me on. The trip proved to be of little value in terms of its purpose, but it opened my eyes wide to a gay subculture I had never known existed, let alone explored, while growing up in Australia. For the first time in my life, I discovered gay bookstores, gay baths and gay bars, none of which existed in India. Still, India retained its firm grip on me and I couldn’t wait to get back. The lure of its anonymous, subterranean gay community was much more enticing than the more public façade of Australia’s counterpart.

  Upon my return, I made a halfhearted attempt to be reassigned to our Calcutta office to escape Henry’s clutches, but I knew that my work demanded that I stay in Bombay, so I gave up on the idea. It never occurred to me that Henry might be transferred to another location instead.

  Each year in July, after the annual global staff meeting in Chicago, new assignments were posted. While most people stayed at least four years in one place, all positions were up for grabs and you were expected to accept your assignment without question. Staff around the world would be on tenterhooks, eagerly awaiting the news. This year, as word trickled through to Bombay, I was not the only one taken by surprise when it was revealed that Henry would be leaving India. I had assumed he would remain at least until the exposition was over. The official line was that the exposition had added significantly to our fundraising bottom line, and required increased momentum. A new team, headed by a young American couple who had been heavily involved in the program’s development abroad, was being put in place to try to meet the challenge of raising more money and undertaking extensive promotional work for the exposition. With the changeover of leadership, I now carried a lot of our common memory in India, and so was critical to the team’s continuity and effectiveness.

  After the announcement of Henry’s pending departure, I saw less and less of him. He would disappear for several days at a stretch. I noticed that Salima was absent more as well. Salima was one of the few Muslim members of our organization and a valued member of our fundraising team. She came from a small village and was smart, attractive and ambitious. She and I had often worked together in my first couple of years and I always enjoyed her mischievous laugh. But in recent months I had had few assignments with her, while those she did with Henry had increased significantly.

  Then, one afternoon, Salima arrived unexpectedly at the front door. She had come to say goodbye and collect a few things. I was stunned. Apparently, she was moving on too, although where to was unclear. After chatting for a few minutes, she said she needed to be going. I walked over to the window, glanced down, and noticed Henry slumped in the back seat of a taxi. In some ways, I was relieved to be spared the awkwardness of saying goodbye to this person whom I’d come to regard as my nemesis. Part of me felt sorry that we couldn’t bring closure to our fissured relationship. Another part of me despised him for accusing me of ‘illicit relations’ outside the organization, while carrying on his own affair with a younger, female staff member.

  Between Henry’s departure and the arrival of our new team leaders, I found myself with a little time on my hands and used the opportunity to reconnect with a number of my gay friends in Bombay and catch up on my correspondence with those further afield. I also pored over a number of articles and books sent from abroad. A new word began appearing in much of the material I read. It was the acronym AIDS. I didn’t have a clue what it was at first but it appeared to be a disease of the immune system that happened to show up most often among gay men. An international flight attendant was reputedly the first Indian to contract it. Within a few years, this four-letter word would become the bane of my life. But just then, innocent of the threat it represented, I carried on with my rapacious ways, stepping up the pace and increasing the danger level all the time. What had begun as an adventure was now an addiction.

  HEAVEN IS IN GUJARAT

  As the exposition drew closer, preparations stepped up to a feverish pace. While our staff in Delhi worked with hotel managers and travel agents to iron out endless minutiae and logistical nightmares, my own team was stretched to its limits shoring up funding and finalizing the conference brochure. I found myself traveling to cities I’d never visited, and sometimes alone, since we were all being called upon to cover more bases than usual. This created opportunities for me to indulge my own passions in ways I could only have dreamed of earlier. Gujarat, Maharashtra’s neighbor to the north, was a case in point.

  I had just arrived in Ahmedabad by train and checked into a shabby, third-class hotel where rooms were cheap and no questions were asked. I didn’t know a soul in this rambling old city, but as I’d learned before, all I needed was one name in a new place to get me started. In this case, I had several given me by a friend in Bombay. I tried phoning the two for whom I had numbers, but as usual I didn’t get through. This didn’t deter me since I’d come to expect phones not to work in India. Instead, I headed for what looked like the center of town and after a few inquiries, located the park my friend had mentioned as the most likely spot to make contact with this little coterie.

  It was not the sort of place I had imagined I might connect with the gay underground. Unlike Bombay’s Bandstand or Delhi’s Connaught Circus, it did not lend itself easily to making covert connections. Its symmetrical gravel paths, beds of pink and orange roses, and flaming gulmohur trees gave it an openness that deterred such activities. When I entered the park through a pergola of bougainvillea, the smoke-filled haze of evening was settling over the city, bringing with it a welcome calm to replace the chaos of the day. Escaping the scrutiny of family, young couples sauntered along, eyes straight ahead and hands apart. Old men and women, venturing out of their homes in search of cooler air, shuffled by in leather chappals. And then there were the young men.

  Many Indian men impressed me with their sense of style. Regardless of their income, clothes were a high priority. Usually tailor-made, they fitted better than off-the-rack varieties, whether neatly pressed white kurtas or the latest Western-style pants and shirt copied from imported fashion magazines. Gujaratis were no exception. Not all were seeking other men but you could easily recognize those who were if you were privy to their shared code of looks and gestures, often as simple as rubbing your forefinger against your nose or pulling on your earlobe. But mostly it was the flickering glance and the returned stare that communicated volumes to those tuned in to the right frequency.

  A number of guys walked up and down the pathways but at this early stage, I was
careful not to show too much interest in any one in particular. Given a little time, I would pare down the list to possibles, then winnow it further to preferables. Just as I was settling into my elimination process and enjoying the accompanying fantasies, I was jarred back to reality. A young man came from nowhere and sidled up beside me.

  ‘You are new here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve just come from Bombay.’

  ‘How did you find this park?’

  What kind of question was that, I wondered? Could he be plain-clothes CID? Something about his manner suggested otherwise. Besides, he was much too young, unless they were recruiting college students to do some of their grunt work for them.

  ‘I asked at my hotel where I might find a park and they suggested this,’ I lied.

  ‘You staying at the Taj?’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t afford that. Only a cheap place near the railway station.’

  My interrogator fidgeted and crossed his legs. I thought this would make him reconsider, but he seemed undeterred.

  ‘Your good name, please?’

  ‘I’m John. And you?’

  ‘Santosh.’

  ‘And what do you do in life, Santosh?’

  ‘I’m a medical student, third year.’

  His answer explained his fluent English and his direct, urbane manner. Although he wasn’t the epitome of my sexual fantasy, there was something about him I admired, not least his perky style and childlike openness. I decided to let down my guard a couple of notches.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I mused. ‘I have a friend in Bombay who is a third-year med student. His family’s from Ahmedabad. He also mentioned this park. In fact, he gave me the names of some friends of his he said I might meet here.’

  At this remark, his eyes lit up and he shifted to face me directly. ‘Do you have them? May I see them?’

  I hesitated a moment. The CID theory raised its scary head again. But having come to know and respect the serendipitous nature of India’s gay underground, I handed him a crumpled piece of paper.

  ‘Oh yes. I know these guys,’ he said with a glint in his eye. ‘They usually show up here around this time. One is a doctor. He has a car. If you’re lucky, he might take you for a ride and show you some of the sights.’

  ‘That sounds like fun,’ I replied.

  ‘It’s bound to be,’ said Santosh with the slightest grin.

  Sure enough, within 20 minutes two more young men showed up, one lightly built with a thin mustache and the other a little heavier. They were walking hand in hand and their parry-riposte banter suggested they were close friends. Santosh arose and intercepted them.

  ‘I hear we are having a mutual acquaintance,’ said the slim one, introducing himself as Suresh. ‘This is Moti,’ he said, pointing to his friend.

  We exchanged gentle handshakes.

  ‘So how is our dear Kanti in Bombay? Behaving himself? I bet not. He wrote to say he had a new foreign friend who might be visiting these parts soon.’

  I felt like a letter expected in the mail, but was pleased to find myself on a first-name basis with strangers only hours after arriving in this city. I was reminded again of the primacy of relationships in this society. Everything is predicated on them. Without them, life is a constant battle for survival. With them, doors open and privileges are granted that would not happen so easily in other parts of the world.

  But this was not the time for pondering. Suresh asked if I would like to join him and Moti and a couple of other friends for a ride in his new Fiat Premier. This Italian-designed, four-door sedan was one of only two types of car manufactured in India at the time. It took obscene amounts of money to buy a car in India, not to mention infinite patience and greasing of many palms. Being a doctor from a middle-income family, Suresh had managed to acquire the vehicle early in life. He took great pride in this prize possession. Clearly, so did his friends.

  All five of us piled into the compact car, sharing the limited space like sardines in a tin as only Indians can. Suresh ushered me into the middle of the back seat between two newcomers, Haroon and Nitin. They looked like college students game for anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw them flash knowing glances at each other as I bent down to enter the car.

  The first thing I noticed was that the windows were made of dark green tinted glass. You could see out but it was virtually impossible to see in. I assumed this helped with the intense glare of the sun in this dry and dusty part of the country. But it didn’t take me long to realize it served another purpose.

  ‘How are you guys doing back there?’ inquired Suresh, as we drove out of the heart of the city.

  Taking this as his cue, Nitin put his hand on my right thigh as Haroon did the same on my left. Simultaneously, Nitin unzipped his fly and indicated with his eyes for me to reach inside. He must have noticed me hesitate briefly.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m clean. Have it.’

  The Indian use of the imperative mood was nowhere as offensive to me now as it was when I first ran into it. But his matter-of-factness made Nitin’s statement sound weirdly routine, almost perfunctory. I was lost for words. Once again, I was caught trying to reconcile a public veneer of prudery and restraint with an ‘anything goes’ mode of private behavior.

  I was about to take up Nitin’s suggestion when Haroon reached over and unzipped my fly. Without waiting for permission, he groped inside my pants and held me tightly. It was like a chain reaction rapidly getting out of control. Control was something that once defined my life but now was disappearing faster than I could say the word.

  I felt my body tense as I realized how vulnerable I was, riding around in a strange city in a foreign country in the back of a car with four other guys I knew nothing about. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot I could do about it; I could either grin and bear it, or let go of my fears and submit to the pleasure of the moment. I had just decided on the latter when Moti interrupted.

  ‘You guys are awfully quiet back there.’

  I glanced at the rearview mirror and caught Suresh winking at me mischievously.

  Nitin let fly with a burst of Gujarati, which I interpreted to be something close to ‘mind your own fucking business.’ Things were fast heading in that direction.

  Moti chuckled, and, as if to have the last word, Suresh swerved the car suddenly as we went around the same traffic circle for what felt like the 47th time. Just at that moment, Nitin came like a burst of gunfire. Haroon shortly followed suit and I finished a close third. As the three of us lapsed in to a state of blissful torpidity, Suresh kept driving. We must have covered most of Ahmedabad several times over, but I was none the wiser.

  When they dropped me back at my hotel two hours later, I was exhausted and elated. I trundled up the steps to my room, barely noticing my surroundings. The events of the last few hours blotted out everything else. I could hardly grasp that I had arrived in this city that afternoon, a total stranger. As I thought about it the next day, I wasn’t sure the events of the previous evening had happened. Was it another of my sexual fantasies playing tricks on me? One glance at my trousers and my question was answered. How ingenious, I thought, to rig up your car so you and your friends could enjoy a little privacy. Never again could I look at a Fiat and think of it as just another car.

  The next two days I was buoyant beyond belief. I sailed through them like a yacht, spinnaker unfurled, fueled by a strong tail wind and gently rolling seas. Santosh invited me to join him at a concert of Gujarati folk music the following evening. When I met him at the theater, he was accompanied by two friends, both of whom were eager to make my acquaintance. The feeling was mutual. Santosh made sure each sat on either side of me, as if to give me my pick. It was a subtle but intentional gesture. I attempted to focus on the singers and dancers on stage, but the more I tried the less I was able to. We were all engaged in a game of telepathy, shooting messages back and forth. The heaviest volume of traffic was between me and the young man to my left, Ramesh, a secon
d-year commerce student. By the third song, the vibes were drowning out the high-pitched sounds pouring forth from the stage.

  Ramesh was the stockier and more outgoing of his peers. His eyes lit up when he spoke. Each time I cast a furtive glance in his direction, he would respond with a stronger one. His right leg kept nudging my left, which left me in no illusion about his interests. This put me in a quandary, since I was Santosh’s guest and I felt obliged to do as he suggested. During intermission, I excused myself to go to the toilet and when I returned, I found Santosh and Ramesh busy in conversation. As I joined them, Santosh turned to me.

  ‘Ramesh has offered to walk you back to your hotel after the concert.’

  ‘That’s most kind of him,’ I said with a swift but telling smile.

  It struck me what a tremendous knack Indians have of ‘doing the needful’—a stock phrase in Indian English that captured a deep-seated capacity for sweeping uncomfortable situations under the carpet, saving face, removing obstacles, and honoring the other. It described so many experiences I had in India—the company executive who offered me the use of his office phone to call my mother because he knew I couldn’t afford an international call; the young man who gave up his precious ticket so I could watch the final day of an international cricket match; the accountant who invited me to dine in one of Bombay’s most exclusive private clubs and use its swimming pool and other facilities. I hadn’t asked for any of these; I didn’t need to.