From Ashok Row Kavi s autobiographical piece on growing up gay in Bombay to Vikram Seth s brilliantly etched account of a homosexual relationship in The Golden Gate, the stories, poems, plays and prose extracts in this collection cover a range of literary styles, themes and sensibilities. Mahesh Dattani s play Night Queen is significant as one of the first serious attempts at dramatizing homosexuality on the Indian stage; the poems by R. Raj Rao included here are part of a series that formed the basis for the Bollywood film Bombay; and the poetry of Dinyar Godrej, Adil Jussawalla and Sultan Padamsee is searing in its intensity. Apart from the pieces written originally in English, there are works translated from Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and other Indian languages, also speaking of the agony and the joy of being a man in love with other men. Extracts from the work of well-known writers like Bhupen Khakkar, Kamleshwar and Vishnu Khandekar provide a rare insight into the lives of homosexual men in India s small towns and villages. With wit, passion and courage, these writings bring to the fore the true meaning of yaraana or male friendship and bonding, an oft neglected facet of Indian life and sexuality.

Yaraana: Gay Writing from India

Literature & Fiction

Merchant, Hoshang

Contemporary

Penguin??Books

These are not pieces written out of literary ambition or to simply explore an appealing idea or concept; these are pieces that had to be written, that demanded to be created, that leaped up and caught their authors by the throats and said write me over and over again until it was done Ashok Banker An exploration of gay identity in South Asia. From Ashok Row Kavi s autobiographical piece on growing up gay in Bombay to Vikram Seth s brilliantly etched account of a homosexual relationship in The Golden Gate, the stories, poems, plays and prose extracts in this collection cover a range of literary styles, themes and sensibilities. Mahesh Dattani s play Night Queen is significant as one of the first serious attempts at dramatizing homosexuality on the Indian stage; the poems by R. Raj Rao included here are part of a series that formed the basis for the Bollywood film Bomgay; and the poetry of Dinyar Godrej, Adil Jussawalla and Sultan Padamsee is searing in its intensity. Apart from the pieces written originally in English, there are works translated from Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and other Indian languages, which speak of the agony and the joy of being a man in love with other men. Extracts from the work of well-known writers including Bhupen Khakkar, Kamleshwar and Vishnu Khandekar provide a rare insight into the lives of homosexual men in India s small towns and villages. An extract from Shyam Selvadurai s Funny Boy details an account of growing up gay in war-torn Sri Lanka, while K.C. Ajay, an illiterate taxi driver, gives us an alternate glimpse of love and friendship in Nepal. Pieces such as these along with the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali and Iftikhar Naseem expand the scope of this collection to include writers from South Asia. With wit, passion and courage, these writings bring to the fore the true meaning of yaraana or male friendship and bonding, an often ignored facet of South Asian life and sexuality.

Yaraana: Gay Writing from South Asia

Short Stories & Anthologies

Penguin Global

" [T]his is no fiction. I have scars on my body and my soul to prove this." Never a shrinking violet, Hoshang Merchant came out of the closet early in his youth. A bard, a teacher, and a lover who has lived many lives, he is the quintessential gay who once cross-dressed, and yet defies categorization. In Secret Writings, he recounts his extraordinary life and splendid experiences ranging across countries and cultures. His is a story of the prejudice and neglect that are part of everyday gay life, and how he channelled his despair into creating poetry. He quotes Rumi, Ghalib, and Mir, and writes with searing honesty about his long and short love affairs, his improbable sex life as both an initiator and a yielding partner, and his inner turmoil. Sex becomes love and love becomes poetry in his writing.Merchant yells at the moral guardians of law and culture, asks uncomfortable questions, and shocks his readers. This rare book opens a window to the myriad worlds of an avant-garde.

Secret Writings of Hoshang Merchant

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Oxford University Press

Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts: New India's Gay Poets

The book argues that there is no monolithic homosexuality; there are only homosexualities, that is, there are as many reasons for being gay as there are gays. Some people are born gay, some have gayness thrust upon them, and some do, indeed, achieve to great gayness. Representation of homosexuality/homoeroticism, as it is understood today, is thus a western import. The act and public/social discourses on same-sex love are still illegal; it is, according to many, against the Indian ‘tradition’; and a sense of ‘history’ is seriously problematic when we dig out for a past tradition of homoerotic love and desire. Hoshang Merchant, through an examination of texts, films, poetry, attempts to analyse and crack the codes of sexual (mis)conduct in contemporary India, giving short histories of the fate of several gay writers and explaining the difficulties of ‘coming out’.

Parenting & Relationships

Routledge India

The book argues that there is no monolithic homosexuality; there are only homosexualities, that is, there are as many reasons for being gay as there are gays. Some people are born gay, some have gayness thrust upon them, and some do, indeed, achieve to great gayness. Representation of homosexuality/homoeroticism, as it is understood today, is thus a western import. The act and public/social discourses on same-sex love are still illegal; it is, according to many, against the Indian 'tradition'; and a sense of 'history' is seriously problematic when we dig out for a past tradition of homoerotic love and desire. Hoshang Merchant, through an examination of texts, films, poetry, attempts to analyse and crack the codes of sexual (mis)conduct in contemporary India, giving short histories of the fate of several gay writers and explaining the difficulties of 'coming out'.

Paradise isn't Artificial

Poetry

Red River

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