#
Before you listen to this episode of The Scene in the Unseen, I have a recommendation for
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Do check out Pulliya Baazi, hosted by Saurabh Chandra and Pranay Koteswane, two really good
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Kick-ass podcast in Hindi, it's amazing.
#
More than a decade ago, in 2007, I wrote a column with the title, The Matunga Racket.
#
The Matunga Racket was a scam run by the police that a gay friend of mine told me about.
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This was how it functioned.
#
Cops would go to this online messaging board for gay people.
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This was in the days before smartphones and Grindr.
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A cop would pretend that he was looking to hook up.
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He would lure his victim to Dadar railway station at a particular time.
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A plain clothed cop would complete the rendezvous and be joined by other cops who would then
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drag their unsuspecting victim, some poor bloke who wanted nothing more than a memorable
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consensual encounter, and take him to King Circle police station.
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There, they would threaten to book him under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which
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effectively made homosexual sex illegal.
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If he was a young man, as he often was, they could even threaten to call his parents.
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Then they would make him empty his pockets, and often they take him to a nearby ATM, force
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him to use his ATM card, and take as much as they wanted.
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The point of that column of mine was to talk about the criminalizing of victimless crimes
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with laws like 377 then used by the cops as a tool for extortion.
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What is the police after all but a legal mafia with a monopoly on violence?
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Now since Section 377 is no longer on the books, you would imagine that we've solved
#
that particular problem.
#
Gay people in India may not be terrorized by a bad law, but they are still shackled
#
by social attitudes that look upon homosexuality as a dangerous aberration, even a disease,
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and many young people grow up with guilt about their secret desires, a guilt that should
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be as unnecessary as, say, guilt about being left-handed.
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Millions of people in our country carry this burden with them every day, this burden of
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shame when there should be no shame, this burden of hiding something about yourself
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from a family that otherwise embraces you as you are.
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Those born to privilege can find ways of escaping this burden, but most gay people in this country,
#
even if they now do not have a law dangling over their heads, still spend their lives
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics, and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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My guest today is my friend Vivek Tejuja, who has just come out with his first book, So
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Now You Know, Growing Up Gay in India.
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This is a charming memoir of growing up gay in India, and while it's written in a deceptively
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breezy light-hearted way, I also found it to be a deeply moving book.
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Vivek and I have met just a handful of times, and our online friendship is actually based
#
Vivek makes his living writing about books, and his transparent, infectious love for books
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has often made me rush to Amazon right after reading a review or a tweet by him.
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So some of our conversation today will be about the literature and poetry that we enjoy,
#
but much of it will be about the brilliant book that he's just written.
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Before I begin chatting with Vivek though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Did you know that Parsis in Mumbai, instead of being left at the Tower of Silence after
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they die, are now cremated?
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Because a cow fell sick in the early 1990s.
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Did you know that the smog in Delhi is caused by something that farmers in Punjab do, and
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that there's no way to stop them?
#
Did you know that there wasn't one gas tragedy in Bhopal, but three?
#
One of them was seen, but two were unseen.
#
Did you know that many well-intentioned government policies hurt the people they're supposed
#
Why was demonetization a bad idea?
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How should GST have been implemented?
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Why are all our politicians so corrupt when not all of them are bad people?
#
I'm Amit Verma, and in my weekly podcast, The Seen and the Unseen, I take a shot at
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answering all these questions and many more.
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I aim to go beyond the seen and show you the unseen effects of public policy and private
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I speak to experts on economics, political philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and constitutional
#
law so that the insights can blow not only my mind, but also yours.
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The Seen and the Unseen releases every Monday, so do check out the archives and follow the
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You can also subscribe to The Seen and the Unseen on whatever podcast app you happen
#
Vivek, welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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Tell me a bit about how this book came about.
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So you know, in 2009, about 10 years ago, I was just working on a couple of chapters,
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and it just started with the memory of, which is also there in the book, of me and a couple
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of gay men going to Gorai for a trip.
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And at that time, like you mentioned, it was totally unheard of for someone.
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And I just met one of them once.
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And I was so taken in by him and his charm.
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And it was not even him that I chatted with online.
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I chatted with a friend of his that I wasn't interested in.
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And he introduced me to this fellow, Tori.
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And I absolutely got taken in by him.
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And I was like, okay, you know what?
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Let's do this trip and that trip memory, which is in detail in the book, just evoked the
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chapter that I first wrote.
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And then I just started writing chapter after chapter.
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And this was then shelved for 10 years or more, 10 years, yeah, a little less than 10
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Still, the book was supposed to be a young adult fiction book with another publisher who
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then decided not to publish it in the memoir form because they had some objection.
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And then the book went to HarperCollins where my editor Udayan picked it up and he loved
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And that's how this book came to be.
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And that's how I wrote this book.
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And I added more chapters to those chapters.
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So yeah, and still it's a very short book.
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I enjoyed reading it thoroughly.
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I mean, my only criticism, as I told you, was that it was too short.
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It got over when I was just settled in and I thought, okay, a little more of it would
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Did you always kind of want to be a writer or?
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No, actually, but in a way it was just one of those very lofty dreams that one has while
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growing up when you read other books and you are so taken in by the love of literature
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that you are like, okay, one day I'm going to be a writer.
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So the story there is that my father gifted me and he didn't even realize what he was
#
I was about 14, 15 and he handed me a book called Sisters by Shobha Day.
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And I was like, okay, I don't know what this is, but it just felt close to home, not because
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of the affluence, but just because it had Indian characters, it had Indian sex, it had
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And then I finished the book and at the end of the book I had written, one day I want
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to be published, you know, I want to write and then that's how it came about.
#
And this was way back in 1998, 1997.
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What do you mean Indian sex?
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Sex between Indian characters or something specific?
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Sex between Indian characters and I never read it in a book.
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Nobody used to write books like these where there was sex between two characters and Shobha
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Day was all out and I was, and I actually enjoyed her after that, I actually read all
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And I was like, why am I reading this shit after a couple of years?
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But then you know what?
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It is good shit in a sense.
#
She is delightfully unpotentious.
#
There are no literary airs or illusions, it's just like, yeah.
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And I wanted to write in the same vein and that's why this book is so simple, because
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it's not, I'm glad that it also ends when it ends because I intended it to be short.
#
Let's kind of go to the book and the subject of the book and kind of growing up gay.
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And you know, I'd done an episode before on this with Naveen Narona who of course hosts
#
the podcast Keeping it Queer, even you've done an episode with him which we'll link
#
So growing up, I mean, one of the interesting things I found about your book was that you
#
were also sort of born to privilege in a sense and aware of that privilege.
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And how did, you know, when did you become aware of being gay, that there was a difference?
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I think I was eight, honestly, I was about eight or nine.
#
And I would watch these videos, or I would watch, there would be cassettes brought at
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home of Hindi movies or Bollywood, and I remember watching a movie of Vinod Khanna in it, and
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he was shirtless on the beach in his trunks.
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And it was Gurbani, I think, and I fell in love with what I saw.
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I fell in lust, actually, I don't know at nine if you can fall in lust, but I knew that,
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you know, I couldn't care about a zenith among in a bikini, I mean, it just didn't matter.
#
And then just incidents and instances kept getting piled on one after the other.
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And while boys in school were talking about girls, I was thinking about other boys pretending
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to talk about girls and I was like, okay, I think I know.
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I didn't have a term for it.
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I didn't know it was homosexuality.
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I didn't know it was being gay.
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I didn't know any of that.
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I just knew that, yeah, and I couldn't even ask or tell anyone.
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So it became a little difficult to give a name.
#
But did you feel that, oh, I mean, what's going on?
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There's something wrong with me or?
#
I just wanted to fit into mainstream, because everywhere around you as you grow up, you
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see heteronormativity and that's what I wanted.
#
I wanted a nine to five job.
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I wanted everything that my father had.
#
Until you saw Vinod Khanna without a show.
#
And I was like, okay, no, I don't think, I didn't know that I wanted him or I wanted
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the straight life, so to say.
#
But I guess over a period of time with whatever you go through and whatever you internal conflict
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and you just figure along the way that, you know, this is what you want and this is what
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Is there kind of an overlap between these two phases, like one, because you're looking
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at your father and you're looking at all the heteronormative stuff and you're looking at
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Bollywood romances and you're thinking, oh, okay, that's the way it's going to go.
#
And then you discover this.
#
The only overlap was that when I discovered and then as I entered my teens, I just because
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of the heteronormativity, all I wanted to do was be a woman.
#
I equated that, that there was a man and there's a woman, right?
#
So while being gay, I never thought of it as two men, at that time, now, of course,
#
things are very different.
#
You're more aware and you read and you interact and you grow with the world and the people
#
But at that time, it was just a dream to be married even to another man without realizing
#
the laws, without realizing, so this is the kind of privilege I'm talking about, right?
#
You don't, you're so molly cuddled, you're so cushioned that you don't realize.
#
You mentioned in your book, you were the Raja beta of your family.
#
Yeah, yeah, yeah, clearly.
#
And it was sickening after a point because then they just invaded my life.
#
They wanted to know everything.
#
Nothing was hidden except for this one thing, which was hidden for a very long time till
#
I came out at 18 in frustration because a man rejected my advances or rejected me and
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I just didn't know what to do.
#
I was so mad at him that I was like, okay, I was angry and then I decided to come out.
#
You begin your book with an incident which you then allude to later, which is basically
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you saw the film Sarak and you were attracted to the character of Maharani.
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No, I wasn't attracted to the character, but I quite liked what I watched on the screen.
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And then you went home and you imitated him and your uncle slapped you and everybody was
#
and you were stunned by that and you've written in your book, quote, one incident is all it
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takes for you to not confide in your loved ones, quote, and from that point on, it's
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You can't even tell your family about it.
#
And you also, you know, you write in your book that Bollywood was a sort of a big influence
#
on you and had a big effect on you, which is very interesting because one is a heteronormativity
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which you've pointed to that it will show male-female relations in a very typical cliched
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And even there is basically it's not even healthy relationships, a lot of it is just
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All of it is very toxic.
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So it's just that one very toxic prism coming through even for women.
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And the other part of it was how they treat gay characters.
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So how was it for you where your big influences in your life are Bollywood, which is most
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of the popular culture that you're then consuming and seeing how they treat gay characters
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after you figure out that you're gay yourself?
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Yeah, so it was very problematic because in my head, then I didn't want to be associated
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with those characters, which I also mentioned in the book, like Pinku from Maskalandar or
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Maharani from Sadak or even the way Dostana, years and years later, when it came out, I
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was very, very upset with that movie that how they were depicting.
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But then I also realized that they don't know any better.
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And how Bollywood played a major role is because in my house, there was nothing but screen
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used to come as a newspaper, as a weekly newspaper then, and everybody would just read that.
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There were only Bollywood magazines from Stardust to Cineblitz to Filmfare and Movie and it
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That was the consumption.
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And which is until, of course, my mother decided to put an end to that and while that was also
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going on, she decided to involve me more in the world of books and literature and that's
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But I think, and Bollywood upset me for a very long time.
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But then I decided that I also wanted to be a part of the fantastical world.
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I wanted to be immersed in that fantasy so desperately that, you know, I wanted to probably
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just be with Akshay Kumar when I washed him shirtless or also there were those other romantic
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ideas of how Rishi Kapoor was wooing Sridevi in Chandni or how it was in Lamhe, you know,
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when you're pining for a lover.
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And you were a big Sridevi fan.
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And how you're pining for your lover and how, you know, your longing.
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I think it was just the feeling of longing.
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More than the romance, I think the unrequited love.
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Because if one thing that gay men know most, then most men out there is unrequited love.
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I mean, I could be wrong, but from personal experience, I feel it's just so looming large
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But as you grow, you start seeing things with a different perspective, which helps.
#
I mean, what must, just thinking aloud, what must make that unrequited love a worse problem
#
than it is for the toxic incels among the straight men who otherwise roam our countryside?
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Is that the pool of available choices to you as far as like if I'm a straight person and
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I see and I'm attracted to a woman, you know, it's something that I can think about and
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consider and it's fair game if you're both single.
#
But for you, most men are also out of bounds.
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I mean, how do you even, is that something that is, I mean, that goes beyond unrequited
#
I think maybe that's why we assert our sexuality so much.
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Like we want other men to know, at least wanted them to know that we are gay, that we are
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available, that we are single.
#
I mean, the flamboyance and the assertion and the entire drama associated with us comes
#
from that latent to be seen, you know, and not to be unseen.
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To be seen, to be visible, I think it is so important because in your head, how will people
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How will a man then want to show interest in you if he is gay?
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How do you, how do you see the signs?
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Do you write it on your forehead and walk on the street?
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Do you sashay your hips when you're walking?
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Do you, do you show it in your talk?
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Do you be soft and genteel and a little high pitch in your voice?
#
Like I remember somebody telling me that in Marine Drive people used to wear white kerchiefs
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on their right wrist to indicate their sexuality and cruise that way, or you cruise and you
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speak through eyes and you speak through expression and at right opposite Taj Mahal, what Gateway
#
of India wall used to be called the wall and people used to cruise there, they used to
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cruise in every local platform loo and that's when these cops used to go masquerading online
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and then, you know, sort of nab them.
#
We had only voodoo, which I also mentioned in the book and then it is, it was a crazy
#
time because how and then coming back to that, right, you just had to be seen to be able
#
to get sex, love or both in good combination or anything that you wanted, like in the so
#
called straight world or the heterosexual world, people take it for granted, right?
#
You see a woman or a woman sees you, you are seen to each other, there is nothing like
#
the unseen, but here you have to present yourself and that's when, you know, from all your choices,
#
the way you dress, to the way you talk, to the way you walk, to what you're reading,
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to what interests you have, to all of that.
#
You want some way of signaling that.
#
Yeah, like you're not interested in sports, so for the longest time in the nineties, if
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you are a boy, you have to be interested in sports and the minute you're not, then something
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Now that wrong, I wanted to convert to the advantage of being right for me so that somebody
#
could pick it up and I could perhaps be with that someone.
#
But how do you signal a disinterest in sports?
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You make it very clear, you're very loud about it.
#
Like with my parents, I was extremely clear, my mother used to force me to go down and
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play a sport, but she's like, oh, sport leads to teamwork, it leads to building character
#
And I'm like, no, I'm just bored, it tires me and I don't want to do this.
#
I just want to be this lazy boy and sit at home and read.
#
It sounds like an excuse, not of a gay man, but also a Bengali man, I mean, being half
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Bengali, I mean, who wants to do physical activity?
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And sweat, I'm sorry, I don't want to perspire, I just don't, I'm just averse to the idea
#
of my pores emitting something that I don't want on my skin, that's all.
#
And you mentioned Voodoo and there's a nice quote about Voodoo in your book, which I'll
#
again read out, quote, Voodoo makes you not want to look in the mirror once you get out
#
There is this heavy sadness in the air, in the low ceiling, the expression that is still
#
muted and with all the strangers, it doesn't make it much easier.
#
Stop code and Voodoo, of course, is this gay club that you went to meet people and yet
#
there was no option, all of you had to be there because how else do you?
#
Yeah, initially, till Gay Bombay party started and then you went on and even there, there
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was such a class difference, like there was something called Salvation Star, which was
#
just for the South Bombayites and if you were say from out of South Bombay and you would
#
come to that party, somehow they would sense you, I think they would smell you, that you
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are not from South Bombay, the other, yeah, the other and they would treat you like that
#
and you would be shunned into a corner and nobody would show any interest in you and
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then there was the Gay Bombay party culture at Velocity in Tarde where every Saturday
#
there is to be a party and just the idea of going there with your other friends or with
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your friends and just dancing to item songs and just living, getting drunk and to be able
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to grind against each other, a stranger even and make out on the dance floor, it just gave
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you such a sense of liberation and this is all pre-377, we just absolutely snatched what
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we got, at least I did that, I remember my moments of just snatching, of just grabbing
#
with both hands and not being apologetic about it at all and I guess privilege had a very
#
big role to play because in my head I knew that I was cushioned and comfort was there
#
to whatever extent back home, so I could manage to put myself out here and do this.
#
But it must have been much harder for example from the non-South Bombay types who happened
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to come to the Salvation Star party and what do you do, you have added insecurities.
#
You learn, you find your own tribe because it's so important to find your tribe, like
#
for me while growing up in college I was dying to speak with another gay boy and I literally
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thought to take a quote from little Britain that I was the only gay man in the village,
#
there was nobody else and it frustrated me no end till of course internet came about
#
and I was like oh there are other people and there are other people very close by.
#
I guess the internet came at just the right time and how has the internet changed things,
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like are there still gay Bombay meetups, is that still a necessity?
#
Gay Bombay parties, yeah sure, sure, sure, they'll still go on but now I have stopped
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And you mentioned that there are more hookup apps for gay men than for straight men.
#
Gay men are everywhere, gay people are everywhere, we are on Tinder, we are on Grindr which is
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exclusively for us, we are on something called Planet Romeo, we are on Bumble, we are on
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Hinge, we are everywhere and I think also with 377 gone a lot of men are coming out,
#
they are coming out as bi-curious, I don't know what that means or as curious or as bisexual
#
or whatever label they want to give themselves but they are also making themselves seen that
#
you know this is us and you know we are out here, like today people have it on their Twitter
#
profile that they are bi-curious, bi-poly, bi-curious, bisexual, trying to figure, trying
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to navigate waters, again I don't know what that means but yeah, so I think it's a very
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good thing that all of this is happening.
#
It's a great thing that a lot of people who had these sort of repressed feelings can now
#
just come out in the open and like a friend of mine was recently telling me and he's otherwise
#
I've known him as heterosexual, he has a girlfriend and all that but he said that he wanted to
#
go to Grindr and check it out and see what it is.
#
So the curiosity right, I mean it's interesting and how the expectation is set with two men
#
but I've only known men right, that how it's either going to be this or that or something else.
#
So I think it's so clear in the communication.
#
It's transparently transactional so there's nothing else.
#
Yeah, like you move with the idea, like if somebody says he's a little discreet or closeted
#
or whatever, you know he's not going to give you his number.
#
You have to still go by the trust factor and meet him where he wants you to meet him if
#
you're interested, if there's been a conversation, if there's some chemistry.
#
So you have to take that risk, like earlier though I wouldn't be able to see a picture
#
of somebody online because people wouldn't, there used to be no option of sharing pictures.
#
You just met and then you took it from there, so you didn't even know who you were meeting.
#
You have an account of a date you had at Just Around the Corner which again makes me very
#
nostalgic because Just Around the Corner is like defines a certain time in Bombay and
#
a certain time in Bandra and he had portrayed himself as I think being very tall and he
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Yeah, dude, really short.
#
Yeah, very short, yeah.
#
Yeah, and you still went along.
#
I was, I was in a sense desperate.
#
I was young, I was horny, I was desperate and I just wanted to experience everything
#
You also got a very interesting account of how you seduced a straight man.
#
So what happened there?
#
I think it was a very unusual evening, things, all the chips fell into place.
#
I didn't even plan it that it would go this way.
#
I thought he would slap me.
#
I thought I'm done for.
#
He was this huge Delhi boy and I was like oh my god and at that time I was scared of
#
I mean I was like okay, you know, and I'm trying to take him home.
#
That was another kettle of fish altogether.
#
So I think we just, I was just a little brave and stupid because it could have gone anywhere.
#
I could have just not been here.
#
I could have been murdered in the taxi or something and I say it with all earnestness
#
because these things used to happen.
#
People wouldn't know about it, I think, but a lot of gay hate crime was very prevalent.
#
I don't know if it still is.
#
Have you experienced any of that?
#
I've experienced verbal hate, a lot of it, I mean in school, college, bullying.
#
In fact, one of the painful parts of your book is where, you know, for a few pages you
#
describe your first crush, this friend called Deepak and then he is the first person to
#
call you a faggot one day.
#
Yes, yes, because of whatever, influence of other boys and extremely painful.
#
I mean the fact that I still remember it the way I do after all these years should say
#
something, but yeah, but these things happened and I don't know if they happened to every
#
gay boy growing up, but universally, yes, these things happen.
#
And you know, so let's take this opportunity to sort of go back to your school days where
#
you talk about how, okay, you had a sheltered life at home and everything is fine, but then
#
you go to school and everything changes.
#
And again, quote from your book, quote, consider this, a boy who has never been shot on confidence
#
suddenly finds himself at a loss for words when it comes to defending himself at school.
#
He has no idea what has beset his life.
#
And before he can call out for his dad or mom, he is surrounded by bullies, bullies
#
who do not lose a single opportunity to make his life miserable, stop quote.
#
And to some extent that this is because they sense that, yeah, yeah, I think, I think children
#
like we all know can be very cruel and they have, they have the sense that perhaps adults
#
just do not, this instinct that something is off in a way that this person is different.
#
Like I think it just started from the time I refused to be in any sports club or engage
#
beyond, like I wouldn't want to wrestle in the mud.
#
I wouldn't want to pick a fight just for no reason.
#
So the angst or teenage angst just got channelized in other ways.
#
So I think they picked on that a very, very, they didn't know and children know and they
#
know how to pick on weaknesses just like Lord of the Flies, which is a very accurate term.
#
And they just, so I felt like piggy just that I think I came out of it a sin at the end
#
How did you navigate your school years?
#
I hid and I did a very good job of hiding.
#
Also the dichotomy there, right, I mean in school you want to be hidden, but the minute
#
you're out of school and you're exploring your sexuality, you just want to be seen.
#
And seen in a way that, that again, you don't want to be seen out there, but in a very subtle
#
You want people who are looking for it to know that
#
Did you know any other gay boys in school?
#
Which is weird because just going by the percentages, there must have been a few.
#
Of course, a more than few.
#
Not many in my school, but notorious.
#
Notorious in the sense that people say, Oh, a lot of homosexuals in your school.
#
But sometimes even the bullies, right, could be, and they may not even have known that
#
about themselves, unfortunately.
#
Or some hidden kind of self-loathing, which is expressing itself and
#
So a lot of psychological drama.
#
So yeah, thank God it wasn't a boarding school because I wouldn't have been able to survive
#
Are you in touch with any of your school friends?
#
I don't have school friends.
#
So yeah, I think I put a stop to that very clearly once I was out of there.
#
Where did you go to college?
#
College was a lot of fun in the sense I had studied literature and it was great.
#
I was immersed in books.
#
My professors were very, very kind.
#
And I went to see in Xavier's.
#
So yeah, so it was a lot of fun.
#
It was something that was so different.
#
It was, yeah, but again, in college, right, the friends that were there were very far
#
I never made friends in school and college, which was very strange.
#
I don't know why I thought I was, I was popular, but of course I wasn't because I was very
#
quiet and I wouldn't mingle.
#
And later when I decided that, okay, now is the time to meet people, to make a friend.
#
I think I found people who thought in a similar fashion or who, you know, were there for me
#
and they continue to be there.
#
So was that sort of initial not making friends or whatever?
#
Was it because you were generally a quiet introverted person or did your own sense of
#
your gayness also have a part to play in it?
#
So I think in college, I was very, very inhibited.
#
I think it was just, like I said, right, when you can't, when you just wait to speak to
#
someone who is like you and that's not there and you feel a sense of loss.
#
I mean, for how long could I just speak with, with friends who were women and not be able
#
Like I also mentioned a very close friend of mine, M, and how she, I fell in love with
#
her because I was so in denial for the longest time.
#
You've written about your yearning to be straight.
#
And I watched City of Angels with her and then I proposed for some strange reason.
#
I just proposed and, and then when she found out that I was gay, she broke down because
#
she thought that I had a thing for her when though she wasn't really interested.
#
So it was a very, very complex situation that played itself out.
#
And I don't know why I did what I did, but I did maybe because we are spending so much
#
time together that I thought that I could, you know, veer in that direction and, and
#
So yeah, I mean, I used to look at, I, like I said, right, and I keep saying I wanted
#
the straight life because it felt so complete, but, but thank God that didn't happen in my
#
I'm very happy for the, for the lack of it.
#
I like a related question that comes up is that because being gay in India is so difficult,
#
how much does going through that experience, that difficulty rather than being gay, that
#
difficulty in being gay in India, go on to define who you are as a person or shape who
#
For example, in my case, I know that my sexual orientation has absolutely nothing to do with
#
You know, it hasn't shaped me in any way.
#
I don't have to modify my behavior because of it.
#
I don't have to be wary of what I say to people or, you know, consider carefully the signals
#
So my orientation hasn't shaped me because I can just take it for granted.
#
How has it worked for you?
#
So I think my orientation shaped me in a very positive way in the sense that the cultural
#
references and the pop culture impact or the impact of arts when it came to my life was
#
Like when I discovered Giovanni's room or when I discovered Madonna on MTV, and that
#
But why a revelation for you?
#
Because when I would watch someone like her with such unabashed confidence and with such
#
glory in the performance and speaking what she did about, which is of sex and love and
#
you know, being who you are and accepting yourself the way you are, that hit a chord
#
and that hit such a strong nerve that you feel that confidence in some way.
#
You feel that there's an ally even though you don't know her and you still know her
#
so well, just like Sri Devi.
#
You just feel that these people or these celebrities are just allies, they are your friends.
#
You could perhaps have a conversation with them in your head and be so comfortable about
#
You know, and the same thing when it came to books like Tennessee Williams, when I discovered
#
a streetcar named Desire or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or a movie like Gone with the Wind, which
#
was something so empowering about that film, even though it has its problems, the book
#
But just to see Scarlett Johanna pick a pound of earth in her hand and say, I'm never going
#
to go hungry again, instilled something in me that just shook me out of my wits.
#
And I was like, you know, it's okay.
#
I mean, if these people can do what they are doing and living the life, so can you.
#
And that impact on the orientation was so strong that the rest didn't matter, really.
#
Like when I first watched Maurice, back then when Star Movies was the good old Star Movies.
#
Post 1130, they would show movies with a lot of graphic content and a lot of nudity.
#
And Maurice was one of them, produced by Merchant Ivory Productions.
#
And it wasn't because of the lust, but I think just the fact that this is possible.
#
And it spoke to me on so many levels, talking to me about, you know, being who you are in
#
a world that probably will take time to accept you.
#
And then acceptance didn't become a matter of concern at all.
#
It was there, of course, in a very latent manner, it was there.
#
But that wasn't the agenda at all.
#
The agenda was perhaps just to live and navigate and figure and meet more people like you and
#
understand and share stories and figure it out and make your mistakes.
#
Oh, I have made so many mistakes with the men that I have met, the choices.
#
It's been a great journey so far.
#
Almost counterintuitive what you just told me in the sense that you're saying that it
#
kind of made you stronger and more comfortable in your own skin, you know, and helped you
#
get past sort of the anxieties that humans feel.
#
And you mentioned Maurice, so like, what are the sort of early works of art, like books
#
or films or whatever, which showed normal gay relationships and not in that whole Bollywood
#
caricature ish, Muskalandar kind of thing.
#
So I think even so when you know, I read this book by Raj Rao called The Boyfriend.
#
And the boyfriend to me felt a little maudlin in the sense that, again, it spoke about the
#
It spoke about people from different classes coming together and then trying to make sense
#
of what they were feeling towards each other.
#
I think the sense of attraction and the sense of desire was so strong in these works that
#
you start relating on a very different level.
#
Like you read books written by heterosexual men and women trying to find gay characters
#
And you can't because they are not equipped to perhaps write about it.
#
But when you see Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar, and you tend to find homosexual
#
authors or writers who happened to be gay, and you can't ask the librarian in your college
#
because she'd be mightily scandalized.
#
And there's no Google back in the day.
#
You just figure, you just find, you read synopsis after synopsis and try and see that, you know,
#
will you find gay literature?
#
Will you find good solid gay literature to tide you through?
#
Like when I, when I thought, when I, when somebody told me a friend that a suitable
#
boy has some, you know, gay sex or a gay intimacy, I knew I had to read it.
#
And that might have been the driving force, but of course, ultimately I loved the book
#
or that the Golden Gate has a bisexual character.
#
So you only want to read because you want to find out that, you know, what it is about
#
me, what is it about me that makes me different or what I don't care about anymore, or I give
#
up caring about because it doesn't make sense anymore.
#
So I think these works of art and these books and movies and, and perhaps lives of people
#
just instilled this confidence layer by layer, which had of course shattered over a period
#
of time because of the bullying and all of that.
#
And I was like, okay, let's pick up and see where we go from here.
#
Yeah, it's interesting because I've read and loved the suitable boy many, many, many
#
I mean, when it came out basically, and I cannot remember a gay scene, which it wasn't
#
It was just intimacy between between two characters.
#
I can't remember that either.
#
And that's very interesting because like I recorded an episode a few weeks back with
#
Ira Mukoti, which will probably release after this about women in history.
#
And she talks about how when she reads a lot of history, because she, her gaze is open
#
to it, she will find interesting women characters and interesting things happening to women,
#
which men reading the same history simply won't even notice.
#
It's like something happening on the side and it's not interesting, but she's looking
#
And so it's interesting that there's that added layer to the way that you're sort of
#
So I think, I think when you, when you want to look for things, they make themselves shown
#
in a way to you that, that perhaps other readers, every reader is different, right?
#
So another reader might catch on to something and I might catch on to something else.
#
We'll, we'll talk about books a little later in the show, but sort of going back to sort
#
of your growing up years, you know, you've described how it was with school where you're
#
basically, you're getting bullied and you're trying to be unobtrusive.
#
And then in college, you gradually open up a little bit.
#
But how was it like at home, like as far as your family is concerned, you mentioned how,
#
you know, your uncle, for example, slapped you once when you did those, the dialogues
#
of Maharani and, and when did they start getting a sense of it and how did they react?
#
So I think after that incident, I stopped doing a lot of things.
#
And I've also mentioned in the book that growing up in a, in a household of women, for the
#
longest time, I was a part of the kitchen.
#
I would go and sit over there and like I mentioned, listen to songs on the radio with them and
#
be a part of them, see how they were cooking, how they were cutting, what was going on in
#
that world, how they would gossip.
#
And it was very interesting.
#
I loved just growing up in the kitchen.
#
In fact, I'll quote the passage from there because I kind of liked it.
#
So I, I have the book open to that page now before you mentioned the kitchen, start quote.
#
I think from there, I learned the art of being the other gender.
#
I learned of grace, of the subtleties, of not expressing everything harshly or not confining
#
oneself to what the world expects of you because you happen to be a man.
#
The songs that would be played on the tape recorder in the kitchen would be only by women
#
There was no intrusion of male voices in that domain.
#
I was a part of that world till I was about 11 or 12.
#
As soon as I turned 13, I knew I wasn't welcome in that space, stop quote.
#
And that's obviously because you're deepening of your voice.
#
Yeah, deepening of my voice, also the fact that they understood that now he's a teenage
#
boy, his body is growing in ways that they couldn't fathom or they didn't want to.
#
Because there's always this distinction in a household, okay, these are the men and you
#
roam with the men when you become a sort of a man and these are the women and you go with
#
and the girls are supposed to become women when perhaps they have their first period
#
or they experience life from there on in the next stage and so on and so forth.
#
So those very, very silly boxing of roles is what took place.
#
And then I just kept quiet.
#
I was like, you know, okay, this is what it is and this is how it will be.
#
Like, you know, even when we used to go to watch movies together, the boys and the men
#
The women and the girls would sit separately, except for, of course, just exchanging, okay,
#
what do you want in the interview, shall we get popcorn and so on and so forth.
#
Otherwise, opinions and thoughts weren't shared or expressed.
#
So I think that was a big, there was a big lack over there when growing up of expression.
#
So I think when I started expressing myself out of anger, it was so different because
#
nobody expected that out of me.
#
Everybody thought I was this sort of adarsh balak, I would do as told and they had sort
#
of charted a roadmap for me that he would do this, he would become this and he would
#
have a girlfriend and you would get him married and so on and so forth.
#
But that never happened.
#
And did this experience also sort of open your eyes to the cruelty of men, so to say,
#
in a way that would not otherwise have happened if you weren't gay?
#
Like I think a lot of men, like I'm talking not about sort of being straight or being
#
gay here, but just in the terms of gender, the cruelty of men is something that is ubiquitous
#
and normalized and taken for granted in the way that they treat their women.
#
And just your sense of identifying with the women more of not understanding why this distinction
#
and why these different roles, did that open, I mean, did you also then sense that ubiquitous
#
Oh yeah, from the word go, I mean, men generally that I was surrounded by expected a certain
#
sort of decorum, so to say, walk this way, chest out, shoulders up.
#
You know, why do you want to wear this?
#
Why do you want to talk like this?
#
Deepen your voice and let it be a little gruff.
#
And abuses, abuses were flying in my house like no one's business.
#
And that's when I realized that, you know, for all the books that I read and for everything,
#
I just couldn't communicate anything with them because they wouldn't get it.
#
They just wouldn't understand.
#
Like I couldn't discuss an Agatha Christie book.
#
I couldn't discuss Marquez with them because in my head I was way above all of this.
#
So in a very flighty sense also, I was like, these people are just beneath me to discuss
#
anything with them, but they won't understand.
#
But did they also read?
#
And an unrelated question before we get back to the family is that would you feel that
#
people who read more are also more empathetic?
#
Not all the time, but most of the time.
#
I think people who read more, I think people who read diversely are more empathetic.
#
People who, like my uncle only at some point he read, but he would only read Alastair McLean.
#
I don't know what kind of empathy you can get by reading an Alastair McLean novel or
#
a James Hadley Chase novel, but yeah, that's what he read.
#
And maybe I guess if you read literature, you'd be...
#
I don't want to sound like a literature snob, but yes, why not?
#
We are sounding immensely snobbish, this is what the common person feels.
#
Because I don't expect them to get it.
#
I think just the idea of not only being gay, but just the fluidity of life, I don't think
#
It would take a lot of years, and which it has.
#
So tell me about the experience of coming out to your family, like, how was that?
#
I mean, I know it happened in steps.
#
Yeah, I mean, I told my cousin, and she went and blurted it.
#
Yeah, to someone in the family.
#
And then I just got all of them together one fine day, everyone, and I just said, hey...
#
My dad wasn't there around at that time.
#
He had gone somewhere, and they didn't tell him, because he had a cardiac problem, and
#
they didn't want to shock him, so to say.
#
So I don't know what sort of shock it would be that would lead to his death.
#
But apparently he knew, that's what my mother told me later.
#
So and when I came out to them, the first thing was, go, now let's take him to a psychiatrist.
#
And then she showed me some Rorschach paintings, and she said, oh, to determine whether he's
#
And I'm like, how can you determine that?
#
I'm telling you what I like.
#
I'm telling you who I am.
#
And then she's like, oh, there's a hint of gay.
#
I'm like, hint of gay is not a color, you know, it's not like hint of purple or hint
#
She's only a little pregnant.
#
How do you define that?
#
And then she's like, I can be solved with medication.
#
I'm like, your Baba Ramdev, before Baba Ramdev was Baba Ramdev.
#
Did they try to give you medication?
#
But I'm like, this is not going to help anyone, you know, fighting a lost cause.
#
I mean, I know exactly who I am.
#
And that made it even more sure, made me even more sure, not that there was any doubt.
#
But by this time, that yearning to be straight had completely gone and it was in the past.
#
Now I just wanted to experience sex.
#
Now the next level of growing up was just to have unbashful sex, just go for it.
#
I mean, and that was very difficult for me initially to engage in that act because it
#
I never think of it as a very enriching or spiritual experience.
#
I don't know what is so spiritual about sex or having sex.
#
I think it's just very messy.
#
And so that I think just has been instilled because of a certain idea of having early
#
sex when you're growing up at 17.
#
And then you wonder that, oh my God, I can't deal with this.
#
And that's again a very contradictory statement only because primarily in our country, gay
#
people are identified by the amount of sex they have.
#
We are meant to be really promiscuous and sort of fawning and falling all over men.
#
And that's when the homophobia steps in.
#
No, in fact, I've known homophobic men who almost behave as if being in contact with
#
a gay person will mean the gay guy will try to rape them or whatever.
#
And you also mentioned that you've been asked in your book about how did you become gay.
#
Yeah, one fine day I woke up and I'm like, no, transformation is the key to life, let's
#
It's been ridiculous questions till date I get asked.
#
How was your first time?
#
I'm like, why do you need to know?
#
I mean, now I can just tell them, read the book, but yeah, I'm like, buy karo, just
#
And how did your family react when you had this gathering and you told them all?
#
First, it was just denial.
#
My mother was like, oh, but you always love Shri Devi, you want to marry her and this
#
I'm like, get the hint mom, I always love Shri Devi.
#
She was one of the, and she still is, the biggest gay icon there is in the country.
#
I didn't know this till I read your book.
#
I think it's just her zest for life, to put it very, for lack of a better word or phrase,
#
so infectious, so this voracious appetite to be who she wants to be on screen, to express
#
herself without fear and very, I think there's this entire, how do I put it?
#
Like when you watch Chalabaz and you watch her dancing in the rain and then you watch
#
Lamhe and you see her falling for a much older man and you watch Chandni and you want her
#
to succeed in whatever she does in her life after breaking from a lover.
#
I think it's just very empowering and I also know that it has a lot of toxicity attached
#
to it in the movie, but just to remove her character and to see how the character is.
#
She was a hero in Chalabaz, Sanidhi and Rajnikanth were not needed and it was just lovely to
#
watch her and watch her being so empowered.
#
I think it's also the minority connect.
#
When a gay man and women meet, when gay men and women meet, it's a minority connect.
#
You understand the pain of being the other, you understand the feeling of being alienated.
#
So I think that's when you connect and people then term silly terms like fag hag, which
#
It means a faggot hag, that you are a fag's hag, you are like their beard or you are like
#
their confidante and all of that and they will stick to you and you will stick to them
#
but I think it's just nothing, it's beautiful, it's a friend and I think that's where the
#
And also I guess because they also perhaps sense that other dichotomy that you've mentioned
#
between say lust and love.
#
For example, in your book you've written at one point, quote, I would wonder if two men
#
could really fall in love.
#
Was it about lust or was there more to it, stop quote and a little later you write after
#
your first experience, you write, quote, so that was my first time and I was too young
#
to realize how overrated sex was and still is.
#
What surprised me was the sadness of sex that would follow with many other one night stands,
#
And as you also mentioned earlier, a lot of the sex is very transactional.
#
How does that play with you, especially because you've sort of, you're exposed to popular
#
cultures such as Bollywood with this fantastical visions of romance and live happily forever
#
after and eternal love and so on.
#
How does one navigate that?
#
See, you know, so it was so funny because I remember after so many encounters, I watched
#
Dil Toh Pagal Hai when it came out and Dil Toh Pagal Hai just made me believe, oh, there's
#
everyone, someone for everyone, which is, again, I don't know if I still believe in
#
it or not, I do, but in a very strange way, but you know, yeah, I mean, transactional
#
to such an extent when you're chatting with someone online, it is all about likes question
#
mark, place question mark.
#
There's nothing about meeting or having a conversation or sitting and getting to know
#
I think they are just scared that if we get to know each other, there'll be no room for
#
You're instantly friend zoned, so they don't want that to happen.
#
You can be friend zoned after the sex because then abhi ho gaya na, it's okay, now we can
#
Maybe it'll happen again or maybe not.
#
So I think that, in that sense, the promiscuity is valid.
#
When people say that we are promiscuous, I take it with a pinch of salt because perhaps
#
there's some truth to it.
#
There's nothing wrong in it.
#
No, no, there's nothing wrong in it.
#
I don't mean it as something wrong with it, but I think, but people do, but people, but
#
I've known of gay men who don't like to be called promiscuous, but I don't have a problem
#
But I think it's just that, like I said, right, when two men meet and there's sort of a very
#
easy initiation into having sex.
#
You just ask each other and you get it done and over with and that's about it.
#
There's no room for getting to know each other.
#
Sometimes, yes, if you're lucky, the person will stay after sex and will have a conversation
#
But most of the time, there's no chance of that.
#
Not to push a stereotype, but would it also be the case that women, that men are generally,
#
men are more often looking for just sex and women want something more.
#
So a lot of that, the courtship between a straight man and a straight woman is really
#
a sort of, it's this dance.
#
It's also transactional, but with this whole veneer of what culturally you're supposed
#
to do, take someone out for a movie or blah, blah, or even put a ring on their finger.
#
And with gay men, there's no need for that pretense.
#
You know what you want.
#
And in a way, that's very sad because sad in the literal sense of sad that you're overwhelmed
#
that you're only, that the person only wants you for your, perhaps for the time your body
#
can serve a need, you know, to put it as, to put it as crudely and to put it as crudely
#
and to put it as crudely and crudely at the same time.
#
And in fact, people write in their profiles, no chubs, no aged men, no oldies, fat people,
#
They actually say all that in a grinder profile, you can actually read this and then you begin
#
to wonder that, do I even really want to meet this person, no matter how good looking he
#
is or no matter, there's no charm anyway, there's a zero charm.
#
Then it's just very, very transactional.
#
And of course, as any other human being, you have desire, you have the need to have sex.
#
And so you give in sometimes to all of this.
#
And then people are also not very kind in reciprocating what they take from you in terms
#
of giving to you or in and out of bed.
#
Like I know so many men who say I'm not going to kiss, I'm like, you're not Julia Roberts
#
So you know, for me, no kissing is a deal breaker.
#
It just doesn't, then I don't take it forward to be so honest.
#
So I think the boundaries or the dynamics even of sex or when it's a transaction, they
#
need to be seeped in a little bit of personal getting to know each other of some intimacy
#
beyond the bedroom, which I would like, but it doesn't happen and there's a need to have
#
I'm like, okay, let's just have sex and get done with this if that's what you want.
#
And before we move on, you know, since you mentioned Sri Devi, you also said something
#
to me before the recording, which is not in your book, which is that there are two kinds
#
of gay men, those who like Sri Devi and those who like Madhuri Dixit, kindly explain.
#
No, well, I think if gay men are hearing this, they know exactly what I'm talking about.
#
Yeah, but I don't enlighten, enlighten your ignorant.
#
I think, I think it's, I don't know.
#
I don't know if it is about the position in bed as some people claim for it to be tops
#
So they're like, Oh, if you like Sri Devi, you're a bottom.
#
Oh, if you like Madhuri, you're a top.
#
No, no, I've heard this a lot of times.
#
I don't think there's any truth to it, honestly, I think it's just stupid.
#
But what I just meant it in a, in a lighter vein, that there are always these scams of
#
Sri Devi lovers and Madhuri lovers and I know exactly where I fall.
#
And you know, going back to the subject we touched on right at the start of your episode
#
that yeah, you're, you know, you're a gay person growing up in India in these times.
#
And obviously it's not easy, but at the same time, you're from a position of, you know,
#
you're in a family of extreme privilege.
#
And even if your family isn't liberal enough to immediately be welcoming the matter with
#
open arms, they are still liberal enough that you are not sort of cast out and you know,
#
you're still part of the family and just a privilege and all of that makes it far easier
#
for you to kind of cope with it, isn't it?
#
No, I wouldn't put it that way.
#
The only reason, yeah, privilege, sure, living in South Bombay, sure, while growing up and
#
But there were times when my aunt is like, oh, in a very dramatic way, oh, I wish I'd
#
Oh, wish you'd never been born in this family.
#
So all of that drama happened.
#
And your aunt also once wished that you were lesbian.
#
One of the other aunts wouldn't realize the difference between being gay and lesbian.
#
It's like, oh, it'd be so nice if you were lesbian, what will two girls do with each
#
And I'm like, okay, you don't know what they can do with each other.
#
So I think it's just, I think time helps and time heals.
#
Like for a long, when I came out to my mother, my mother was like, oh, my upbringing is so
#
And I'm like, what is wrong with your upbringing?
#
You did what you did and I'm doing what I'm doing as a consequence of who I am.
#
I mean, I mean, you know, oh, but you can definitely try being straight.
#
So my mother, and I'm like, what do you mean by try being straight?
#
Why don't you try being gay?
#
You know, and see whether you can fall for another woman and have sex with a woman.
#
You also try, if you're telling me to try, you also try.
#
You actually said this to her?
#
And she was flabbergasted.
#
She didn't know how to react.
#
So she just reacted the way mothers would anger.
#
So and when I just banged my bedroom door and I didn't want to engage in any conversation
#
and all of this, my dad never spoke to me about this.
#
So I don't know that he was so close to the idea of approaching and talking to me.
#
So it was very strange thing that was going on in the household where people were like,
#
Is he still the same person?
#
Will he get up in the morning and be the same Vivek that we know him to be or Vicky, so
#
But, but yeah, I think things changed, things did change.
#
Because I guess there is that dissonance where they have a mental image of you, the son.
#
And then suddenly that mental image is completely shattered because you're not now going to
#
get married and have a family and all of those things.
#
And it's like, okay, so I mean that I guess it takes, and it took your mother a long time
#
In fact, when she read the book, I don't know, she loved the book, but I was very hesitant
#
to give her the book to read because there are a couple of encounters with men that I
#
have mentioned and spoken about in the book, which I didn't want her to read about, but
#
Though rather delicately, there's not much that is, there's nothing that is graphic in
#
Because maybe I shouldn't have said that I'm reducing the sales.
#
No, no, no, I don't think, I don't think they care.
#
There's too much, there's too much of gay porn out there if they want something graphic.
#
If you don't want something graphic, go read the book.
#
In fact, you mentioned something that again struck a chord with me and reveals our respective
#
ages where you, you know, wrote in your book about how you used to serve gay porn back
#
in the day through a dial-up connection.
#
So just when you were about to sort of reach a pleasurable climax, your, you know, your
#
mother would pick up the phone somewhere else and boom, it's all over.
#
Yeah, you're like, yeah, we know again, I'm not, I don't have it in me to dial up now.
#
So I'm going to let it be, but just fun times you would know how to hack passwords and get,
#
and friends would share passwords over the phone and you would just use those and start
#
It was crazy when there was just one site called gay.com for the Indian gay boy to go
#
online and interact with strangers.
#
And your book in a sense is a coming of age story where, you know, you're young, you discovered
#
that you're different from other people and you're alarmed and scared by it, but then
#
you come to terms with it.
#
And then by the end of the book, we're in a happy place.
#
You've kind of found what you call a family of choice and you're in a nice place.
#
And obviously a lot of time has passed since then also to now where you are.
#
You know, how different is the world today?
#
I think the difference is that people are conversing.
#
The fact that you and I are sitting in a studio and talking about it, which wouldn't have
#
happened as far as 10 years ago, in 2009 or 2008, this would have been unheard of.
#
Or even Naveen's podcast, in fact, if you're queer, who's going to have a home?
#
And all for the fact that he's out there doing standup, you have queer standup comedians,
#
you have, so you're owning spaces, which I think is so important.
#
You're making conversations happen.
#
You are talking about it on Twitter, on Facebook, on every social media platform, which would
#
have never happened earlier.
#
Earlier, there was this one magazine called Bombay Dose, which nobody even looked at.
#
As a gay man, I didn't know it was available till about recently somebody told me about
#
It was that exclusive, so to say, or not sold that widely because of the fear.
#
You might be from South Bombay, but you weren't exclusive enough.
#
Which was so funny, right, that today I'm so glad that today people can reach out to
#
There are support groups in whatever form and manner, there are individuals who've come
#
out as solid sort of spokespeople of the LGBTQIA plus community.
#
I think it's so important.
#
There's Gacy, there is a lot of other organizations that talk about it, that are there to help
#
teenagers or young people navigate through the process.
#
It's not that difficult.
#
Today people come out in college and you know that there are support groups.
#
I would have loved to come out in today's time.
#
So much of popular culture has also changed.
#
Just the fact that two of my favorite films of the last few years are Moonlight and Call
#
And in both of them, straight people can look at these very moving love stories and feel
#
moved by them themselves and it doesn't matter that these are gay people who are the protagonists
#
And do you think that's happening in Bollywood also to some extent with Kapoor and Sons,
#
Now there's another movie whose teaser just got released, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdaan
#
with Ayushman Khurrana.
#
He's playing a queer character, which I think is fantastic.
#
He's a guy who takes risks with his role that I love the confidence he has to be able to
#
For me, it is so, so endearing to see that on, it'll be a lovely experience to see it
#
on big screen without it being reduced to a caricature or a matter of ridicule and then
#
not to be ashamed of it, but to take pride in the fact that this movie exists.
#
I hope that when it releases, that's the sentiment and that's the idea because it's so important
#
to have such conversations and not, you know, it being reduced to just a caricature.
#
And sort of a final question about something from your book before we move on, I'll quote
#
another bit from your book quote, that's another thing that I get irritated about when people
#
introduce me to others as their gay friend.
#
Why can't I just be a person first and a gay man later?
#
There's definitely more to me than just being gay.
#
Some women always need that one token gay friend who they air kiss and call darling
#
and sweetie and think are their personal shoppers or something, which isn't the case.
#
Is there still a problem that you face that, you know, people say, Oh, Vivek, the joja
#
Yeah, I think, I think it comes from a place of an identification, which is okay.
#
It's an identity and that's fair.
#
I wear it on my sleeve and I make no bones about it online or offline, but it'd be nice
#
to to not be known by orientation.
#
Like we don't go around introducing straight people, like he's a straight friend, he's
#
a straight man or he's a straight friend, we don't do that, right?
#
So why should that be stuck to me just because the orientation is different, just because
#
a particular need is different, which is only limited to the bedroom.
#
So I don't think, I don't think there's anything else that's different where we are still the
#
In fact, for like much of the time that I've known you online, I didn't even know you were
#
I just knew you as a guy who really loves books.
#
We have good conversations about it.
#
And it wouldn't have made a difference even if I didn't.
#
I mean, so like, like it does to, like I keep getting DMs from women where I go, I didn't
#
know you were gay, but this is so, so nice now that I know our relationship will be different.
#
I'm like, how will it be different?
#
Maybe it's different for them because they can, they can be less threatened by you.
#
I could still be a toxic gay man.
#
Like when, when people, people used to stay back in the past that, you know, that, oh,
#
you can go with Vivek or you can go with anyone who's gay, you'll be safe with them.
#
Oh, I may not rape you, but I can be a serial killer, you know, I don't understand this
#
concept of safety with a gay man.
#
I'm like, why are you doing this?
#
How is it any different?
#
I can, I can still strangle, I can still be hurtful.
#
I can still ensure that I drop you in the middle of the road and, and go my way.
#
So what makes you think that you are safe?
#
I think, I think these hints at this darker serial killing side of yours are suddenly
#
making you much more interesting to me.
#
But what we are, we're going to go in for a break now and when we come out of the break,
#
we are going to talk about our mutual love, which is books and literature, and we're just
#
going to have a lot of fun talking about books we love and reading our poems we like.
#
So that's what is waiting for you after the break.
#
You've been warned, don't complain later and do come back.
#
Hey everybody, welcome to another awesome week on the IBM podcast network.
#
If you are not following us on social media, please make sure you do.
#
We're IBM podcasts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
#
I have a announcement for all of you, at least, you know, the couple of dozen of you who are
#
listening to us on SoundCloud come the end of October, early November, we're going to
#
be discontinuing that channel.
#
We're not really going to be making our content available on SoundCloud anymore.
#
So if you are listening on SoundCloud, you can have a number of options.
#
I say the best option is downloading the IBM podcast app.
#
But if not, you can download another podcasting app and you'll be able to find our content
#
We have a couple of new shows launching this week.
#
Let me tell you about those.
#
The first is called Boundless.
#
This is hosted by Natasha Malpani Oswal.
#
She reads her poems on mental health, relationships, family, marriage and many other topics and
#
narrates personal anecdotes around these poems.
#
Tune into new episodes every Monday and Wednesday, starting from 7th October.
#
Postcards from Nowhere is hosted by Utsav Mamoria.
#
It's a travel podcast where Utsav talks about his journeys to obscure and fascinating places
#
He explores the culture, history and people from these places in the form of stories and
#
gives you tips and tricks on solar travel.
#
Tune into new episodes every Thursday, starting from 10th October.
#
Here's what else you got on the IBM podcast network this week.
#
On Cyrus Says, Cyrus is joined by Tej Brar, founder and managing director of Third Culture
#
He tells Cyrus the stories behind his tattoos, talks about the upcoming Neon East Festival
#
and living in different places around the world from Boston to D.C. to Delhi.
#
The 150th episode of Simplified is finally here.
#
You sent in your questions and topic suggestions, now listen to Chuck, Naren and Shrikhet tackle
#
On The Habit, Kosh Ashton is joined by Shimi Nadraja and Jessica Gabrelli from Power & Posture.
#
They talk about the importance of arm balancing and how handstands can improve posture and
#
build up core strength.
#
On Tech, Careers and the New, Shiladitya is joined by Jayanth Swami and Namrata Maheshwari,
#
chief data architect and senior architect at Accenture to talk in detail about data points.
#
On Gol Gappa, Tripti is in conversation with actress Sayali Fatak.
#
They talk about her experience in theatre, acting as well as dancing.
#
On Paperback, Rachita and Satyajit talk to Nirbhai Kanoria, the co-founder of online
#
literary magazine, The Curious Reader.
#
He lists his favorite non-fiction books and the trends of reading on digital platforms.
#
On Kinetic Living, Coach Urmi shares a surprise workout on Tabata Tuesdays and on Thriving
#
Thursdays she shares a story that made her realize just how fragile life is.
#
On Football, Shootball, God of Karthik and Shiva round up the Premier League weekend
#
and talk about the absolute demolition Bayern Munich inflicted upon Tottenham.
#
On Puliyabazi, Pranay and Saurabh are joined by Prateek Sinha, editor and co-founder of
#
They discuss the anatomy of fake news and its prevalence in today's time.
#
And with that, let's get you on with your shows.
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with my friend Vivek Tejuja about his book, So Now You Know, Growing Up Gay
#
And we spent the first half of the show talking about the contents of the book, but we're
#
going to spend the second half talking in equal measure about books that we love and
#
poems that we love and which have influenced us and so on.
#
Let me start, Vivek, by kind of telling you about how I became a serious reader.
#
And there's obviously a lot of luck involved because when I was growing up I was surrounded
#
My father had thousands of books.
#
And one day at about the age of 10, he had this, I was just looking at his shelf for
#
something exciting to read up till that point I had only read, you know, normal things that
#
children of that age read.
#
And I came across a book with a very intriguing title, House of the Dead.
#
Yeah, no, no, House of the Dead is Dostoevsky.
#
So I thought House of the Dead sounds really exciting, there'll be some adventure in it
#
And it was an account of Dostoevsky's time in a Siberian prison.
#
And I was so hooked that I read all of that and then I read all of Dostoevsky and then
#
I for some strange reason skipped to Shakespeare and read all of Shakespeare at age 10.
#
I read much more at that age than regrettably I do now.
#
But tell me more about yourself and in your case is also sort of the added angle that
#
for you it was also a refuge.
#
Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely.
#
Like I remember I first discovered classics through Wuthering Heights and there was a
#
pocket classic with pictures.
#
And I was like, okay, I was about 10, 11, I was intrigued, I was like, let me just pick
#
It was a big book and at that time I didn't know about the concept of unabridged and abridged.
#
So I picked it up and I fell in love with it.
#
It was written very simply because it was, of course, abridged.
#
And I absolutely loved it.
#
I didn't even realize it was set in old England and the moors and everything.
#
I just loved the idea of love in that.
#
I maybe didn't even realize that it had the ghost element and so much had happened and
#
I think from there on I started.
#
So then Pride and Prejudice happened.
#
And this time, I guess in the unabridged, right?
#
And for all its flaws, I love Pride and Prejudice, I love Dasi, so that was another thing.
#
And when college happened, I think around the same time, my exposure to Hollywood, so
#
to say, was with the bodyguard, Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston and I loved Kevin Costner.
#
Absolutely charmed by that man.
#
And from there on, again, it led to some more literature of a very different kind.
#
Then I started reading a book called The English Patient, which I loved to date.
#
And that time, Booker, I think I came to know of the Booker because Arundhati Roy won it
#
in 1997, when I was 14.
#
And English Patient won it the year before, I remember.
#
And that's how I got to know of the existence of The English Patient.
#
And then I watched the movie.
#
I insisted that my mother take me to watch the film and I fell in love with the movie.
#
And it's one of those very interesting instances where the film is also remarkably good.
#
Which doesn't happen all the time.
#
And from there on, from the movie and from the book, I wanted to read Herodotus because
#
that book was mentioned so many times in the movie and the book, The English Patient, you
#
So I love book references in books.
#
I love that when there's a reading list that comes out of a book, when that happens, so
#
that you already have that reading list.
#
So when I read nonfiction, something I keep doing is I just go to the back very often.
#
I go to the footnotes or the endnotes very often.
#
So inevitably, if I read a good book, I'll end up reading five other books that I picked
#
up because of the endnotes.
#
Oh yeah, yeah, completely.
#
And when it's fiction, I love when a character is talking about a book, like I just finished
#
reading a book by Anne Patchett, the new one called The Dutch House, and in that she's
#
mentioning the Macioca Sisters by Tanezaki and I love that book.
#
So I'm like, I smile to myself and I'm like, hey, there's a camaraderie of sorts between
#
You shared that secret book.
#
Yeah, you share that secret book or you know that, you know, she also loves it.
#
So I think that that is very, very uplifting in the world of books and reading.
#
And when you start doing, when you look out for these red herrings and you look out for
#
these clues, whether it's a sentence or a reference in a TV show, when people talk about
#
Like Lost, one of my favorite TV series had so many books mentioned in it.
#
So yeah, it just, it's just lovely to see that.
#
And your mother also read, you mentioned.
#
So you had books at home.
#
I had books at home and access to them.
#
And my parents, we had a membership library, family membership to British council.
#
So every weekend or every week after college, I would go to British library and borrow books.
#
There was I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which also had a BBC television series.
#
I think the I, Claudius BBC television series is pretty, I was reminded, oh yeah, yeah.
#
You know, his grandmother in that show, I don't know if you remember, she was so good
#
I don't remember at all.
#
But what a character and then what a book by Robert Graves.
#
I mean, to think that historical fiction was written way back and of course, in a very,
#
very, in fact, I never actually read that particular book.
#
I just saw the series, but you know, while we are on that and we mentioned English patient
#
to take a brief digression, what are the instances where you have loved both the book and the
#
That's a very difficult question.
#
Like my standard answer to that while you think about yours is James Joyce's The Dead,
#
which was made into a film by John Huston.
#
I've not, I've not watched the film, I should.
#
It's a lovely film and remarkably, it's not on your Netflix prime and all that.
#
The full thing is on YouTube.
#
In a slightly bad print as they would say.
#
I'll watch it for sure.
#
Back in the old days and I put up a tweet thread on it as well at one point from the
#
show notes and that was memorably lovely, especially because like there is one scene
#
in it, which I love where you've read the story, right?
#
So there's one scene where they're leaving the party and the male protagonist is at the
#
bottom of the stairs and his wife is coming down and at one point someone starts singing
#
the song called The Last of Ogrim and you cut into her face and she has just stopped
#
and he is staring at her riveted and she is lost in another world and you see that sadness
#
and longing in her face and she's looking down and Angelica Huston just acts beautifully
#
there and the inside story of that also of that particular scene is that this film was
#
John Huston's last film, her father, Angelica's father.
#
He died before the film was released, but after it was made.
#
So when she looked down from the stairs, she saw him on a wheelchair with oxygen pipes
#
Oh, that's why the sadness.
#
And that's where the sadness came from.
#
And it's a mind blowing scene.
#
And of course the scene itself alone is on YouTube, but that's one book film combination.
#
But I must tell you, sorry to interrupt, but there's this one other story to The Last of
#
Ogrim is that James and his wife, Nora, used to share this song and they loved this song
#
and it was part of their song, right from their marriage till their death, one of the
#
deaths or so yeah, that's the story to that.
#
I mean, there's a movie called Nora, which is based on, which has a beautiful scene where
#
Susan Lynch is singing this song with Ivan McGregor, which is beautiful.
#
I mean, and that also, I saw the courtesy British library and the interesting thing
#
is that that incident, the Michael Fury incident was inspired by something which actually happened
#
There was a Michael Fury in it.
#
Which I hadn't known till recently.
#
There's a biography of Nora Joyce by a lady called Brenda Wex or something, but what a
#
You must pick it up if you ever get a chance, sorry, books to movies.
#
You were saying, I'm done.
#
I wanted to just jog here.
#
I love Gone with the Wind, I think.
#
Like I said, people may find it problematic today, but going by the time it was made and
#
how it was made, I absolutely loved it, though at that time also it was problematic in the
#
sense that Clark, there was another actor supposed to play the role of Red Butler, but
#
was replaced because he was known to be a homosexual.
#
I can't remember the name of the actor and the director just didn't want that.
#
I can't remember, but there's a story, you can, you can Google it and how they then got
#
Clark Gable to play Red Butler, which was really sad.
#
Clark Gable benefiting from the homophobia of others.
#
Yeah, there you go, of Hollywood.
#
I love The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain and I love the movie also only because
#
I absolutely find him so stunningly hot.
#
I was like, I was just glued to Turner Classic movies at one time in my life.
#
I mentioned the book as well.
#
And Cat on a Hotten Roof with Paul Newman looking the way he did and the play by Tennessee
#
Williams, which I again love because Tennessee Williams with his latent homosexuality in
#
all his plays does a wonderful job of projecting that into either his women or his men, but
#
His angst and everything comes out through the women characters, which I think is a brilliant
#
job that he did as a playwright.
#
I read him when I was a teenager, like decades ago, so I've probably got to reread him in
#
I mean, another great translation of story to film I thought was Brokeback Mountain.
#
The story, of course, came out in I think 98 or 99 in New York.
#
Annie Prew, I don't remember.
#
Yeah, but what a story.
#
And have you seen that film called In the Bedroom?
#
Okay, In the Bedroom is based on a short story by Andre Dubu.
#
I think that's how you pronounce it.
#
Dubu is just a glorious, brilliant short story writer.
#
And the story was called something else.
#
I think it came in either New York or Paris Review or one of these.
#
And the story basically is about these parents whose son is killed by someone and then they
#
Son is killed in the sense maybe it's an accident.
#
I don't even remember now, but it's a very nice story and it's a beautiful film, classic
#
film, one of my favorites, but they're very different from each other, which is also sort
#
of very interesting on how you take a story which is much more compressed and then you
#
just build this dramatic thing out of it.
#
Which is great because I love him as a short story writer and I wish there were more movies
#
In India, I've seen so many.
#
I love Gumna based on And Then There Were None.
#
Because it's so bad, it's so hammy that I love it like for the longest time when I got
#
my tribe of gay men as friends and all of that, we would play the song that Helen dances
#
to in that movie Kitty Kelly on the beach and we would dance to it as well at a friend's
#
house because it was so funny, the song and the way it was done.
#
And then we used to copy steps of the song and it was sort of very interesting.
#
So I think Indian literature has a lot.
#
I mean, I love Devdas for all its, again, such a badly made movie by Bansali.
#
It's a horrendously bad film.
#
I don't know why, because of Madhuri and Aishwarya, I guess, but I love some, I love their interaction
#
I don't like the book at all, but yeah.
#
This is a completely by the way diversion, but my father once used to be director of
#
the film and television institute of India in the late eighties and he expelled Sanjay
#
Not for the right reasons.
#
Not for, it was, I think more to do with misbehavior, but I would have expelled him for aesthetic
#
You know, there's this one movie that I don't know if you watched it called Maya Mem Saab
#
Madhambovari by Flaubert.
#
I really enjoyed the film.
#
I love the book, but I enjoyed the film because I thought Deepa Sai did such a good job and
#
it was a Doordarshan film.
#
So that I really liked and a lot of movies that time on Doordarshan that were made were
#
from books like the, like party, right?
#
I think he wrote the play and Govind Nailani made the film.
#
Govind Nailani made the film.
#
By the way, I don't think I've told you this, but since you had mentioned before we recorded
#
that you had liked the book I released 10 years ago.
#
That was almost made into a film by Govind Nailani.
#
In the sense he got in touch with me and he said, I'd like to make the film.
#
And I even worked on a script treatment for him, but he could never raise funding for
#
At which point he said that, nahi theek hai Marathi mein banate hai, Marathi film industry
#
is like Hindi film industry was in the early eighties and he still couldn't get funding.
#
And I was kind of flabbergasted that a guy of his stature who's made the kind of movies
#
he has is not being able to get funding.
#
Maybe you want to pitch it to Netflix.
#
No, I don't want to pitch it at all.
#
It was a terrible book.
#
Now you're just fishing.
#
And I have an interesting Mayam Emsaab story also.
#
So I was a hostelite in Ferguson College, Pune when Mayam Emsaab was released.
#
And if any of my hostel mates are listening to this, after all these years, I apologize
#
So what I did was I went and watched the first day for sure.
#
And then I went back to the hostel and I gathered everyone around and I described in detail
#
a number of lurid scenes which were not in the film.
#
So then all of them go to watch first day, third show and then they come back out saying
#
Amit, yarr, those sensors ne kaad diya, yarr, third show ke li kaad diya.
#
No, so I got to watch the uncensored version through a library VHS tape.
#
And even then, I mean, Shah Rukh did nothing for me, but I just liked the way the movie
#
was except for the horrendous Raj Babbar in it.
#
I was like, why is he there in the film?
#
But yeah, it was a good movie.
#
I kind of felt it was a little bit of a sort of random movie.
#
Yeah, I mean, very, very self-indulgent, no doubt.
#
Let us now take a poem break.
#
I think both of us have got about three, four poems that we are happy to talk about and
#
So this is one of my favorite poems and one of my favorite people, Eunice, Eunice D'Souza.
#
The poem is advice to women.
#
And very strangely, this always reminds me of 36 Chorangilain, which I love.
#
And I wish somebody would write a book out of that movie.
#
That's a movie that I want to read.
#
One of my all time favorite films.
#
So I think that's also got to do with the idea of gay man, aging, old, alone, which
#
We'll talk about that some other time.
#
But here's a poem called advice to women.
#
Keep cats if you want to learn to cope with the otherness of lovers.
#
Otherness is not always neglect.
#
Cats return to their litter trays when they need to.
#
Don't cuss out of the window at their enemies.
#
That stare of perpetual surprise and those great green eyes will teach you to die alone.
#
And, and I love all of stuff and it's, it's very interesting.
#
I mean, how do you feel about this that, you know, I feel very awkward reading poetry aloud
#
or listening to spoken poetry in fact, because, you know, it seems to me that I read it one
#
way in a page and then when you hear it, it's a completely different beast.
#
Even though the sound matters so much, but so, you know, these poetry readings just seem
#
to me like, I think they are very pretentious.
#
And there are a lot of them today, spoken word performances and all, which is see, I'm
#
not taking away from the beauty of the poem, but just by being read aloud, I don't know.
#
I think the entire drama and performance attached to it.
#
So that's something that maybe I don't know how I'll react to in person when this happens.
#
So I don't attend them anyway, but it's fun to know that there are voices.
#
It's good to know that there are so many voices that are emerging or emerge because of this
#
And as a sort of a book critic, do you also find expectations of what a critic must do,
#
especially from the more academic sorts, that a critics have to have a particular way of
#
But you write about books.
#
I write about books, but I don't care what people have to say because people say a lot
#
of things of how things should be written about or viewed or said or listened to.
#
I mean, you can't make them all happy, right?
#
Let me read out something.
#
Have you read Mark Strand?
#
You had mentioned it online, I remember on Twitter, and I replied to you as well, saying
#
how much I love Mark Strand.
#
In particular, I like his later work.
#
His last book of poems before he died was called Almost Invisible.
#
And it's a book of prose poems.
#
So if someone who is not into that stuff looks at it, they'll just see one paragraph and
#
they'll say, how is this poem?
#
And even I can't really answer that question.
#
You know, Anne Carson does a beautiful job of prose poetry.
#
A lot of people do that, prose poetry.
#
Mark Strand's book is pretty spectacular.
#
So the first poem I'll read out is actually a prose poem.
#
It's called You Can Always Get There From Here.
#
And in a sense, you know, this poem before I read it out, in a sense, this is a little
#
poignant because it feels to me that this might be a direction in which we might be
#
going in India, you know, the overall sense of it, but maybe that's just my take.
#
You Can Always Get There From Here by Mark Strand.
#
A traveler returned to the country from where he had started many years before.
#
When he stepped from the boat, he noticed how different everything was.
#
There were once many buildings, but now there were few and each of them needed repair.
#
In the park where he played as a child, dust-filled shafts of sunlight struck the tawny leaves
#
of trees and withered hedges.
#
Suddenly trash bags littered the grass.
#
He sat on one of the benches and explained to the woman next to him that he'd been away
#
a long time, then asked her what season had he come back to.
#
She replied that it was the only one left, the one they had all agreed on.
#
And in this poem, I don't mean literally that India is going to sort of look like what the
#
Soviet dystopian thing.
#
The imagery is so powerful when you're talking about the sunlight or talking about the leaves
#
and the hedges and you're talking about how he steps out of that.
#
And I don't mean this literal sense of decay or everything looks the same or whatever,
#
but just the sense that this is a season that everyone has agreed upon and you kind of,
#
you know, the season of loss.
#
I think he might well have had the Soviet Union in mind, for example, when he wrote
#
this, which was pretty much where it was.
#
You had a totalitarian regime insisting on its own vision of the world.
#
We are not very far from it.
#
But that's, well, I mean, scary, but yeah, well, that's, that's kind of, so, so do you
#
have like a snobbery from book people that, you know, why do you like this?
#
And, you know, are there writers who are supposed to be cool to read and not so cool to read?
#
Like you mentioned earlier in the episode that you had liked Shobhade's sisters.
#
But that of course was when you were first given it and that's not necessarily what you
#
Is there somehow that, I mean, you know, I, for example, I discovered Haruki Murakami
#
in the late nineties, I think when I read him in Playboy, of all things, I read Playboy
#
There were some fantastic stories right there.
#
And I was a fan of Murakami from then and it was kind of disconcerting that about a decade
#
or a decade and a half ago, it suddenly became cool to like Murakami when the rest of the
#
And, and now to hate it.
#
Like I discovered him in 2001 with Sputnik Sweetheart.
#
And that was the time I lost my father.
#
So that book has always been very special.
#
You know, it's somehow, it's not the loss of father, of my dad that would make me stop
#
In fact, I read it every year.
#
I love that book so much.
#
There's something maybe because it speaks of loss and it speaks of, again, love not
#
So I think it just connected at a very, at a very deeper level.
#
And I get what you mean about authors being dissed and being loved later.
#
And then you're like, I have been reading him, you've discovered him right now, so you
#
shut up kind of a thing, but that kind of book snobbery is there in my head.
#
I don't say it out loud, but now I have said it out loud.
#
So sometimes it's there.
#
I'm like, why can't you get what the author is trying to tell you?
#
But then I also see that there are different things that people take from the same book.
#
And then also you see people making that effort because it's cool to like Murakami, you buy
#
Murakami and you read him and you're making the effort to like Murakami to be cool rather
#
than just take joy in the book itself as the case maybe.
#
I mean, the short story of his I read in fact was one called The Second Bakery Attack.
#
Yes, it was in The Elephant Vanishes.
#
It was in The Elephant Vanishes.
#
Yes, it had come, the second or third story in The Elephant Vanishes.
#
For me, Murakami, one of my favorite Murakami stories is in After the Quake.
#
I don't know if you've read it.
#
I've read it, but I may not remember.
#
There's a last story called, I can't remember what it's called, Honey something, Honey Bun
#
or something to that effect about a girl and her single mother and a friend who loves the
#
girl's mother and how they make this strange family unit beautifully written.
#
One of his more life-affirming stories and not so pessimistic, but a great one.
#
I've got to kind of revisit that.
#
Speaking of stories for a moment, like another writer I've loved for many, many years and
#
we've actually discussed her.
#
So I know you love her also, Alice Munro.
#
And she suddenly became very cool for the Hyperloid who said they've read her when she
#
won the Nobel Prize and all that, but like just such an amazing.
#
I think she can never write a bad sentence.
#
Like anything, anything that we've read of hers, I think she's just brilliant.
#
And what strikes me about Alice Munro is that she does with a short story I haven't seen
#
anyone else do to this extent in the sense that in a very short space, she will compress
#
such a deep, lovely, novelistic world almost.
#
It's like she doesn't need to write novels because she can say it all in a short story
#
and the one, my favorite short story of hers is called The Bear Came Over The Mount.
#
But Alzheimer's, you're correct.
#
I, but what a beautiful, beautiful story.
#
You know, talking about that, the movie is also really very good.
#
Based on the short story.
#
I saw the movie far from her or something like that, but away from her, far from her.
#
And I found it may perhaps compare to the story because I'm just such a fan of the story.
#
We will link the story from the show notes, kindly read her.
#
I mean, Monroe is someone who's so close to my heart because again, I think, I think when,
#
when authors and books come to you at a time when you need them the most, I think they
#
just change the way you are as a person.
#
Was that the case with Monroe?
#
She just landed in my lap, just like that, like literally, I just went to Lotus bookstore
#
and I love Joyce Carol Oates and, and I was like, okay, time to read something different.
#
And I just chanced upon this book called hate ship, friendship, love ship, courtship marriage
#
and I was like, okay, let's just pick this up.
#
And I never looked back since then.
#
I just have to read her.
#
And even though you've read her, you want to go back to her and read her again.
#
And often just from the point of view as a writer, like I have gone to her stories, trying
#
to figure out the craft, like how the hell does she do this to keep a story moving so
#
fluidly and yet pack in so much and pack in a whole universe into a story.
#
And so many emotions, she'll ring them all out of you.
#
Like when she writes a sentence, it's that the central just keep playing in your head
#
And if some of you are aspiring writers, it might be interesting to note that her writing
#
really happened very late.
#
She really blossomed in her fifties and sixties and her best work is like now in her old age.
#
I think in the last 20 years, she's just kind of been knocking it out of the park one story
#
There's this other writer who I absolutely adore, this Australian writer called Christina
#
Okay, I never read her.
#
There's this book called the man who loved children about how a father, you know, treats
#
his children really badly and not, not abuse in the sense, but about the family unit and
#
It's a brilliant book, a Franzen recommends it a lot.
#
And that's how I got to know of it.
#
And that's when I read it way back in 2009 when I think freedom came out, 2009, 2010
#
and Oprah selected freedom for her book club.
#
And then I read freedom and it already had corrections, but I love freedom more.
#
And then he spoke about Christina Stead and that's how I got to know of her.
#
And it kind of brings on a lament about how my reading habit fell a little bit through
#
Like I read corrections and absolutely loved it.
#
And I haven't read freedom.
#
And it's a rock and roll.
#
And it's got music and of course he loves birds.
#
So there's a lot of bird watching and there's again about a dysfunctional family.
#
And I don't think anybody else has dysfunctional family better than Franzen does it.
#
So the great American writers are very good at dysfunctional family.
#
Like Abdike is all dysfunctional.
#
Which he had a very short span.
#
Cheever does a brilliant job.
#
In the short stories again, does a brilliant job of the dysfunctionality.
#
Ford also does a very good job.
#
It's right up the American.
#
I've even seen a lot of Bengali writers who do that really well.
#
I know Asha Poornadevi who I love as a short story writer.
#
I was just thinking about her when you mentioned Mandro because she is brilliant.
#
I wish more of her works.
#
You know she was the one who wrote her novels and stories without stepping foot out of
#
And she was this Bengali lady, very unassuming.
#
And she wrote about close to 3,000 short stories.
#
And some of it has been translated, very few.
#
But I keep telling Arunava on Twitter, Arunava Sinha that you know please translate to more
#
of her because we need to read more of her.
#
And he's an outstanding translator and he also translates very prolifically.
#
You must read Asha Poornadevi.
#
In fact, speaking of book to film, another one which struck my mind when you said Bengali
#
was Days and Nights and Aarane Dein Ratri.
#
I just finished rereading it last night.
#
And Robi and all these characters are still so fresh in my mind.
#
Absolutely loved the movie.
#
And I guess if you want any filmmaker to make a film of your book and therefore to be part
#
of this list, it's obviously Shottu Jitra.
#
Like I can't think of anyone else.
#
But I loved how Choker Bali was done by Ritu Parna Ghosh as well.
#
Oh, I haven't seen that.
#
I loved the treatment of the film and how he got the essence of the book, baton.
#
Another movie I would love to be read as a book is Doshar.
#
I don't know if you watched it.
#
Kunkana, Sen Sharma and Prasanjit is there.
#
That's something to record for.
#
Let's have your next poem.
#
Since we are talking about Sputnik Jitra, should I give you a quote from that?
#
And it came to me then that we were wonderful traveling companions, but in the end no more
#
than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits.
#
From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they are nothing more
#
than prisons where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere.
#
When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happen to cross paths, we could be together,
#
maybe even open our hearts to each other, but that was only for the briefest moment.
#
In the next instant, we'd be in absolute solitude until we burned up and became nothing.
#
I think he just hits a spot, and I don't expect him to in any of his books, he just come out
#
of the pages and grabs you, and you're like, okay, I have to pay attention to what he's
#
Which books do you wish were made into movies?
#
No, those I don't wish, like I'm very skeptical, I love 100 years of solitude.
#
For example, it was very hard to make something like that.
#
Yeah, but they are, right?
#
They are making a series, I just hope somebody has understood the book to be able to make
#
it into a series, and A Suitable Boy, which I never wanted them to make into a series,
#
but they are, so that's something that I don't want.
#
I wish they would leave some books alone.
#
Well, you're not forced to watch it, and you never know, sometimes they can surprise you
#
in a good way, like with The Dead, I mean, who would have thought it to make the kind
#
But like, you know, Bel Canto they made by Anne Patchett, starring Julianne Moore, and
#
I haven't watched the movie because I'm scared.
#
I love the book way too much.
#
The fear of the cinema hall.
#
Yeah, like I watched Midnight's Children, I wanted to puke into a bucket.
#
It disappointed me so much.
#
And no, I'm not saying that for the director or the way it is, but it's a big book.
#
You cannot compress it into two and a half hours of movie.
#
You have to tell it the way the author meant it to be written and to be interpreted.
#
If you think about it, even with the English patient, the film made that cinematic choice
#
of focusing on sort of one particular strand of the book, like the Indian characters, for
#
example, very major in the book, but not in the movie.
#
You know, one book to movie which I absolutely love is The Namesake.
#
I absolutely love Jhumpa Leary's adaptation, as in Miranaaya's adaptation of Jhumpa Leary's
#
book, which is stunning.
#
I mean, Tabu and Irfan Khan, and everybody's acted so well.
#
So yeah, that's again one of my favorites.
#
Great writer, great director.
#
And in fact, a writer I discovered, so Jhumpa Leary was on this podcast called Conversations
#
with Tyler, with Tyler Carvin.
#
And in that she mentioned, she was going through this phase where she was learning a new language
#
and writing in it, in her case, Italian.
#
And she spoke about another author called Agata Christoff.
#
At first, I thought it's a typo of Agata Christoff, for a moment.
#
So she spoke about an author called Agata Christoff, who basically, I think, moved during
#
the war to France, if I'm not mistaken, learned a new language and then wrote books in that
#
In her new language, which she learned in her adult life, it's a trilogy, I forget what
#
it's called, but it's magnificent, very sort of bare, sparse, minimal language.
#
I think The Notebook is the first book.
#
The Notebook is the first one.
#
I remember this one now.
#
And I recommend everyone.
#
I mean, I have the omnibus copy with all three books.
#
I think Strand used to sell this one a lot.
#
Oh, I got mine from Amazon.
#
Yeah, they used to sell a lot.
#
Mr. Shanbhag knew what he was doing after all.
#
He knew it right down to the pad.
#
And speaking of a bare, sparse language, do you sort of have specific literary tastes
#
which stop you from enjoying certain writers?
#
For example, in my case, I simply don't like the sort of flamboyant, over-stylized kind
#
of writing that say Rushdie and Arundhati Roy do.
#
So I'm much more a kind of person who'll read Vikram Seth or Amitav Ghosh or all the Japanese
#
writers because it might be some intrinsic quality in their language which lends itself
#
to simplicity and minimalism.
#
But the more flamboyant a writer gets, the harder...
#
Even if I can appreciate some of the flamboyance, and interestingly, Rushdie's flamboyance
#
is only there in his fiction and I find his non-fiction much more readable.
#
His non-fiction, in fact, is very interesting.
#
But I think for me, nothing of that sort, really.
#
But I think some writers, I just don't veer towards, like I'll never thrillers, I can't
#
Just the way it's written.
#
I have to wait till the end to figure things out.
#
But I just can't read a thriller, no matter how hard I try.
#
Horror for the longest time I couldn't.
#
But King makes it palpable, so I'll read it.
#
But otherwise, I won't read horror at all.
#
Do you read any science fiction?
#
Um, yeah, I mean, no, not really.
#
Science fiction cloaked as fantasy, yeah, sure, I'll read, I love that.
#
But not science fiction, like I can't read Asimov.
#
But I love Philip K. Dick.
#
I don't know why, but yeah, I can't answer that.
#
But I love Philip K. Dick.
#
If you read some of the newer guys, aren't even, I mean, it's hard to even call them
#
science fiction because they're not like how you imagine cliched, hard science fiction
#
People like Ken Liu, have you read it?
#
Yeah, Ken Liu I like a lot.
#
I love that collection of short stories.
#
Or that Three Body Problem writer.
#
Cicin Liu, I don't know how to pronounce it.
#
I've read two books, I have to read the third one.
#
Jemisin, who I absolutely adore.
#
Yeah, Ted Chiang, N.K. Jemisin.
#
He has come up with a new collection, Exhalation.
#
Which I've got, but I haven't started reading it yet.
#
Actually, wait, I've read, I think the title story from it, which is very interesting.
#
And the good thing about a lot of these so-called science fiction writers and even a lot of the
#
so-called science fiction films that come is that this quote unquote genre is going
#
to places which other literature doesn't seem to be rushing into so eagerly and asking these
#
big existential questions.
#
You know, like even with say a film like Blade Runner, you know, the new Blade Runner.
#
Even Minority Report for that matter.
#
Even Minority Report or, you know, there's a film called Dars Machina.
#
Yeah, I've heard of it, but I haven't watched it.
#
It's made by Alex Garland.
#
The guy who wrote The Beach.
#
The guy who wrote The Beach and Tesseract, which I like more than The Beach.
#
Yes, Tesseract is a better novel than The Beach.
#
Definitely a better novel.
#
So it's a very interesting film.
#
So like Dars Machina will, for example, go into areas like, you know, how the moral value
#
you attach to AI, should you kill an artificial being and so on.
#
Blade Runner looked at things like how identity is constructed or the fallibility of memory.
#
And all of these really big questions are questions that I think science fiction is
#
ideally placed to answer because it can take those sort of that one further step that you
#
Like Ursula K. Le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness about gender and about identity and
#
So sometimes, like I'm not a hard science fiction reader in that sense.
#
I'm probably very ignorant about most of science fiction, but I do find that it's really unfair
#
to sort of knock something as, oh, yeh toh genre hai, like this is sci-fi or this is
#
crime industry or this is whatever.
#
When you are asking the big questions and you're doing everything literally, that I
#
But other than that, I don't think I can read a thriller at least.
#
I read it when I had to read Puzo and Sidney Sheldon, which I love.
#
And for the longest time, I thought it was a woman.
#
And then I figured, no, it's a man.
#
Did your uncle pass on his love of Alastair McLean to you?
#
All those guns and weapons and wards, I just cannot.
#
I find it extremely boring.
#
Right now, I'll read out a poem now because we have to get to your next poem.
#
Before that, we'll have to, okay.
#
This is by a poet called C.P.
#
I mean, of course you've read it.
#
This particular poem is translated by Edmund Keeley.
#
And it's called The City.
#
And much of the first para is actually a quote, so I'll say stop quote at the end of it, as
#
But that doesn't mean I have stopped.
#
It means a poem has moved on from the quote to the normal thing.
#
The City by Constantine Cavafy.
#
You said, quote, I'll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better
#
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong.
#
And my heart lies buried like something dead.
#
How long can I let my mind molder in this place?
#
Wherever I turn, wherever I look, I see the black ruins of my life, here, where I've spent
#
so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.
#
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
#
The city will always pursue you.
#
You'll walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these
#
You'll always end up in the city.
#
Don't hope for things elsewhere.
#
There's no ship for you.
#
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner, you've destroyed it everywhere
#
It's just something else.
#
It reminds me of Ishiguro for some strange reason.
#
This poem took me to Ishiguro immediately and never let me go.
#
I think something is just, and we have to go and reread.
#
It's interesting, you were mentioning how you would go to British Council every weekend.
#
I discovered Ishiguro in these summers in the early 90s when I was in the hostel in
#
Ferguson College, Pune, and I'd walk over for the air conditioning to the British Council
#
So I read his early books, The Remains of the Day, A Pale View of Hills.
#
I discovered Atwood also in the British library.
#
Otherwise, I didn't know of her.
#
I mean, you don't know of anyone till you know of them.
#
I just, you know, there's this other quote, I'm sorry, I'm quoting, it's called Mother
#
of Pearl by Melinda Haynes, which is about a black man falling in love or taking care
#
of a 16, 17 year old white trash girl, so to say, as it happens in the book, and how the
#
delicate tender relationship they share.
#
So there's a quote from the book that just stands out completely.
#
And I love it because it's so relevant to the book that I've written.
#
And so I want to go ahead, please.
#
So going by what you do, start quote, or just quote and start quote, not start quote.
#
Sometimes partial kindness kills a person as bad as partial knowing.
#
Judy said this while she hugged the dress.
#
But then sometimes partial kindness and partial knowing is the two best things in the world.
#
So given that my book is about kindness in a way and knowing in a way.
#
How do you feel about your book now that it's kind of like you've been a reader throughout
#
and now this is actually your own book.
#
I felt I want to disassociate myself from the book only because I feel I'm not on justice
#
And then when people quote to me from my book or they tweeted me with lines from the book,
#
I am hereby going to make you feel awkward.
#
I'm going to interrupt you and I'm going to read out this very nice sentence from page
#
three, that early the good writing starts, quote, and she was like how the matriarch
#
of a good South Bombay household should be honorable and relentless in putting others
#
down even if it was her own family.
#
That's a very nice sentence.
#
Matriarch actually came to mind when I was writing, but she was like that.
#
From what I've also heard, my grandmother was extremely stern and staunch.
#
I think people also to go in a different trajectory, when they came from Pakistan to India, I think
#
they became hard in the process.
#
They lost their softness, they lost their innocence.
#
And she was married off really early to my grandfather as young as she was 11.
#
And when you are young and you experience such pain in leaving home and leaving family,
#
I think it just hardens you to a very large extent.
#
Then for you to show what you really feel and express yourself so difficult.
#
And now I understand this, of course, about a lot of people, which earlier I wouldn't.
#
But back to this, I find it very awkward now that the book is out, honestly, because I
#
don't know how to deal with it.
#
I don't know what to do with it.
#
And then I'm like, just like either I soak in what it has to offer or just reject it like
#
a stepchild and not look at it ever again.
#
Didn't that happen to you when your book came out?
#
I think it, as I think I've told you, I wish it had never come out.
#
No, I mean, I think I let myself down.
#
Because you read so much, I also feel that you want to, like, I want one perfect sentence.
#
I can't find a single perfect sentence in my book.
#
No, I just want to be like, when you read Mandro and then you read Atwood, you read
#
Murakami, you read people from other languages writing so beautifully, like Marquez or Isabel
#
Ayande and all those people.
#
And you're like, wow, what writing.
#
Who are the Indian writers you like?
#
I love, I absolutely admire Shanta Gokhale.
#
I love Shashi Deshpande.
#
I love Ghosh, earlier work.
#
I absolutely adore Vikram Seth.
#
Eunice, a big, big, big influence in my life through her writing and through the way she
#
Just, just absolutely brilliant woman.
#
Who, Indian, who else do I love?
#
I love Niranjana Roy's writing when I read how she talks about cats and the love that
#
she projects into her books about them.
#
It just makes my heart sing.
#
I absolutely love her writing.
#
Very good friend of mine.
#
And she's just finished her new book.
#
But it's not about cats.
#
But still I can't wait for it.
#
It's about crime in Haryana.
#
I, I like Annie Zehdi's work, I find it's like deceptively simple.
#
Her new novel just arrived.
#
So I also like Anita Nair.
#
Something magical about her writing, but, but yeah, I look at it from a distance and
#
And given that you're in Bombay and I presume that you also do the lit festival circuit
#
a little bit, you must be meeting writers that you've read and then you meet them and
#
how is that experience?
#
Is it like, does it change the way you look at it?
#
You know, I had met on Rajje in Jaipur and like a fool, I told him to sign on a page
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of the English patient that I loved so much.
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That one line that if I give my heart to you, will you break it or something to that effect?
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If I give you my heart, I hope you get what I'm saying.
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Because he's like, Oh, I don't want to sign in the middle of a book.
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And I made him and he gave me the dirty look.
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And then right after he signed, he didn't sign for me, he didn't say for Vivek.
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He just said, whatever scribbled something, his initials or whatever in a very dramatic
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I just, I just gave the book to somebody else and I walked out from there in front of him.
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But I didn't expect that from him.
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I love the guy and I still will always love what he writes and I will pick up what he
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That's churlish of him.
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But I didn't like the way he behaved.
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So I think never meet your heroes.
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Never meet your heroes.
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You've met Alice Monroe, you once told me.
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It was in Canada and I had gone there for something else and I just happened to be in
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the bookshop where she was reading.
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I'm very rare that she does this, but I was just very honored to do that.
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I got my copy signed and she was very gracious about the meeting and it was something else
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You should have given her the English patient and asked her to sign on that line to see
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If she even liked the book, I know I loved it.
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I still like Andhraje a lot, his writing, but I don't think I want to meet him.
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We all have feet of clay and it's very scary.
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So I don't want to, yeah, but I still want to idolize them and that I'll never stop
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Your turn to read a poem.
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And last I have with me, it's called Possibilities by this writer called, I don't know how to
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pronounce her name, Vistlava Simborska, I don't know how to pronounce the name either.
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It's called Possibilities.
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I'll be very quick with it.
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I prefer the oaks along the water.
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I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
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I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind.
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I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand just in case.
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I prefer the color green.
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I prefer not to maintain the reason is to blame for everything.
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I prefer to leave early.
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I prefer the old fine lined illustrations.
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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I prefer where love's concerned, non-specific anniversaries that can be celebrated every
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I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
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I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
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I prefer having some reservations.
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I prefer grim fairy tales to the newspaper's front pages.
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I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
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I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
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I prefer light eyes since mine are dark.
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I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here to many things I've also left unsaid.
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I prefer zeros on the loose to those lined up behind a cipher.
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I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
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I prefer to knock on wood.
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I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
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I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.
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And to think that she writes is in Polish.
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And the translation is wonderful.
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And translation is another fine art by itself because the languages are just so inherently
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And to find that word and that phrase that will connect with the reader.
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Or more so just the essence of something.
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And that's something I've often wondered about that languages have their own inherent qualities.
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For example like I mentioned earlier I think most Japanese writers I read tend to be quite
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minimal and sparse and perhaps that's a quality in the language.
#
But equally a lot of the Urdu shairi I love is so overflown and you know expressionistic.
#
And the thing is if you translate them literally they read like shit.
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In English they're like shit because we are attaching a different set not a better set
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but a different set of values to it.
#
I never want fares to be translated in English ever.
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Yeah because it'll be like what just kind of.
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I'll never read them in English and never think of it in English or Mir or anyone for
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Amrita Pritam never can never from Punjabi to English it just wouldn't make sense.
#
And somebody tried to translate me tenu phir milangi it was a disaster.
#
I was like don't don't even bother.
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I shall meet you again.
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That was basically Schwarzenegger saying me tenu phir milangi.
#
Now that there's a new Terminator movie.
#
The Punjabi dub version should kindly have these yeah very true.
#
I think we've reached the two hour mark so I'll finish off a poem and then we'll have
#
This one is a traditional rhyming type poetry so if you guys are wondering what the hell
#
is happening here rhyme kyuni karda this one rhyme karda.
#
This is called a long distance to by Tony Harrison.
#
Have you know long distance to by Tony Harrison though my mother was already two years dead.
#
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas put hot water bottles aside of the bed and still
#
went to renew her transport pass.
#
You couldn't just drop in you had to phone.
#
He put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone as though
#
his still raw love was such a crime he couldn't risk my blight of disbelief though sure that
#
very soon he'd hear her key scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
#
He knew she just popped out to get the tea.
#
I believe life ends with death and that is all you haven't both gone shopping just same
#
in my new black leather phone book there's your name and the disconnected number I still
#
And if you see it on the page it's very interesting what he's done here if you see it on the page
#
though it's got four stanzas the first three have this rhyme scheme of a b a b and the
#
last one is a b b a and that actually makes a sort of difference in just the effect that
#
I don't know if you Brian Patton I know if you've heard of him.
#
Brian Patton was in charge of Hong Kong when they handed over.
#
Brian Patton writes poetry just like this it's just beautiful very very touching very
#
soft I find you know in poetry which is so strange I find I find male poets also to have
#
that sense of softness sometimes most of the time they are not harsh like when that happens
#
a lot I find that in prose when it comes to men who write I find I find that prose sometimes
#
very jarring very like Richard Ford I don't find them making a point softly like Murakami
#
will make a point softly.
#
So I think maybe because of the culture maybe I don't know it'll be very interesting to
#
find out why but have you read Mary Oliver's poetry yes and have you read this wonderful
#
book which I recommend all my listeners go out and just buy right now blindly just trust
#
me and buy it is called a poetry handbook.
#
Where she talks about I mean that got me to appreciate poetry so much more just in terms
#
of how poets do their thing and the style and the craft more than anything and even this
#
lady and Lamott if I'm not mistaken.
#
Isn't it the lady who wrote the book called One Bird at a Time.
#
That's also on the craft of writing.
#
Which is on the craft of writing which is a lovely story I mean the story that from
#
which the book gets its title is that when they were kids she and her little brother
#
they were with the family at a summer cabin and by the time the vacation got over the
#
kid had to do this sort of homework project where he had to I think describe birds or
#
paste pictures of birds on a scrapbook or whatever by the end of the holiday and they
#
had ample time to do it but like all of us who face deadlines and react to them the same
#
way as they go washing by he basically left it for the very last day and then the little
#
kid had a near panic attack on the last day because there were so many birds and her dad
#
told him just do it Bird by Bird.
#
And in that vein I hope that Bird by Bird you shall also get to your next book and to
#
Thank you so much for coming.
#
Thank you so much for inviting me.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode do hop over to your nearest bookstore online or
#
So now you know Growing Up Gay in India by Vivek Tejoja.
#
You can follow Vivek on Twitter at Vivekisms, V-I-V-E-K-I-S-M-S.
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You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
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The Seen and the Unseen is supported by the Takshashila Institution and Independent Center
#
for Research and Education and Public Policy.
#
You can browse all our past episodes at www.seenunseenradayen.com and www.ivmpodcast.com.
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Thank you for listening.
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We are from the Open Library Project and we host a podcast called Paperback.
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Paperback is a podcast where we engage with stalwarts and experts from various industries
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suggesting non-fiction titles that contributed to their journey in a big way.
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We've had guests like Anjali Rehna, Dr. Marcus Rani, Dr. Swati Lodha, Ambhi Parmeswaran,
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Apurva Damani and many more on our show Paperback.
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Find new episodes every Wednesday on IVM Podcast app, website or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Okay that was a crappy story but I've got some really cool stories over at my new show
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On this podcast I look at the stories of how brands came into being and sometimes evolved
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End of story they lived happily ever after.
