Book review: To be gay and sad in small-town India

I’m not gay. Neither is anyone in my family that I know of. And gay was a bad word when I was a teen in the 1980s. Rather, it was used nastily, as an insult. She’s a lesbo. He’s a homo. They’re gay. And there were other words for gay in local languages that, given my very sheltered life, I didn’t know, but I could guess their meaning by the tone of voice and context in which they were said. Words that gave me the impression that being gay was more than unnatural; that it was actually perverted.

Luckily for me, I grew out of that impression. Moving to India’s Maximum City, Mumbai, with its millions of people of all kinds helped. So did working in an allegedly creative field like the media where the norm is pretty much what you make it. It didn’t take me long to realise that there are many different kinds of love stories, and that other people’s lives are their own in the same way that mine is my own.

So my heart sort of crunched when I read all the references to gay-aware Mumbai in Mohanaswamy, a collection of short stories by Kannada writer Vasudhendra, translated by Rashmi Terdal, about being gay in small town India. Every time Mohanaswamy refers to the acceptance of non-heterosexual relationships in India’s big city in comparison with what happens to gay people in small towns, it sounds like his idea of heaven on earth. And I know for sure it isn’t, at least not the way it should be.

But then, for all the Mohanaswamys of India, whether in small towns or big cities, heaven on earth is an impossible dream, at least at this point in India’s social and legal system. Which is something that makes the everyday emotions of love harder than usual. For instance, in the very first story, “The Gordian Knot”, Mohanaswamy is dumped by Karthik, the great love of his life. Not for another man, but for the woman Karthik’s unsuspecting parents want as a daughter-in-law. This really breaks Mohanaswamy’s heart because why should marriage only be about men and women? What’s so special about that relationship that other relationships can’t even be mentioned, let alone allowed?

To make matters worse, Karthik also really wants to spend his life with his wife-to-be — not only because he’s bisexual, but, you suspect, also because marriage is a recognised relationship. It doesn’t need to be hidden, ever. And that hits Mohanaswamy the hardest. As it does all the other gay people he’s ever encountered, none of whom have ever come off well in their interactions with their families and the world.

Mohanaswamy has himself been at the receiving end of family insults, first via his older sister, the first person ever to use a gay insult against him, and later by his parents individually, both concerned about his manhood. His father, when he notices that Mohanaswamy has been secretly watching him bathe, turns cold and unavailable. And much later, Mohanaswamy’s mother, upset because her son refuses to marry, swallows her pride and her sense of dignity and attempts to molest him while he’s asleep to see if he reacts sexually.

Things don’t only happen to Mohanaswamy. The story “Bed Bug” is about his friend Shankar Gowda, a transsexual treated like dirt by the same heterosexual men who enjoy him sexually, and eventually murdered by his own family. And in “Anagha — The Sinless”, Kalleshi is thrown out of his home by his virile father for being completely uninterested in women.

As he grows up and older, our lonely hero is abandoned by a heterosexual pal he’d made a pass at, blackmailed by a so-called friend, encouraged to marry the widowed daughter of a priest just to save her reputation (sex not required), and persuaded somehow to buy a flat that he does not really need because, well, he lacks a home. Meanwhile, people wonder why some people are born gay. Perhaps, says the popular consensus, it’s because the parents had had woman-on-top sex when the child was conceived.

As I read story after story, I found so much to think about that I was quite stunned — and I’d thought I was pretty empathetic to start with. So I can only imagine the effect that this series of stories had on its readers in the original Kannada. It’s almost a manual of gayness in small town India, something that would be sorely needed both by the secretive gay community, used more to insults than to acceptance, and by everyone. In fact, I’d say this book is more required reading for the non-gay community than the gay community. Because at least the gay community know what they’re facing.

I can’t say I loved Mohanaswamy. It’s not the kind of book that you can love or hate. But I can say it’s unputdownable. Or that it would be unputdownable if it weren’t for the translation, which is basic at best, and ungrammatical at worst. And for the latter, I blame the copy editors. My inner sub-editor was pretty riled throughout the book, but I almost shredded it into tiny little strips when my unbelieving eyes saw the word “contended” unashamedly used for “contented”.

Having said that, I think everyone in the whole world should read this book, and right now. Just put down this newspaper and go straight to a bookshop. I promise you won’t regret it.

Kushalrani Gulab is a freelance editor and writer who dreams of being a sanyasi by the sea