Writer Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla's new novel is a story of an Indian wife, her husband and his male lover based in Los Angeles. While queer writing is still at a nascent stage, efforts are underway to bring it into the mainstream

Queer writing is usually considered to bring with it notions of exclusivity, of including in its ambit only those voices that are, by definition, outside the mainstream.

In practice, this kind of baggage is not really lugged around by a lot of literature that ends up as being considered queer resonant, intendedly or otherwise.


A Gay Parade in Mumbai

The boundaries of this world are found to be more amorphously defined that one would imagine.

It's an inclusive universe, and if you cast the net you can sometimes end up with a literary haul that is oddly diverse and remarkably full-flavoured. Over the ages, and across countries, this has certainly been the case. In India, we're attempting to catch up.

Battle
In these post-377 times (a widely accepted epithet despite a protracted legal battle that still lies ahead in the battle for decriminalisation), there are two strands of writing that seem to have emerged. There is the kind of writing that purportedly speaks to the sub-culture, for it, and by it.

Here, ideas like that of the mythical pink rupee or a content-hungry Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) demographic, are bandied around, whether or not whole queer populations can be actually delineated in such unifying terms (and in such a country as India especially, where it's impossible to pigeonhole anything with any great degree of accuracy).
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There is no evidence that niche audiences actually exist, like so-called urban, gay men with disposable incomes who are partial to refurbished chick lit and beefcake magazines, or the disaffected feminist lesbians who turn up for political-poetry-cum-tantra sessions in droves.

Then there is the kind of writing, where voices that have been quelled in the past because of an overriding parochial mindset, or have been fearful of being throttled by a bullying majority, are now encouraged to communicate with the mainstream, and make accessible the worlds that have always existed under its fold.

Works
Sometimes, authors try to straddle both these streams, trying to maintain a universal tenor in their works without diluting the themes that make their writing precious and unique. In practice, crossing over is not easily achieved, because sometimes being classified as 'gay literature' implies that a book and its readership have been effectively 'ghetto-ised'.

Authors try to fight it all the time-the connotations of being queer-while also trying to embrace what the term actually signifies with all its enriching nuances. Gay writing is not gay propaganda.

Books such as Hostel Room 131 by R Raj Rao, or You Are Not Alone by Arun Mirchandani, released over the past year, are titles that sometimes lend credence to the cynical view that some books have only made it to the surface because of the lacunae in any kind of writing that caters to queer people specifically.

Rao's book seems mired in the well of its own indulgence. The self-lacerating world of its unpleasant protagonist makes for bleak reading of the sort that a new generation of queer readers is discomfited by.

They will rather more easily pick up unchallenging texts like Mirchandani's, which is written rather artlessly but which may be giving voice and expression to this new generation that seems entrenched in the superficial 'rainbow' ethos of their times.

The harsh underbelly that Rao talks about is every much a real part of the Indian gay existence, so it needs to be expounded upon, but it should be done in the effective manner employed in books like Eunuch Park, from author Palash Krishna Mehrotra.

Whatever the merits of his book, Mirchandani represents a bullish new breed of author, willing to put himself out there, and woo queer audiences without worrying about the labels and tags he may be bogged down with, or the pressures of suddenly becoming the spokesperson of an entire community, with all the approbation that comes with it, and of course, dealing with a kind of adulation that seems almost underlined by his queerness.
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His book is now in its second reprint, and for some it would seems that this strategy has paid off, but there are personal costs involved that he has also borne. Other writers who have engaged with the community have been Mahesh Natarajan, whose collection of short stories, Pink Sheep, makes for a light but reasonably engaging read, and American writer Rahul Mehta whose book Quarantine is wonderfully written, and with beautiful turns of phrases, although it sees India through the so-called NRI prism that some people find quite reductive.

Urban
One thing that works quite well for the new crop of gay and lesbian writers, is the well-oiled machinery of the urban queer network and the new distribution channels that now exist.

There are retail outlets like Azaad Bazaar that fosters a sense of community that may not have existed a couple of years ago. Queer Ink is India's first online queer bookstore, and this year will see the launch of its fledgling publishing arm, with a new anthology of brand-new queer writing.

So we can now leave behind the days of only accidentally discovering queer titles in bookstores, where there isn't a dedicated Gay & Lesbian section unlike corresponding stores in the West.

Perhaps the one book that transcends any categorisation, is Parvati Sharma's beautifully realised The Dead Camel & Other Stories. There is a delicacy with which she weaves her worlds, without compromising on the heft of the larger themes that she tackles head on. Sharma's book has found its way to queer audiences without the need of a promotional drive.
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Devdutt Patanaik's books on mythology frequently situate queer themes in their universal contexts, and have a dedicated fan following. Anjali Josephs's Saraswati Park, which features a prominent gay character, also seems to have arrived at a readership not defined by self-limiting parameters.
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Shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award, the book may signal in a small way that queer writing has arrived. It hasn't come of age as yet, and it may take years before we see a consistent literary maturity to works thus classified, but at least the rights noises have now begun to be made.