Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (40 page)

ASIM: PEOPLE FROM MY PAST WILL TELL ME THAT I WAS DULL. PEOPLE

TODAY SAY I AM ONE OF THE MOST TALKATIVE PEOPLE AROUND.

PROBABLY THIS HAS BEEN DUE TO THE FACT THAT I HAVE BEEN

ABLE TO FIND A COMMUNITY AND EXPRESS MYSELF FREELY.

MAYBE MY PREVIOUS RESERVE WAS A SHELL IN WHICH I USED

TO KEEP MYSELF. YES, I HAVE NO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FACT

THAT GAY BOMBAY HAS HELPED ME. I KNOW TODAY THAT MY

DEGREE OF OPENNESS COMES TO A LARGE EXTENT FROM MY

INTERACTIONS WITH GAY BOMBAY.

On the other hand, Queen Rekha and Gopal commented that the group may have had a negative impact on the lives of homosexuals in India, either because, they have ‘made it easier to stay closeted’ (Queen Rekha) or, as Gopal wrote, ‘often consciously, encouraged the evolution of a gutless, closeted, urban gay male who is mainly a sexual creature. Through mutual complicity, they have sanctioned and strengthened language, class and gender barriers between emerging gay cultures’.

‘The catch phrase for Gay Bombay is that “come to the meets, it is people like us”’, said Senthil. ‘What do
people like us
mean? Middle class, working, having jobs, English speaking not doing drag—“normal”

people. [Gay Bombay is] creating normativity in the gay scene by excluding others…people who are effeminate, from a working class

background…’

COMMUNITY

The interviewees reported experiencing community differently. For some, it indicated the network of friendships they had been able to form through Gay Bombay, both online and offline; for others, just being a part of Gay Bombay itself gave them a feeling of community.

232
Gay

Bombay

NACHIKET: GAY BOMBAY IS A COMMUNITY, BOTH ONLINE AND OFFLINE.

IT IS NOT A PICKUP SPACE, LIKE A LOT OF OTHER ORGAN-

IZATIONS IN OTHER CITIES. IT ACCOMMODATES A DIVERSE

RANGE OF VIEWS, FROM THE TRULY OBNOXIOUS AND

HOMOPHOBIC, TO THE MAINSTREAM, TO THE LIBERAL.

Woolvine (2000) contends that gay men in the West generally tend to break down
Gemeinschalft
or
Gesellschaft
distinctions in their organiza-tions8 and membership within a gay organization—social or political—

tends to result in both primary and secondary groupings. The scenario in India is clearly different; as per my observations, the primary affiliation group for most respondents was their own blood family. Though many of them did form pretty
‘intimate secondary relationships’9 (Wireman, 1984) within the various Gay Bombay spaces, with ‘informal, frequent and supportive community ties’10 (Wellman and Gulia, 1998) binding these relationships, the group functioned more as a neo-tribe—with partial and shifting affiliations; it ‘did not have a complete and total hold’ over them (Charles and Davies, 1997).11

There were different reasons provided for attributing
community
to the Gay Bombay experience. For Vidvan, Om, Isaac, Asim and Bhuvan, the wide range of safe spaces engendered by Gay Bombay were the ‘locus for

“expressive” and “emotionally reciprocal” behavior’ (Woolvine, 2000).12

The group functioned as a ‘third space’ for its members, a place other than home or work (Oldenburg, 1991) that provided them the capacity to just be
themselves
without any fear of discrimination. I noticed that the constant interaction between members online and offline had produced a kind of community feeling and loyalty to the group. Individuals like Rustom and Husain who primarily accessed the group online, described this community feeling as an ability to recognize the names of regular posters; (Rustom—‘They are becoming personalities or individuals in my mind’), while Kabir and Harbhajan pointed to the range of regular social events that Gay Bombay organized as well as the services provided like
Neighbourhood Watch
as an indication that Gay Bombay was a vibrant and thriving community.

KARIM: IT IS A COMMUNITY—BUT IT DOESN’T MEAN THAT EVERY GAY

PERSON HAS TO BE FRIENDLY WITH EVERY OTHER GAY PERSON.

IN MANY CASES WE DON’T EVEN GET RECOGNITION FROM GAY

Straight Expectations
233

PEOPLE. BUT A LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO COME FOR OUR

PARTIES FEEL THAT THERE IS A CERTAIN KIND OF COMMUNITY

THEY ARE BEING A PART OF AND THEY HAVE A CERTAIN LEVEL

OF APPRECIATION FOR WHAT GAY BOMBAY DOES. IF SOME-

THING AWFUL HAPPENS WOULD THEY COME TOGETHER IN

SUPPORT? I DON’T KNOW, PERHAPS NOT. THAT’S SOMETHING

THAT CAN ONLY BE TESTED. WE’VE REACHED OUT TO A WIDE

RANGE OF PEOPLE—WITHIN THAT THERE WOULD BE SOME

PEOPLE WHO ONLY THINK OF US AS PARTY ORGANIZERS, BUT

THERE ARE STILL ENOUGH PEOPLE WHO WOULD THINK THAT

IT IS A COMMUNITY…

Karim also drew on Granovetter’s notion of strong and weak ties13 (1973) to reason that the success of GB as a community lay in its online origins.

KARIM: WE ALWAYS THINK OF A COMMUNITY AS ONE WITH STRONG

LINKS. STRONG LINKS HAVE PROBLEMS—LOT OF BONDING AND

LOT OF FIGHTING ALSO. WEAK LINKS ARE USEFUL BECAUSE

THEY PROVIDE A CERTAIN CONTINUITY BUT THEY PREVENT

PEOPLE GETTING BORED OR BECOMING TOO MUCH OF A

BURDEN. PURELY BY CHANCE, WITH THE INTERNET WE HAD

A TECHNOLOGY THAT WAS GREAT AT PROVIDING WEAK

LINKS—IT WASN’T OPPRESSIVE OR PUSHING ITS ATTENTION

ON US ALL THE TIME. IT WAS THERE AND WE COULD FOCUS

ATTENTION ON IT WHEN WE WANTED TO.

Both Vidvan and Karim touched upon the
imagined
nature of Gay Bombay, as a part of a larger imagined gay community in India. Vidvan emphasized—‘Even if there is no such thing as an Indian community right now, it is important to address yourself as a community; in the very process of calling yourself a community, the community gets formed’. Karim agreed and stated that from the point of view of the organizers—

WE’RE OUT TO CREATE A
GAY
COMMUNITY. GAY BOMBAY IS JUST

INCIDENTAL. A FACILITATOR. WE WANT PEOPLE TO FIND THEIR OWN

LEVEL OF COMFORT. THERE IS A REAL BENEFIT IN PROVIDING DIFFER-

ENT SPACES FOR PEOPLE TO FIND THEIR OWN LEVEL OF COMFORT…

HOPEFULLY WITHIN THESE SPACES THEY WILL MOVE ON TO LARGER

EDUCATION WITHIN THE GAY COMMUNITY… AS IN, THINKING OF

THEMSELVES AS A GAY PERSON—WE DON’T PARTICULARLY WANT

PEOPLE TO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS ‘A GAY BOMBAY PERSON’.

234
Gay

Bombay

Woolvine (2000) has described the ‘divided community’ as the corollary to imagined community;14 several of my respondents articulated this division and simultaneously emphatically denied community status to Gay Bombay.

BHUDEV: NO. I AM BECOMING VERY DISILLUSIONED. ACCORDING TO

ME, THERE ARE NETWORKS FOR MEN FUCKING MEN. WAY

ACROSS CLASS AND GENDER. I DON’T THINK THERE IS ANY

TOGETHERNESS.

Randhir, Nihar and Cholan felt that community was too big a word to describe gay Bombay and called it ‘a reasonably successful group’, ‘a driving force’ and ‘a loose collective’ respectively. Mike contemptuously referred to it as ‘scattered cliques who refuse to recognize each other in public’. For Pratham and Jasjit, it was a virtual community rather than a real world one, while Gopal indicated that it was more of a ‘social network’ since ‘a dozen people do not make a community; there has to be a much larger number of people who relate to each other and have characteristics, needs, desires, goals and so on that coincide to a high degree’. Rustom and Yudhisthir concurred and referred to the
hijra
community as a case in point.

YUDHISTHIR: I THINK A COMMUNITY NEEDS TO HAVE A DEEPER SENSE

OF BONDING, WHICH GAY BOMBAY DOESN’T HAVE. THE

HIJRA
COMMUNITY HAS A TREMENDOUS SENSE OF

BONDING. IF YOU TALK ABOUT PEOPLE WHO DO DRAG

OR THE TRANSVESTITE POPULATION, THEY ARE A COM-

MUNITY. BUT GAY BOMBAY IS A GROUP, A BIG SOCIAL

GROUP…CATERING TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO DO THINGS

OTHER THAN SEX.

GLOBALIZATION AND LOCALITY

All the respondents felt that globalization (which they largely perceived to be financial, technological and communication focussed in nature) had had some impact on their lives and on the larger gay scene at large within India. Many respondents praised the international media that Straight Expectations
235

were available in India post 1991, as the harbinger of a liberal worldview towards homosexuality.

MIKE : I was the first gay person that some of my friends knew or well, knew that was gay and now having a gay friend is ‘cool’ just

because its happens on will and grace.

Of course, my social circle is not representative of the bulk

of the country, but the fact that I can go home and ‘not tell the truth’ to fewer people makes a difference.

I can be myself.

Queen Rekha pointed out that globalization had provided her with employment in the call centre industry. For Nihar and Senthil, globalization presented an opportunity for the young Indian gay movement to learn from the legal, media and social battles already fought in the West.

Nachiket theorized that ‘globalization and the rising middle class’ led to

‘increased travel, increased opportunities…as more and more material desires get satisfied, your aspiration levels increase in terms of finding your identity and expressing it and being honest about it’. My other interviewee responses seemed to confirm his hypothesis.

Travel was a theme that came up again and again in many of my interviews with respondents located in India. Whether this referred to travel to Bombay from a smaller city in India (Om, Nihar, Senthil), or to travel out of India for study (Murgesh, Mike, Cholan, Rustom), leisure (Harbhajan, Asim, Karim, Gul) or work (Nachiket, Cholan, Bhudev)—all the respondents spoke about it as a positive experience in helping them learn more about themselves and their sexuality.

NIHAR: WHEN I CAME TO BOMBAY [FROM BHOPAL], IT WAS GAY EL

DORADO… IF I HADN’T GOT IN TOUCH WITH THE GAY WORLD,

I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SO LIBERAL. I WOULD HAVE BEEN

A PRUDISH PERSON—SOMEONE WHO GETS SCANDALIZED

EASILY… STRANGELY, IT WAS MY FATHER WHO WANTED ME TO

COME HERE. HE SAW WHAT A SISSY I AM—HE WANTED ME

TO BE IN THE BIG BAD WORLD AND LEARN THINGS OF MY OWN.

I THINK IT WAS A GOOD DECISION!

Some of the older interviewees described themselves as
passport
princesses
—privileged gay men who could travel abroad to experience
236
Gay

Bombay

a gay lifestyle there (which they equated with being out, gay parties and activism). Among this generation, Murgesh and Cholan spoke

of leaving India in search of their gay identity, but returning in disappointment—their experiences in foreign lands were an affirmation of their separateness from Western gay culture instead of the utopia they had hoped to find.

MURGESH: I DECIDED THAT THERE IS NO WAY I CAN FIND AN IDENTITY

IN INDIA. SO I SAID, OKAY, I CAN BE GAY IN AMERICA. THIS

WAS 1978. I KNEW THERE WAS A MOVEMENT IN THE WEST—

AND I WANTED TO BE PART OF IT. BUT WHEN I WAS THERE,

MY CULTURAL IDENTITY, WHICH I THOUGHT WAS NOT SO

IMPORTANT BEFORE GOING TO THE US, BECAME A BIG

STRUGGLE. I COULDN’T ADJUST TO A WESTERN LIFESTYLE.

IN THOSE DAYS, UNLESS YOU WERE IN A BIG CITY, YOU

WERE INVISIBILIZED UNLESS YOU DID NOT ASSIMILATE.

AND FOR ME, I DID NOT WANT TO. I WAS MISSING INDIAN

FOOD, INDIAN FILMS AND MUSIC. MAYBE IF I HAD FOUND

SOMEONE IN THOSE VULNERABLE YEARS, I WOULD HAVE

SETTLED DOWN IN THE US. BUT SINCE IT WASN’T THE

PARADISE THAT I HAD THOUGHT IT WOULD BE AS FAR AS

BEING GAY WAS CONCERNED, I RETURNED.

CHOLAN: I WENT TO CHRISTOPHER STREET. I WENT TO THE CASTRO.

I KNEW I WANTED TO COME BACK AND TELL MY DAD AND

BE HONEST TO PEOPLE THAT MATTERED. WHETHER THERE

WOULD BE SPACES OR NO SPACES, IT DIDN’T MATTER. I WAS

LOOKING FOR SPACE WITHIN FAMILY. I WASN’T LOOKING

FOR SPACES LIKE CHRISTOPHER STREET.

In contrast, younger interviewees, already exposed to the international gay scene through television and the net, used their travels abroad to either access support and counselling services that were difficult to find in India (Rustom), or voraciously consume the gay pop culture that they were already vicariously previously clued in to (Gul)—and both these acts served as confidence building measures for living out a gay lifestyle
in
India on their return.

GUL:

IN AMERICA, THE WORD ‘GAY’ IS SO OPEN ON AMERICAN

TV—I SAW
QUEER EYE, BOY MEETS BOY, THE REAL WORLD,

QUEER AS FOLK
. BEING GAY IS OK. I WENT TO SAN FRANCISCO; Straight Expectations
237

SAW CASTRO, THE RAINBOW FLAGS AND ALL THAT. THEN

THERE WAS LAS VEGAS, SEX AND SLEAZE… WENT TO NEW

ORLEANS. I WENT TO ALL THESE BARS. I WENT AND SAW A

DRAG SHOW, A STRIP CLUB WHEN I CAME BACK, I WAS MUCH

MORE CONFIDENT. I WAS GOING FOR GAY BOMBAY EVENTS

REGULARLY. NOW IT IS A LIFESTYLE FOR ME.

Many respondents indicated that the Internet was extremely crucial in helping them formulate their own personal conception of an imagined gay world.

BHUVAN:

IF THE NET WEREN’T THERE, MY LIFE WOULD HAVE BEEN

HELL. EVERY STEP OF MY DISCOVERY PROCESS—HAS

BEEN TOTALLY INTERNET DRIVEN. WHEN I WENT ONLINE

I STARTED KNOWING GAY PEOPLE AND REALIZED THAT

THEY ARE NORMAL PEOPLE, THEY HAD DECENT LIVES, THEY

WERE EDUCATED… BUT STILL THEY WERE GAY. I CAME TO

KNOW THAT I LIKED THIS. I CAN LOOK AT MEN AS SEXUAL

PARTNERS. I STARTED EXPLORING THE NET. EVEN IN

READING PORN STORIES, IF THEY ARE NOT ENCOUNTER

STORIES, THEY ARE RELATIONSHIP STORIES AND I GOT

THE IMPRESSION THAT TWO GUYS CAN LIVE TOGETHER,

BE HAPPY TOGETHER. THERE IS A POSSIBILITY FOR A HAPPY

LIFE APART FROM THE ‘FAMILY, FAMILY’ THAT I’VE BEEN