Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (22 page)

Up Close and Personal
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Morsy chronicles the historical refutation of the detached observer position in anthropological practice—

Affected by anti-imperialist struggles and changing global relations, the evolution of critical anthropological thought has challenged traditional disciplinary claims of objectivity and ethical neutrality. As Third World and radical critiques of anthropology exposed the discipline as a Western-dominated ‘child of imperialism’, anthropologists began considering not only the history of the ‘people without history’, but the history of anthropology itself. (Asad, 1973; Copans, 1975; Huizer and Mannheim, 1979; Leacock, 1982; Wolf, 1982). Calls for ‘reinventing anthropology’ (Hymes, 1974) followed critical assessments of the assumption of ‘objectivity in anthropology’. (Maquet, 1964)32

In contemporary ethnography, it is increasingly being understood that

‘because locations are multiple, conjunctural and crosscutting, there can be no guarantee of shared perspective, experiences, or solidarity….’33

(Clifford, 1997); and the ethnographer’s subjectivity is expected to be highlighted in his writing.

To acknowledge particular and personal locations is to admit the limit of one’s purview from these positions. It is also to undermine the notion of objectivity because from particular locations; all understanding becomes subjectively based and formed through interactions within fields of power relations. Positioned knowledges and partial perspectives are part of the lingo that has risen to common usage in the 1980s (Clifford, 1986, 1988; Haraway, 1988; Kondo, 1986; Rosaldo, 1989). (Narayan, 1993)34

This approach calls for the substitution of
unabashed subjectivity
in place of objectivity. ‘Knowledge, in this scheme, is not transcendental, but situated, negotiated and part of an ongoing process…. By situating ourselves as subjects simultaneously touched by life-experiences and swayed by professional concerns, we can acknowledge the hybrid

and positioned nature of our identities’35 (Narayan, 1993). It is wrong to assume that ‘an epistemology of “otherness”’ is ‘the best route to

“objectivity”… “objectivity” is not a function of “distance”…’36 (Passaro, 1997). In any case, distance is far too overrated—it can be replaced by making the ethnographer’s identity and location ‘more explicit’ and by giving informants ‘a greater role in texts’37 (Narayan, 1993). However, this does not mean doing away with distance completely—

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To question the discipline’s canonical; modes of objective distance is not however, to forfeit subjective distance and pretend that all fieldwork is a celebration of
communitas
. Given the multiplex nature of identity, there will inevitably be certain facets of self that join us up with the people we study, other facets that emphasize our difference. In even the closest of relationships, disjunctures can swell into distance; ruptures in communication can occur that must be bridged. To acknowledge such shifts in relationships rather than present them as purely distant or purely close is to enrich the textures of our texts so that they more closely approximate the complexity of lived interaction. (Narayan, 1993) 38

Instead of asking, ‘what fundamentally unites us or separates us?’, we should be more concerned with ‘what can we do for each other in the present conjuncture?’ (Clifford, 1997).

What from our similarities and differences can we bend together, hook up, articulate…. And when identification becomes too close, how can a disarticulation of agendas be managed in the context of alliance, without resorting to claims of objective distance and tactics of definitive departure?39

The ultimate aim should be—

To represent and understand the world around us more adequately, to see beyond the epistemologies of received categories of collective identity and the assumptions about anthropology and fieldwork that continue to reinscribe various ‘Others’ of internal and external colonialism and thus, participate in ethnographic practices of liberation. (Passaro, 1997)40

PRICKED BY A THORN

The author R. Raj Rao, is visiting Bombay from Pune where he lives and
teaches and he asks me to meet up with him at the infamous Voodoo club.

For six days a week, the place is a seedy pick-up place for the Arab tourists
that congregate in the area to pick up cheap hookers. But every Saturday
night, it undergoes a magical fabulous transformation as hordes of gay
men descend upon it and make it their own! Though it is located just off
the street where I live, I have only been there once, with Riyad, maybe
five years ago.

Up Close and Personal
129

I arrive late, a little before midnight, pay rupees 250 to the old Parsi
owner sitting at the counter (wasn’t it 150 the last time?) and swing open
the door. It is a lot smaller than I remember. I walk straight on to a packed
dance floor. There is a tiny DJ booth to the right, a basic bar to the left.

The walls are scribbled with neon graffiti; there are strange coloured shapes
spray painted on to the ceiling. Very 80s. There are a few tables arranged
towards the back of the club and a metal staircase that leads to a mezzanine
observation lounge, as well as passages that lead to a more private lounge in
the back of the club and to the toilets adjacent to this lounge. This is the
make out
lounge with soft sinkable sofas, slightly tattered and even lower lighting
than the rest of the club.

I climb up the metal staircase and position myself midway, leaning on the
railing, arms folded, just like I’d seen Riyad do the last time. (Maybe, he’s
watching me and smiling indulgently from somewhere way up there). From
my perch, I can scan the crowd, predator-like. I lean over and chat with Raj,
who is dancing on the floor with someone he has just met. I make polite
conversation with an older guy and discover to my surprise that he is the
uncle of A, former fuck buddy, brief crush and now soul brother. He is a
jet-setting global academic and this is his first time out to a gay place in
Bombay. I wish him all the best and continue sightseeing.

Tonight, I am horny and angry. B has just told me online that he has slept
with a girl back in Boston, I don’t know whether he is lying or not—but
I despise myself for being head over heels in love with a stupid 18 year-old
Venezuelan boy who has only just begun exploring his sexuality. I seek
revenge. Someone random, someone I will never meet again. I see a possible
candidate. A cute white guy, standing by himself in a corner of the club.

Hmm. Why not? He’s skinny and geeky; exactly my type. American? Perhaps
European or Israeli. I ponder about whether I should descend and make a
move, but before I can make a call, Charu (who I discover later is Nihar’s
ex-boyfriend and a complete slut) bags him—and within five minutes,
they’re the centre of attraction on the dance floor, groping each other all
over. Sheesh!

I look away disappointed. On the floor, there is an assortment of men of
all ages, sizes and shapes, merrily dancing away. This is not Gay Bombay
crowd—it’s more mixed—though I do see some familiar faces from the GB

parties. One of these is Kirit. He is about five and a half feet tall. Twentyish.

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Very thin with a smooth body exposed due to the fact that his T-shirt is raised
to his nipples, as his hips gyrate feverishly. He is surrounded by a pack of
hungry wolves, but his eyes are closed as he dances. It’s such joy—to see
such beauty, such grace, such unabashed pleasure with one’s own self. He
moves confidently, assuredly, slickly. I was such a dork at his age—pondering
over my sexuality, wasting all those years being scared.

With his eyes closed, Kirit looks a little bit like B and that does it for me.

I alight, cut through the crowd with practiced ease and whisper into his
ear while nuzzling his neck that he’s the sexiest person I’ve seen all week.

It’s a really lame line, but Kirit giggles and pulls me close to him. On the
floor, we fondle each others’ dicks and try to tongue each others’ mouths
out. Ten minutes later, we’re on the sofa, in the make out lounge, kissing
fervently. I pull him to me, but he wants to go back and dance to Kaanta
Lagaa (
Pricked by a Thorn
)—the hot new remix that the DJ has just begun
playing—understandably, a gay dance floor favourite. We can do it after
this song, he winks as he zips up and prances back on to the floor. I sit for
five minutes on the sofa by myself. What the fuck do I think I am doing?

And stupid, stupid boy. What kind of an idiot is he, wanting to ‘do it’ with
someone he’s just met in a club. Does he do this often? I want to go back to
the dance floor, slap him and educate him about safe sex and being careful.

But I slink away home quietly and jerk myself off to sleep.

WHEN FIELD = HOME

[There] are people who belong to more than one world, speak more than one language (literally and metaphorically), inhabit more than one identity, have more than one home; who have learned to negotiate and translate between cultures and who, because they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures, have learned to live with and indeed to speak from, difference. They speak from the ‘in-between’ of different cultures, always unsettling the assumptions of one culture from the perspective of another and thus finding ways of being both the same as and at the same time different from the others amongst whom they live.
(Stuart Hall, 1995)41

As discussed earlier, the ethnographer in the classic mould, was someone who travelled far away from his home country to an exotic place in order Up Close and Personal
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to study the culture of the natives residing in that place. This posed no problem in colonial settings, because the ‘natives were genuine natives (whether they liked it or not)’42 (Narayan, 1993). But with the growth in ethnography and the collapse of the subject/object division for the ethnographer, this concept of ethnography no longer prevails. The
natives
have begun to wield academic influence, read the ethnographies written about their lives and fashion their own versions. For them, what does it mean to go to the field, or to return home? Going
out
to the field now sometimes means going
back
; the ethnography becoming a ‘note-book of return to the native land’ (Clifford, 1997).43 However, besides a wide variety of nametags such as
native
,
insider
and
indigenous
, there is no real criteria for defining what this kind of research actually entails.

All these different sobriquets might be used to denote a commonality between the nationality of the researcher and the subjects of research, membership in a cultural community, or the sharing of language, religion, ethnicity or class (Altorki and El Solh, 1998).44

Over the next few paragraphs, I mull over some of the broad concerns regarding the practice of ethnography in one’s own society (however, one may choose to define this
own
). In subsequent parts of this chapter, I will address specific instances of the challenges that I encounter in my fieldwork and how I respond to them.

To begin with, is it right for a researcher to exploit his background as a valid point of entry in his field of study? Gupta and Fergusson (1997) certainly think so and they contend that growing up in a culture could and in fact, should be considered as a ‘heterodox form of fieldwork…

an extended participant observation’.45 Being an insider certainly has advantages. Such a researcher ‘knows the language, has grown up in the culture and has little difficulty in becoming involved with the people’

(Jones, 1970).46

The indigenous field worker has the undisputable advantage of being able to attach meanings to patterns that he or she uncovers much faster than the non-indigenous researcher who is unfamiliar with the culture of the wider society. Being part of the same cognitive world implies that the subject and object share a similar body of knowledge
…
. Being indigenous also implies the advantage of being able to understand a social reality on the basis of minimal clues; that is, the meanings of cultural patterns
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are more readily understood
…
. Indigenous researchers
…
are believed to be able to avoid the problem of culture shock
…
. They are expected to be less likely to experience ‘culture fatigue’, namely the strain of being a stranger in an unfamiliar cultural setting and the demands this places on their role as researcher. (Altorki and El Solh, 1998) 47

On the flip side, there are also disadvantages to being an insider. One of these is that ‘information may be withheld when it relates to behaviour that must be concealed from public knowledge. If one is outside the system, one’s awareness of goings-on may not be problematic. But as a participant, the researcher constitutes a threat of exposure and judgment’48

(Altorki, 1998). Therefore, one should be cautious not to excessively privilege the inside position over that of an outside researcher.

One vantage point cannot be said to be better than the other. There are logical dangers inherent in both approaches. The outsider may enter a social situation, armed with a battery of assumptions, which he does not question and which guide him to certain types of conclusions; and the insider may depend too much on his own background, his sentiments, his desires for what is good for his people. The insider, therefore, may distort the ‘truth’ as much as the outsider…

It is undoubtedly true that an insider may have easier access to certain types of information as compared to an outsider. But it is consistent to assume, also, that the outsider may have certain advantages in certain situations
…
. The crucial point is that insiders and outsiders may be able to collect different data; they also have different points of view, which may lead to different interpretations of the same set of data. (Jones, 1970) 49