Different and no longer in the closet

“And she said?”

“Fine.”

Strange? Odd? Then take a look around. A well-known Delhi-based transsexual appears, sexily dressed, on a television chat show and gigglingly talks about her adolescent attraction to boys, a failed marriage and love of partying. There is no irony, no surprise; the host is completely unfazed. And this is a family channel. There is a park, reportedly, in Mumbai where mothers with children, aging pensioners and amorous couples look on indulgently at the Sunday procession of painted and perfumed drag queens. The fashion industry, always known for its proclivity for the wild life, has numerous well-established same-sex relationships. But even Bollywood gossip these days centres increasingly on homosexual liaisons between well-known personalities. It has been some time since alternativesexuality peeked out of the Indian closet. But now, as these instances seem to indicate, it is walking around, not on tip toes, not defensively, but as a matter of course. Boldly. Flamboyantly. And nobody seems to be raising an eyebrow.

It has of course been often argued that same sex relationships whether they are between men or women have always existed in India, often even with social sanction. Yet it is also true that sanction even when it was forthcoming, was covert, and such relationships have always been the exception not the norm. The middle class certainly has never been supportive of homosexuality. In fact, even the much touted media-led sexual revolution of recent years has displayed permissiveness in dress or behaviour mostly within the framework of heterosexuality. Run through any of the soaps and mainstream films and you will find that apart from the comic chakka, homosexuality is never even acknowledged. Then what has suddenly brought about this appearance at least of middle classacceptance?

Probably a combination of factors. The quiet efforts of those who have come out; the print media; and the emergence of a clutch of support groups that provide emotional support and counselling have all helped create a gay community of sorts. The advent of AIDS, figures bandied about by the World Health Organisation predict a pandemic for India in the coming decade, has also brought sexuality, particularly the subject of homosexuality, into the realm of serious discussion and concern. As journalist and gay activist Ashok Row Kavi says: “Five years ago I would have been killed for distributing condoms to homosexuals.” Today the outreach centres of his Humsafar Trust does so freely, particularly in areas where male prostitutes operate. Row Kavi even has plans to introduce some variety into the fare — dotted, ribbed, flavoured and perfumed with pan masala.

These factors however would have had an impact limited to a certain milieu had it not been for certain other significant happenings.Cultural events such as Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Mahesh Dattani’s On A Muggy Night In Mumbai have helped expand social consciousness about homosexuality. As has the increased social preoccupation with beauty and fashion which has made role models of camp make up artists and effeminate fashion designers. Openly gay celebrities are not usually ordinary people. They (mostly men so far) tend to be deliberately flashy, flamboyant, sometimes outrageous. They live and work in a sphere where unconventional life choices are hardly frowned upon.

So, to some extent the change in social attitude towards alternative sexuality that appears to have come about has not come as a surge from within society but as a trickle-down phenomenon. As attitudes go, film director Mehta and playwright Dattani too are urban, westernised minds. It is similar to feminism in the late seventies which came as an idea from the west and was embraced initially by the more progressive and affluent city-based woman. How widely theseeffects have percolated is difficult to tell. But what the phenomenon has done is forced the ordinary middle class to acknowledge the concept itself.

The Shiv Sena’s decision to ban Fire for instance not only turned it into a civil rights issue; it also evoked widespread curiosity on the subject. I remember overhearing a young girl telling her friends about a woman who she claimed had been falling all over her in the train. “She was,” she said, laughing, “Fire!” Clearly the alleged lesbian overtures had been unwelcome but finally she had a word to describe the experience. Similarly when I went to see On A Muggy Night In Mumbai, a play that explores gay and lesbian relationships, by the interval, one of the people I had gone to see the play with, a fairly traditional housewife, was confessing with a great deal of sympathy a family secret about a cousin who turned out to be gay.

It is difficult to tell how this emerging awareness will impinge on the lives of the average gay or lesbianperson. Nargis Irani, a lesbian activist interviewed by Outlook, at the time of the Fire controversy, was ambivalent: “It’s harder in some ways, easier in others. The new awareness also erodes the safe places.” Be that as it may, current indications are that some sort of change is taking place. That despite the periodic wave of puritanism, Indian society might just be shifting and adjusting to make space for the different, the unconventional.