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POST script
APRIL 01, 2012

SEVEN SISTERS

NELit review

FIFTH WALL
UDDIPANA GOSWAMI
Literary Editor

Against the order of nature?

Barring some notable exceptions, literature exploring alternate sexuality in the region is still struggling to find a foothold, says Siddhartha Sarma

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Exploring alternate sexualities

NE of the abiding legacies of Victorian rule in colonial India has been an ambivalent stand towards homosexuality, swinging between denunciation and denial. Radical elements within almost all the religious communities of the country have condemned and persecuted homosexuals for long. The intense homophobia generated by these elements has trickled down to the popular psyche and made itself visible through homophobic acts like Dharun Ravis who, in 2010 at Rutgers, filmed his roommate having gay sex and uploaded it to the internet. The consequent circumstances forced his roommate to suicide. There are innumerable other such cases - like the one a couple of years back, involving an Aligarh Muslim University professor who was suspended after some students filmed him having consensual sex with a rickshaw-puller in his campus home. Instead of questioning the actions and motives of the homophobic vigilantes, it is the homosexuals who are persecuted. And this in a country where sex used to be celebrated and same sex love inscribed in some of the oft quoted classical texts of Hindu heritage. Among the Muslim rulers who came later, Babur, for one, is also known to have recorded his attraction for another man. Since 1860 however, when the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was introduced, Section 377 proclaimed gay sex an unnatural and criminal offence entailing punishment up to life term. A country which suffers from colonial hangover in more ways than one, continued to uphold this section of the IPC till 2009, when the Delhi High Court decriminalised gay sex and ruled that consenting adults could have homosexual relations in private. Despite this though, the central governments stand on the issue has remained unclear and un-clarified. It was only on 20 March last that Attorney General of India G E Vahanvati informed the Supreme Court that the centre admitted, unambiguously, that there is no error in the decriminalisation of gay sex. In a country where alternate sexuality continues to be frowned upon and its practitioners persecuted, so much so that coming out is rare, the government had till then been claiming that homosexuals number 2.5 million a highly suspect figure. Of these, it said, seven percent are HIV +ve. Instead of using this latter figure to push for programmes of AIDS awareness among the homosexual population, the government was using it to discredit the entire 2.5 million of its own population who also have the same fundamental rights as the rest of the citizens. It remains to be seen how or if this latest clarification changes others attitudes to the LGBT community, as those of alternate sexuality are often referred to. Despite the prevailing climate of hate however or maybe because of it a lot of good literature has been produced from time to time from among and relating to the LGBT community. This issue of NELit review is dedicated to culling out some such literature from Assam. Siddhartha Sarma explores various issues surrounding the literature relating to the community (if they have indeed come together as a community) here. He finds that as elsewhere, even in the Northeast, literature on or involving homosexuality is jinxed from the start. However, there has been a slim body of writings which deals with the issue and we extract from two pieces of fiction. In our section highlighting readers contribution, iPen, we include a short story by a promising new voice from Assam. Gaurav Deka, tarot reader by profession, writes often but not exclusively with a gay perspective. T

ITERATURE on or involving homosexuality from the Northeast, like from the rest of the country, is jinxed from the start. The multiple problems, perceptual, psychogenic or societal, confound the telling of any story involving such themes. This problem is particularly acute when it comes to fiction. One can count on ones fingertips the number of gaythemed fiction works by writers from the region. The principal problem has certainly been the attitude, in the subcontinent, that alternative sexuality is, at best, an aberration and at worst an inorganic disease, somehow synthetic and manufactured by that catchall bte noir, western culture. Reactive morality by the middle classes which, as it needs no reminding, comprises the largest chunk of the reading masses has somehow fixed homosexual lifestyle and themes as an imposition from the decadent (another clichd phrase) West. Just as any moral attachment to a theme is unfair because all themes need to be explored in fiction, the attachment of such a perceived moral high ground to sexuality inherently limits some writers, straight or otherwise, from exploring homosexuality. A corollary of such a line of thought is those few who do write about itand here I do not specifically refer to writers from the region because the pool is too small to extrapolate a trend fromare therefore already on the defensive when they include such themes. Therefore, a form of aggressive verbage creeps into such writing. This is a parallel to the strident militancy of gay activists voices in Indian society. This is particularly unfortunate, nearly three years after the Supreme Court acted against the century-and-half old section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, decriminalising homosexuality. The Home Ministry, somehow in the mix and not exactly known as a nest of liberals, recently agreed to toe

FRONTIS PIECE
sonal life if the subject is not executed competently. This would apply to all manner of stories involving emotional relationships. Gay literature, more by accident than design, falls into this hazard very neatly. A writer would therefore find it difficult to put out the message that the work of fiction is to be enjoyed or understood as divorced from her personal life or choices. Who, then, would want to be willingly involved in such a perilous venture unless they have the supreme confidence of a gifted storyteller that they can create a great work out of any theme? There are writers who have worked around these problems and produced memorable works. Some even stand as landmarks of their particular era. These are writers whose individual merit fuelled their storytelling and made the works rise above the commonplace or merely sensational. Mamoni Raisom Goswamis Uday Bhanur Charitra, the first work in its genre from the region, is a near perfect example of how a sensitive writer can weave a plot around a gay theme without being hindered by the hazards mentioned above. In the 1990s there was Suwali Hostelot Egoraki Lesbian, part of an eponymous short story anthology by Gobinda Prasad Sarma which, once again, was years ahead of its time and which yet had an organic integrity to the plot. He uses the interesting device of a first person account by a newcomer from a village to a hostel, the story including detailed descriptions of the appearance and physique of the actual other, the lesbians in question. It is a gradual introduction to the larger issues surrounding alternate female sexuality, including more militant strands of feminism, showing more than a trace of Valerie Solanas. But these are a mere handful of writings, perhaps one for a decade. There are a few others, notably Arup Kumar Nath and Jayanta Saikia, who have written stories with gay themes, as has Manikuntala in the novel Mukti. Others have gay characters in the plot, such as Anuradha Sharma Pujaris Ejon Ishwarar Sandhanat, or a lesbian episode in Nirupoma Borgohains autobiography. The problems mentioned earlier play out in that little Venn diagram where the perceptions of society, critics and writers meet. But there is another significant problem that springs from the mind of the writer alone. It has been seen that fiction with gay themes, whether in short or long prose formats, deal with relationships with strong sexual overtones. The writers might therefore be actually putting on their own blinkers and assuming that every story about alternate sexuality has to involve the actual practice, so to speak, of such a lifestyle choice. This is an unfortunate divergence from any fiction with straight characters. In the latter case, the sexuality of the character is subsumed, where necessary, by the requirements of the plot. That is, the writer is not hamstrung by the fact that, since the protagonist is straight, she has to be in a relationship with a man for the plot to move forward. In fact, such a heterosexual relationship might not even need to exist if the plot does not require it to. Going back to the detective fiction analogy, say we have a straight female detective investigating a case. If there is absolutely no need to explore the protagonists personal life, then the writer is free not to and concentrate instead on the case the detective is trying to solve. If, however, such a protagonist is a lesbian, going by available evidence from fictional works, the writer eventually ends up, more by subconscious choice rather than design, devoting large parts of the plot to exploring such a relationship even though it might be totally peripheral to the central story arc. If the work is executed in this manner, in the hands of even a moderately competent storyteller, it runs the risk of being unwieldy, offputting and ultimately frivolous. Such gratuitous story sub-plots do not help the cause of the genre or its public reception at all. An example of how gay themes can be explored is Aruni Kashyaps His Fathers Disease, a short story with a male homosexual character. But there is more to the plot than just that. It also plays out the central characters mothers life and her views as well as general social points of perception. The sexuality of the character drives the plot, but the treatment is neither gratuitous nor superfluous. Therefore, in order for more literature on such themes to emerge from here, good writers could give a shot at portraying the gay experience without prejudice or extraneous baggages. They should, if they are straight themselves, understand the psychology behind alternate sexuality and be fair in their work. And all this should be backed up by storytelling as a craft practiced well, because there is simply no substitute for a good story told well. Finally, everyone involved, writers, critics and above all readers, should understand that gay literature is not about men and women from the Andromeda galaxy. Like all other stories about our species, this is an essentially human experience, a story of a characters rise, her fall and more than everything else, her striving. The only good stories worth reading are those that deal with the essential humanism that underlies who we are. T

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THE apparently colourful but shallow lives of such people, frequently depicted on the shadowy margins of respectability, only reinforce existing perceptions for the merely vapid reader
the line as well. But such changes are merely cosmetic until social perceptions change from the inside out. And that, particularly in India, takes a lot of doing. Therefore, such stridency, particularly when manifested in a writers work, might come across as the writer promoting such a lifestyle or even displaying some kind of undersiege mentality. This approach might put off some genuinely interested readers who follow fiction not for the gratification of any agenda, but for the pure enjoyment of creative work and an understanding of what is called the human experience in all its hues. The third problem, not necessarily in order of importance, is the portrayal of such lifestyle in more, shall we say, persuasive media, such as cinema. The apparently colourful but shallow lives of such people, frequently depicted on the shadowy margins of respectability, only reinforce existing perceptions for the merely vapid reader that any themes based on alternate sexuality are by definition flippant and therefore of little redeeming literary merit, if at all. Then, there are certain genres in which practicing the craft of literature comes fraught with an almost-comical hazard: a reflection of the writers own life, perhaps. Consider this: if a writer is not able to execute or craft a murder thriller competently enough, critics will never accuse her of being a bad murderer or not well-versed in criminal enterprises, because there is an understood disconnect between the creators personal life and the creation. In case of erotica, though, comparisons or speculations are immediately drawn about the writers per-

His Fathers Disease

B
UT the damage was done. The whole village started to hoot at Promud as Anils wife and after four days, on the evening he was publicly humiliated by a band of guys at the Tuesday Market, he went to his brothers room and gulped down a whole bottle of sleeping pills. Nirgun went into a rage. He went from house to house insisting that everyone in the village knew his father had suffered from that disease but that did not mean his son could destroy the lives of younger men by dragging them to his bed. The village elders agreed and said he should be taken to the bej who could cure him but Nirgun said he didnt believe in all those and that he would file a case. He stressed that it would be an important thing to do because he had, after all, been the prospective head of the Village Council and people should therefore know his real character. On the fifteenth day after he had taken those pills, Promud was brought back from the hospital. He was accompanied by a police officer who went straight to Anils house, woke him up and asked Promud if Anil was the person who had cajoled him into his room for a chat and had then forced himself on him. A bewildered Neerumoni went from pillar to post after the arrest but the villagers were too ashamed that it had become a huge scandal, the name of the village was associated with that shameful disease, and the news was published in the local papers. Lots of reporters came and some of them were talking about something called Article 377 that could go in favor of Anil because it had just been repealed. Neerumoni noted down that number diligently on a piece of paper. She phoned Gurmail and told him to make a call on the number 377 because the kind reporter from Guwahati who

iNKPOT
ARUNI KASHYAP
had come with a large camera, a strange car with a huge umbrella on top of it and had had her eyelids colored blue had mentioned that it could be used to save her son. When Gurmail heard that, he started to weep on the phone. He wanted to say something but he couldnt say anything beyond the sentence that he would leave everything in Delhi to come and help her. Things were sorted out when he came. Within two days, he used his influence, made many calls on his mobile phone and urged Anil to call a Village Council meeting. Anil did not agree initially and kept saying, They will kill me. Finally, Gurmail said he should stop behaving like a madman and that no one was against him or after his life. That they thought it was just a disease and he would just have to go and say that he would take good medical care once he became Headman. They would then vote for him anyway. Anil said he would withdraw his nomination papers. Nirguns party was the ruling party and they were using every means to malign him. Though some sensitive reporters had come last time, reporters from some of the numerous satellite channels that raised a mountain out of a molehill might come to make him out to be some sort of a demon. Gurmail said he had nothing to worry about, that he was with him; and he should just agree to fight the elections. They ate meat that day. Duck meat. Gurmail had shopped, just like those days, days when he used to take Anil out to spend holidays in the hill station Shillong, in Guwahati City and to buy him new clothes;

NEW PRINTS
MAUTAM
Mrinal Talukdar Bhabani Books, 2011 `300, 309 pages Hardcover/ Non-fiction history of insurgency in Northeast India, based on the authors experiences as a journalist in the region

Graphics: Sanjoy Seal

THE BLAFT ANTHOLOGY OF TAMIL PULP FICTION VOLUME II

Pritham K Chakravarthy (trans.) Rakesh Khanna (ed.) Tranquebar, 2011 `395, 467 pages Paperback/ Anthology AMIL fiction, translated into English for the first time. Theres crime, romance, science fiction and detective stories

ANUXANGA
Tusmi Rekha Bora Journal Emporium, 2012 `80, 63 pages Paperback/ Poetry

handful of poems by a young Assamese poet

the days when he used to call Neerumoni Mother. She slept well that night even though the sounds invaded her ears and she found that same smell of male bodies in the morning when she went into Anils room to arrange his books, make his bed and arrange the stack of newspapers after Anil had read them. Neerumoni had cooked the duck meat with banana flowers and stir fried it with ginger and garlic paste. Gurmail said it tasted like the immortal nectar of the Gods and she had laughed, blushed, laughed and laughed. That night when Anil went to pee in the backyard at midnight, someone tried to stab him with a sharp knife but he raised an alarm and the knife only mangled the flesh on his arm. The whole village gathered as Neerumoni wailed and cursed, and Gurmail ran out with his gun to find who it was. He was shouting, Come back coward, in Hindi. An old woman from the village made

a paste of marigold leaves and put a layer on Anils wound. Someone found a fresh wad of cotton and tore some clean cloths into strips and bandaged him. The bleeding stopped. But it only made him more and more miserable. Day after day, Anil slept. He didnt show any interest in the election campaigns and avoided repeated calls from the senior party leaders in Guwahati. They will kill me, he just kept saying. The village experienced a lull. The villagers murmured amongst themselves about what could be done. They resembled and hummed like a band of swarming locusts. One evening, the villagers began to trickle into his courtyard. When the women saw that their men were going to visit Anil, they were curious. They said, Why shouldnt we go too, and, Who knows if we explain things to him he may yet stand for the elections, to each other. So they nodded their heads at one another,

combed their hair, slipped their bangles on, pushed betel nut with thin wads of tobacco into their mouths and followed their men. When the children started to follow them, they said, Go away, we will be back soon. But the children followed them too. They also perhaps had sensed that something was about to happen... That afternoon, when Anil agreed in front of almost the whole village that he would contest, a young man from the village came up to him to whisper that Nirgun had come to know about this meeting and that his brother, Promud, was a few meters away, not daring to come near his house. Promud is crying. He has asked me to ask you if you will ever forgive him. He says, Ask him to stand for the elections and I will vote for him. He handed over a small crumpled paper to Anil in which was written, It was my brother who forced me to do all these things. I love you still. Anil woke up due to the strong smell of kerosene and petrol around him. He wondered why he was dreaming of weird smells when he was in the arms of the man he loved most. He brought the naked body of Gurmail closer and dug his nose deeper into his chest. He put his arms around his waist. They had made love so passionately after a long time and he was feeling happy-tired. The bed was wet with their sweat and he took a deep breath, taking it all into his lungs and once again he smelled kerosene and petrol. Anil! Gurmail was screaming at the top of his voice. He was pulling his pajamas up and asking him to run. Anil didnt know what to do and Gurmail only said, No need to dress, its only me, only me. The house was on fire: the newspapers that had been collecting for ages, the clothes, the almirah and the old wooden furniture that had been there forever: everything was on fire. Someone flung the door open. Anil had wrapped the bed sheet around his waist by then. It was his mother, They are trying to kill you, she screamed. Some-

one had set the house on fire, someone had locked this door. He stood there, not knowing what to do and it suddenly struck him that this could have killed his love and his mother and that it was all because of him. In the courtyard, he howled and cried, and Gurmail said, Shut up, its not because of you. I am going to find who did it. His mother hugged him and cried. He clung to her and said that it was all because of him; that he shouldnt have agreed to contest the elections. He should instead have gone to the forests with Gurmail and never come back. That was first time he came out to her and they both stared at each other. His mothers back was to the house. It was burning down and he kept his eyes on the flames engulfing what had been home, for he couldnt look at her eyes anymore. He had built the house to carve a space of his own, the house had implicitly told his mother what his male needs were, and now, before that burning house, he was telling her that he loved Gurmail, and that he wanted to live in the forests with him. The whole house was on fire now and his mother was howling, saying something he didnt understand. He released himself from Neerumonis arms in a fleeting second and started running towards the house. Leave it, leave! Life is bigger than the things you are trying to get! that was the initial cautionary phrase that came out of her mouth but when he went in and latched the door from inside, she knew, he hadnt gone in to bring back anything special. She wailed and clawed at the ground. Gurmail came in a bit late. He had gone in search of the person who had set fire to Anils home. By this time the whole neighborhood had woken up to an unusual smell that of burnt human flesh, the smell of burnt human flesh... T
Aruni Kashyap is a poet and novelist from Assam, currently based in USA. His debut novel, The House With a Thousand Novels, is forthcoming