This conversation, which I had noted in my diary, has been reproduced as best as possible. Much of it was in the vernacular (Marathi and Konkani) and some of those colloquial nuances have been lost. But it was in a monastery that my ‘coming out’ took place. I am ever grateful to the monks of the Ramakrishna order for making my coming out so painless and worthy of all that is great in man’s heritage. Thank you, Swamiji! It is finally only people like you who will be heard and admired for what you are: a truly evolved human being.
*
My coming out was with a bang. When I returned home, I would go out to cruise with a vengeance. Since my first days in the Indian Express as a junior reporter, rarely, if ever, did I come home before midnight. And the scores? For people who don’t know what gay life is, Bombay can be a dead place after nine at night. For us gays, life began after sunset. From Chowpatty, the famous beach in the centre of town where the popular bhelpuri was invented, all the way to Borivili where even the guards at the National Park were gay.
My coming out, to office colleagues, was dramatic. Most of us reporters and sub-editors took the last train home from Churchgate in South Bombay. The last train at 1 a.m. was also called the Queen’s Special in gay slang. There were five of us led by R, an orthodox Karnataka linguist who believed even heterosexuality was sinful. That Saturday night there was a particularly heated argument about sex. It went like; this:
R [my senior]: I’m sick of this sex, sex, sex all the time in our magazine section. Why don’t they stop talking about it? It’s sick!
Ashok: What’s so sick about it? It’s a subject that is worth discussing in a repressive society . . .
R: Well, it’s embarrassing. It’s . . .
Into the railway coach walked M, a particularly glamorous glitterbug of a gay. He was dressed to kill; there was stardust in his hair and on his face, and he was wearing a tanktop, showing off his biceps and pectorals to good effect.
M: Oh, you silly fellow. Where were you tonight? Do you know the fun we had at the Bandstand? [He was talking of the Cooperage Bandstand where gays cruised navy boys.]
Ashok: [trying to fob off conversing with M] Oh M. Sorry, but I was working. This is my boss at the office. [This was supposed to be a hint to M to shut up but it wasn’t taken.]
M: The seafood [navy guys] was fantastic, yaar. I got this Rajput fellow who went on and on in Lovelane [a little alley behind the Bandstand]. I got him through the fence man. I still have the chain-link marks on my bum, yaar. Yum, yum!
I was blushing. R was red as a lobster in a steampot. Finally, R got up and heaved out of the compartment at Marine Lines. My cover was blown by M who went on chattering about his conquests.
But, to R’s credit, the subject never came up again. In spite of being such a conservative fellow, his attitude never changed nor has he made a single homophobic remark to date. R refuses to even acknowledge my sexuality and there it stands.
*
It was by looking at Akka’s condition that I knew my position as a single person was a severe handicap in India. Akka was Anna’s only and elder sister. She was also a child-widow and had come to live with us when she lost her husband at sixteen. Though respected and loved as the head of our family, even as a surrogate mother to us, her position was secure only on a contract—the contract of silence; silence about her sexuality.
This was my position too. I was secure in my position as the patriarch of the Row-Kavis, being the eldest, unmarried brahmachari (bachelor) brother. But this security was tied to a silence regarding my sexuality. Any sexuality, if not harnessed for the family good, was taboo. I would finally break that silence to transgress the social contract that holds homosexuals and lesbians prisoners of a heterosexist society. This I was, I think, fated to do. It was part of my secular mission and the result of my liberation at the Ramakrishna monastery. I am grateful to the monks for the spiritual strength they gave me. It would give me a firm commitment in seeing that Bombay Dost would succeed.
Akka’s final isolation and rejection by every child she raised would convince me that Indian families held nothing sacred in their drive for self-perpetration. Towards the end, at seventy-four, she would be a bitter but brave old woman. The child she had rejected because it was weak and had few chances of survival had grown up to be a homosexual, a social outcast. The first category she did not understand, the second she had fought all her life to avoid becoming a part of. But her silence had not paid off. The sacrifice she had made—of her sexuality—in order to bring up her brother’s children had been taken for granted. She discovered that she had nothing to call her own.
I decided never to let that happen to me. The family—and the world—had to accept Ashok Row Kavi, complete with his homosexuality. Or nothing at all. Those who chose the second option would get the right retort: a cold rejection! On that score, there could be no compromise.
*
Bombay in the seventies and early eighties was ripe for a gay sub-culture. A distinct class of skilled professionals had a firm grip on the city’s cultural life. A corporate work ethic had finally evolved in contrast to the babu-raj of Delhi and the Bengali queasiness regarding sexuality in Calcutta. All these signs were important ingredients for a gay sub-culture.
There were already rather naughty gay parties in such staid places like Matunga and Ghatkopar. I went for a gay party hosted at a Marathi school in Mulund where a teacher’s housing quarters had been turned into an orgy room. Within five years, the private feature of these gay parties had gone public. The first such leap forward was thanks to a crazy incident at an ace Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot’s house on Pali Hill.
B, the pilot, had left the IAF thanks to a liaison between him and the mess cook that was about to burst into the open. If B had stayed on in the IAF, he would possibly have been not merely the most handsome officer in the ‘Vayu Sena’ but also the Chief of Air Staff. However, they allowed him an honourable discharge if he resigned his commission. He left gladly to join up as the head of an agricultural air-spraying business.
We were having an innocent orgy in his bedroom while his wife was supposedly away in Calcutta or wherever. The bed had been removed and wall-to-wall mattresses had been laid out with rubber matting covering them. Anybody going into the room was to remove his clothes and throw them on clothes-horses placed outside the door. After six men had trooped in bare-assed, a can of coconut oil was poured over the human pyramid. It was fun except that I’d never liked group sex. It turned into a nightmare when the lights suddenly came on and B’s wife stood at the door screaming like a banshee. Her husband had his legs in the air (we called it the Flying Angel position) being screwed by a stud from Thane. I’ve never seen such an Olympic race to get out of a house.
Anyway, I decided that enough was enough and soon after that we had Bombay’s first mad public party at a hotel in suburban Ghatkopar. The owner had decorated the whole terrace with twinkling lights and we had numbered tickets with tight security. Each ticket had to be sold against two guarantees from established gays.
It was amazing to see the energy liberated that day. Gay couples like R and V thought it was the first time they could show their love for each other. Snazzy singles like C and F flirted madly. And the prizes for individual dances like mujra musicals and rumba-sambas were snapped up by I unexpected queens from the suburbs. It was a grand exposition of talent, such as had never been seen before, all in one place. Queens came dressed to kill, some in exaggerated macho clothes while others wore feathers and sequins. Glitter powder, silver lipstick and high-heeled shoes, all the things Ghatkopar had never seen before. As for the ‘hotel’, some of the waiters did get seduced but it was not the gays who were at fault. After all, the beautiful and the bold could hardly be blamed for what they were, mad crazy poofs.
Nothing succeeds like excess, goes the saying. And soon R from Chembur, an orthodox little South Indian Brahmin, started organizing the first gay do’s. By then, in April 1990, the first copy of Bombay Dost had hit the c
ity like a ton of bricks. We got excellent coverage.
The first issue was historic in more ways than one. First, the Editorial Collective of Bombay Dost stumped quite a few from the cadillac-communist brigade. The alleged hard core Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghi, me of course, had inducted three Muslim male members into the Collective. Out of the three women, one was a Muslim. So if there was a divide along communal lines, I would be out-voted.
Efforts to torpedo the venture started immediately. The main opposition faction was led by a film director who thought he ought to be leading the movement.
It got to be ridiculous, actually. They started with a call to socially boycott me. Then a graduate of the IIM, Ahmedabad, got into a crazy, drunken, verbal assault on me even as he asked me in a hushed voice: ‘As one Brahmin to another, tell me, how can you work with Muslims?’ This from an avowed secularist!
Bombay Dost went from strength to strength. We were reported in the New York Times, the London Times and even in the esoteric Columbia School of Journalism’s magazine.
By the fifth issue, Bombay Dost had started getting advertisements which had an immediate impact. It was amazing how nobody had seen this huge niche market: fifty million males waiting for just such a newsletter. Bombay Dost was not just a newsletter but a movement by now. It was nearly a year since we had started off as an underground sheet for the gay and lesbian community but it represented something much more. Bombay Dost was a lifeboat for many people who thought they had no one to turn to. In a heterosexist world where marriage was a marketplace, we had created a space to be ourselves. But there was trouble in paradise!
When we had started, we hadn’t expected the type of response we got which changed our agenda. We had just managed to get a pokey little space at a business centre in Bandra, opposite the station. It was to be commented upon nastily by Arvind Kala, who wrote a book on homosexuals in India.
One day, after the first issue had been out for a month, there was a desperate call from Mrs Pinto, the manager of the business centre we were using as our mail-in address.
‘Why is nobody picking up the mail?’ she asked tiredly. ‘We have 200 letters here. For heavens’ sake, somebody had better come and pick it up,’ she added.
The torrent had started! Those first letters were like winged messengers from my huge new family spread over the subcontinent. Many were practising homosexuals who had not evolved a self-identity. India’s gays were like swans swimming in a dream waiting for that magic touch to wake them up.
But there were some who disagreed—mostly English-educated Indians with a skin-deep knowledge of not just their own culture but also of what was happening abroad; this lot were mostly armchair critics. But some of them felt that it was too soon to have a Gay Consciousness Movement. The regional and vernacular press had lurid stories of how Dost had horrendous male nudes and pornography. Most of these stories were, of course, untrue, but the best one was an interview a local politician gave in which a new theory of homosexuality was propounded. According to him, homos were dangerous because they seduced young boys. Also, the cause of homosexuality ‘was a blood disorder where female blood corpuscles ate up the male blood corpuscles and a man’s masculinity was subverted by terrible female characteristics’. It showed a distinct link between homophobia and misogyny.
However, it was within the home that much of the bitterness bore fruit. One of my siblings complained to Amma (Mother) that his eldest brother’s homosexuality was making life miserable for his poor, dear wife and two kids. The wife mostly ate out while the kids were left with the ayah to turn into ill-bred brats. It was strange that his wife’s activities (questionable to say the least, but which I shall not expand on) were not reflecting on the kids.
Amma stood up bravely to the age-old trick. Suggested Amma when it was brought to her notice, ‘Look, this duo is the typical modern lot. They want to have their cake and eat it. My suggestion is that he should give up the Row-Kavi surname and take up his wife’s surname. If he used his elder brother’s name when it suited him, he can’t turn around and try disowning him now. In fact, I’m ready to disown him.’
Sure enough, when Akka died in March 1993, and I was away in Canada, Amma saw to it that that particular sibling was refused permission to touch the funeral fire and the aasti (ashes) of the old lady. He had been disowned in public, a fitting reply to him and his painted, homophobic wife.
My poor little brother with his perpetual pout had committed the other cardinal sin that gays love to watch out for: assume too many things in a war they thought would be fought for money. Little do heterosexuals know that money is the last thing on a gay mind when a serious war begins.
Probably, V’s lessons had been learnt extra well by me. Though avoiding confrontation and conflict is the best way out for gays who have suffered through the centuries for their sexual orientation, I think gays make excellent fighters when the situation demands it. Playing the game of reconciliation and yet being prepared for confrontation have been the watchwords of this community as the careful management of our family squabbles had showed.
*
Bombay Dost progressed by leaps and bounds. Far too much responsibility fell on me and bearing the cross was no cakewalk.
By December 1991, I was already on the verge of a breakdown. But so crucial was the work and so critical the situation that there was no way that events could be slowed down for my sake. As Rebecca Savila, present secretary-general of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, would keep repeating: ‘The planet’s oldest and most persecuted minority now faces a now-or-never chance. We either learn to fight for dignity, demanding nothing more than what should be every world citizen’s right or we fight to get this invisible nation together.’
As many of us Asian gay activists had carefully confided to our government health officials, the conclusion by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the spread of HIV/AIDS in Asia was heterosexual was wrong. Not only was HIV/AIDS detected in India by forcibly testing female prostitutes, but it pretended that homosexuality just did not exist.
The incursion of Western ideas through Christianity and communism had wiped out the very visibility of sexual minorities. So thoroughly had this been achieved that most Indians were ashamed of the homosexual heritage within Indian culture. The great god at the Sabarimala shrine in Kerala, Ayyappa-Skanda, was not only a product of a sexual union between Shiva and Vishnu but he was called the husband of all army-men. In the Renuka-Yellamma tradition, boys too would be dedicated to the fertility goddess. But this found no mention in the concocted histories or mythologies.
Now, of course, all these and more would have to be harnessed to fight the new scourge of mankind, HIV/AIDS. The Panos Institute in London had already noted something new happening in Asia. In its November 1991 issue of WorldAIDS Briefing, the premier Institute reporting the new, frightening disease, had called homosexuals ‘The Unsung Heroes in the South’.
WorldAIDS Briefing put it bluntly: ‘Despite formidable proscriptions against homosexuality in many developing countries and Eastern Europe, gay (homosexual) men have been an advance guard of AIDS educators and carers.’ It quoted Bombay Dost extensively, forcing the Indian health authorities to take us seriously.
The only way out was continued education and a simultaneous campaign to sensitize Asian homosexuals to consolidate their identity. In Kuala Lumpur, my friend Heesham Hussein, and in Indonesia, Dede Oetamo, would also feel the same way. We linked up with the Filipino gay activist, Jomar of Reachout, and Austero Bong of the Library Foundation, Roy Chan representing Singapore’s gay groups, and finally, the elderly Minami-San of Japan to set up the Gay Asian and Lesbians Groups’ Association (GALGA). GALGA, set up in late 1992, was the first umbrella organization of Asian gay groups to help the new invisible minorities all over Asia. Sexually abused and suppressed by the heterosexist majority, Asia’s myriad lesbian and gay groups hoped to lead their flocks into a more dignified lifestyle in a future rampant with AIDS and other kille
r Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Mid-1992 was really one of the most hectic periods of my life. Starting with a workshop for US Congressmen in Washington, I did an exhausting tour of six cities in three countries. After presenting a paper on the ‘Emerging gay peer groups in Bombay’ at Amsterdam’s Eighth International Congress on HIV/AIDS, I came home to burnout and bad news: I had diabetes and drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Lying in my hospital bed, dejected and depressed, there was no time to wallow in self-pity. My friends never left me alone! The nurse would say, ‘Your family may have forgotten you, but you sure have a lot of friends.’
There was Suhail and Shridhar and Ramesh, Salim, Edwin in drag, and podgy, ageing Chandan and studious Yusuf, and Jehangir and Sopan and Cory, Rakesh and Pallav; every day! They came with flowers and naughty, nasty get-well cards (‘You’ll do ANYTHING to get attention, won’t you,’ screeched one). The nurses had a problem driving them out after visiting hours. One even gave a rude nurse a few tips on making up her face!
I had come home!
Shivraj
Kamleshwar
There were many stories current about him. He had come to the town four years ago, on a full moon night. Sadhus, sanyasis and yogis adept in tantric lore were a common sight in the bazaars of the town. One such mahatma expatiated more on the importance of the town than on God and was keen to build an ashram there.
Yaraana Page 4
