Queer India Now: The ordinary lives of queer Indians take centre stage

Queer India Now

by Dhamini Ratnam and Dhrubo Jyoti

Published by Queer Directions, Westland

272 pages  ₹499

  Reading Queer India Now, edited by Dhamini Ratnam and Dhrubo Jyoti, feels like finally having documentation of all the conversations one has with queer people; all the worries, joys, and dreams. For the longest time, the narrative of the LGBTQIA+ community in the mainstream media and otherwise has been focused on the angst of coming out. It is necessary to showcase this issue, but can be problematic when it becomes the only narrative.

 

The queer community has been criminalised for a long time, its rights debated and discussed in courtrooms, laced with social prejudice. How do they sustain themselves through such frameworks and navigate their surroundings? This anthology attempts to answer this with the experiences of people in 29 pieces, showing the intersection of caste, class, languages, religions, professions, disabilities and geography with queerness in India.

 

The editors set the stage by discussing the various intersections within the queer communities, which often lead to differences, and briefly explore the colonial laws that “blurred the lines between moral policing and identities”, “conflated bestiality with homosexuality”, and negated consent. They situate queering as “a practice of radical empathy; a lens with which to view intersecting marginalisations; to prod one’s psyche to acknowledge and humanise the other; a multidirectional view of the past and multiple futures”.

 

The anthology begins with evocative vignettes of queer lives in small towns in “Where You Weren’t Looking: Tales from Small-Town India” by Dhrubo Jyoti and Dhiren Borisa, which makes the reader understand that people from the LGBTQIA+ community are everywhere around you, hiding, living, and most importantly, loving — with unimaginable caution. It ends with Dhamini Ratnam’s “Queering the Family, Choosing Your Kin” that has an endearing depiction of her friends who have been able to acquire a flat in their name, becoming a safe house for many, and it also includes a riveting portrayal of polycule — a network of people in consensual non-monogamous relationships — that makes one rethink the institution of family.

 

In between these two pieces, there are memoirs by people from marginalised castes and tribes from the villages and towns of Telangana, West Bengal, Kashmir, Karnataka, Odisha, Manipur, and Nagaland vis-à-vis those from the metro cities. Some of these voices have had government recognition but still have received no resources to change ground realities. B Kiran Nayak exposes the lack of intersection between transgender organisations and disability organisations, and demands intersectional policies beyond theory; Sintu Bagui dreams of opening an old-age home for sex-workers of all genders and expressions; Rabi Raj speaks of the importance of ending caste discrimination more than needing marriage equality; Siddharth Shanthala Ganesh narrates the life of Manjamma, a jogati, who wants to establish an institution for housing and also teaching performative arts to the trans community; Dit Toudam hopes for an equal and accepting world where safe homes for gender non-confirming children is the last option; Tashi Choedup creates space for queer people in the Buddhist monastic code.

 

With the recent Transgender Persons Amendment Act, which denies self-identification and threatens to criminalise allyship, the poems, essays, illustrations and memoirs in the book portray trans-lives in all their struggles and joys, from struggling to get transgender cards to the work opportunities in modelling and acting. The nuanced conversation between health practitioner Aqsa Shaikh and psychotherapist Aryan Somaiyya in “Is That Any Way To Treat Someone?” sheds light on the fact that only knowledge cannot translate into better healthcare, and expresses scepticism of the government’s responsibility to take care of trans people.

 

In his signature poetic prose, Prathyush Parasuraman politicises emotion itself, questioning sex, desire, and dreams in a straightforward manner in “In Our Image, Sex In the Age of Apps.” In another lucid piece, “What A Drag”, Vikram Phukan reflects on the changing queer scene in the last couple of decades in Mumbai. He says, “Queer spaces can be generous stages. Even an entry or a look can draw cheers and whoops, as if it’s not about performing at all, but simply about being seen, however inchoate the act.” This stands true for this anthology as well, where short and long-form pieces receive equal cheer.

 

Oviya V theorises intellectual attraction and talks about underrepresented romantic identities in “Now It All Makes Sense”. Ankur Tangade writes about the intersection of being pansexual, Dalit, and having activists for parents who con¬fuse pansexual with polyamorous in “Some Things I Learnt on Bad Dates”. As a stand-up comedian, he states, “Normally, when you talk about discrimination, there’s always an argument. With comedy, that’s really the case. Laughter is basically consent to listen.”

 

This anthology is a product of its times when people are tired of being framed in the same repeated narrative of grief that victimises them enough for the heteronormative world to sympathise with but not act towards advocacy. It doesn’t explain the lives of queer people; it shows their everydayness — of the desire to be their partner’s medical proxy, share a joint account, buy a home together, order shoes for their child from inside a courtroom, and build a personal faith. It doesn’t ask for a space to exist. It shows queer folks have always had their space, and they deserve recognition, respect and dignity, hopefully with less social prejudices and bureaucracy.

 

Queer India Now is an accessible eye-opener for the ones who haven’t engaged with the queer community but, more importantly, it is likely the most diverse representation of the LGBTQIA+ in India right now.

 

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The reviewer is an independent books and culture writer based in Sambalpur, Odisha. @geekyliterati