Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (49 page)

Other respondents were avoiding marriage and devising means to

negotiate what was best for them. For some of these individuals, this meant coming out, for others it meant discreetly fighting for what they felt was important and making creative compromises to attain their goals. But for all respondents, there was a constant reflexivity—an acute consciousness of their thoughts and actions vis-à-vis their sexuality.

Overall, I think that to be gay in Gay Bombay signifies being
glocal
; gayness here stands for
Indianized
gayness. So, one might dance in a Western style disco anywhere else in the world, but one can only munch on a post-dance
jalebi
27 in India. My respondents wanted to selectively
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draw on a buffet of Indian and western influences in conjuring their own
thali
28 of gayness! Most of them, even those who had access to the El Dorado of
abroad
, still wanted to configure their gay experiences within an Indian matrix. As Cholan said, hanging out in the Castro was not important, but coming back home and being with his father was. Even for the younger Gul, travelling to America opened his eyes to
Queer as Folk
and gay strip bars, but he used the experience to be more confident
in
India.

Gay Bombay is certainly inspired by Western notions of what it means to be gay—its dance parties, PFLAG29 style meets, website and so on, have all drawn from Western experiences; but they have been customized, glocalized and made uniquely Indian, uniquely Gay Bombay. Thus, as I noted in Chapter 1, even though I talk about flows throughout this book, I do not want to diminish the agency of my respondents or their locatedness in Bombay itself. For Gay Bombay, as I have realized, place does matter and this is true both offline and online, where even though it is a
virtual
world, it is still a manifestation of Bombay and Indianness at large.

HOW IS IDENTITY NEGOTIATED IN GAY BOMBAY?

The politics of identity generally is driven by the paradox that no identity, no sense of community and no imputed property of a place ever can be self evident or stable. There are always multiple meanings, many narratives and inherent instabilities within such entries. (Hansen, 2001)30

As we saw in Chapter Five, for most of my respondents, being gay was just one aspect of their identity and not the dominating aspect. Family and related obligations and duties were a much more important aspect.

This is in line with other studies like that of Seabrook (1999) where he commented that the ‘English speaking and educated to university level’

men that he interviewed did not see ‘being gay as the main constituent of their identity’. ‘They did however, express relief at being able to name this aspect of themselves’.31

For my respondents, their gay identity was something that was both fixed and negotiated. Being gay was something that was often considered intrinsic—‘I always knew that I was this way ever since I can remember’

Conclusion
287

was a popular refrain—but alongside, it was also something that was constructed and played with performatively, in an acutely reflexive manner.

Online, my respondents used the Gay Bombay newsgroup as a ‘tool, a place and as a way of being’,32 in order to better understand and makes sense of their sexual and other identities. For them, the Gay Bombay newsgroup (and this was similar to what Berry and Martin concluded from their 2000 study of queer people and the net in East Asia) was

‘neither a substitute for nor an escape from real life. Nor [was] it simply an extension of existing offline communities and identities. Instead, it

[was] a part of lived culture, informed and informing other parts of [their]

lives,’33 and often functioned as a ‘testing ground for possible selves that can then inform offline identity’.34 Like Campbell (2004), I too saw my respondents ‘integrating their online and offline experiences into a broader understanding of the reality of everyday life’.35

In any case, for most of my interviewees, online versus offline distinctions were not as significant as the distinctions between their
gay
and
straight
identities. Several of them reported purposefully constructing a straight-acting offline identity that they performed for the outside world and in their day-to-day lives, while their gay side was only to be revealed in safe spaces like Gay Bombay and among close friends.

It was clear that the habitus of my respondents fixed their notion of social identity a great deal. As I have already iterated, being
Indian
, however the respondents chose to define it, was a common thread running through the responses. My interviewees were in a constant state of internal negotiation between their Indianness (and its related social and family expectations and obligations) and what were to them considered to be more Western ideals, such as the quest for personal space and self-centred happiness. Thus, though cultural globalization as defined by Apppadurai (flows and so on) did take place in Gay Bombay, factors like nationality and cultural origins mattered, perhaps more to my respondents, as did their educational and social background. I saw this happening again and again in my interviews. I perceived each individual’s identity as the product of his own personal interaction between his habitus and the extent to which he was able to stretch that habitus to allow him to tap into the rapid changes occurring all around him.

At the same time, as Bourdieu himself noted, habitus is not something that is constant. It also involves choice and reasoning and while it
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continues to be affected by geography, family background, gender and so on, it can definitely change based on one’s life experiences. According to Appadurai (1996), the
improvisational
quality of habitus is now being stressed.36 Certainly, I witnessed a tremendous amount of creativity and improvisation being carried out by my respondents with regards to their habitus and the various Gay Bombay spaces served as both—the facilitator and the locus—of these changes.

IS GAY BOMBAY A COMMUNITY?

Yes, I think so. My respondents had mixed feelings about this but to me, Gay Bombay is a ‘community of sentiment’37 (Appadurai, 1996), of ‘affirmation and solidarity…[and] self-discovery’ (Campbell, 2004)38 and a gay
third space
, borne out of the collective imagination of its constituents, representing a variety of meanings for them. It is a fluid community—its name fixes its location geographically—but its membership is global.

It is an imagined community (Anderson, 1983) and also a divided one (Woolvine, 2000). Its inhabitants, predominantly English speaking upper middle class urban gay men, connect to this
imagined world
via a tangle of wires, satellite signals and fragile human networks.

Unlike other gay communities in the West (or even some of the other non-gay identified sexual minority communities like the
hijras
in India), I feel that Gay Bombay serves as a secondary community for its members rather than their primary community. Insofar as one’s primary community is concerned, the blood family still rules the roost here.

I rather like Phelan’s notion of community as a process (1994), ‘which…

is always in a state of becoming and thus is open to and requires negotiation’.39 This resonates with Ahmed and Fortier’s suggestion of thinking about communities as ‘never fully achieved, never fully arrived at, even when “we” already inhabit them’;40 sites of possibilities as well as reality. Drawing on these accounts, I view Gay Bombay as a site that is ‘lived through the desire for community, rather than a site that fulfils and

“resolves” that desire’.41 It is more a common ground rather than a site for commonality—both a space and a place—where community is created as an effect of how the members of gay Bombay ‘meet on this ground…

a ground that is material, but also virtual, real and imaginary’.42

Conclusion
289

IN MEMORIAM

1998. I am so glad to be at
Elle.
For a while, I thought I was doomed to a
corporate existence at my previous marketing job and it is good to be working creatively with words and images again. I am also beginning to think
about my sexuality in concrete terms. I have blanked it out of my head for
the past six years, but am not so uncomfortable with the thoughts these
days. Why don’t we do an article on the gay scene in Bombay, I suggest in
all seriousness at an edit meet one week. Why, what’s happening out there,
the editor queries. I don’t know, I reply defensively—how would I know,
I mean—but it’d be cool to find out, right?

The piece never gets written. At my first interview, I meet Riyad Wadia,
future friend, mentor and guide. The scion of the legendary Wadia Movietone
film production studios, Riyad is flamboyantly high after the success of his
latest gay themed documentary,
BOMgAY
. He had given me his phone number when he showed his film to a roomful of gasps at my film study course
last year. Darling, he drawls as he drags on a Marlboro light, at his elegant
Worli sea face apartment one late afternoon. Let’s drop this article crap,
shall we? You’re a faggot. Deal with it. I feel a huge weight lift off my
shoulders.

I stay on at his house for a party he is hosting that evening. It is just like
any other party, except that it is full of gay men. Diamond merchants, filmmakers, artists, bankers, corporate executives, consulate staff. (Do they send
all their gay employees to India?). Everyone’s rich, successful and happy
looking. I’m the youngest and the only one wearing shorts. I can feel eyes
on me. They won’t bite you, Riyad nudges, as he circulates, Martini glass in
hand, even though you’re looking very bitable. Go talk to someone.

I encounter an interesting group. Mostly older men, who are not really
my scene, but this is my intro to gay life 101 and I still have a lot to learn.

François, from the Alliance Française in Bombay, cooks me fabulous meals
at his Malabar Hill apartment. Ben, from the Israeli consulate is great for
going out with, because we always travel in a cavalcade of cars, with flashing
lights and a jeep-load of stone-faced Mossad bodyguards to give us company.

Ram, from Calcutta, is married and comes to Bombay on weekends where
he puts up at the swanky Oberoi Hotel and enjoys the good things in life
like gay sex accompanied with Absolut Citron shots. I laugh at them when
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they tell me they have fallen in love with me! I can afford to; I am 20 years
old, tight-bodied and smooth skinned.

Riyad introduces me to his world of Voodoo’s and the Walls and late night
cruising and the concept of sex without love. We never sleep with each other,
which is why I think that the relationship is so special. He feels protective
about me. If we have sex, I doubt we would be as good friends. Not that
he doesn’t try. One night, early in our friendship, after a party from which
he is dropping me home, I casually ask him up for coffee, not knowing its
implications on the scene. Are you sure, he raises an eyebrow. He is amused
when I emerge from the kitchen with two steaming cups but leaves after a
pleasant conversation. A few weeks later, he instructs me never to invite
a gay man up for coffee unless I want to sleep with him. I keep that in mind,
to be used later.

I have Riyad to thank for so many things. And I am not the only one. When
he dies in late 2003, his family in India is overwhelmed by the number of
emails and phone calls they receive from men and women all over the world,
telling them what a positive influence Riyad was in their lives. Whether it is
advice regarding the collapse of my company, writing my recommendation
letters for graduate school, or being there to share my exuberance at having
met Q and later Z, it is him that I turn to, at every significant moment of my
gay life. When I travel to America for the first time, to college hunt, Riyad
voluntarily sets me up with his network of friends all over the country, so
that I have a home in every city I visit. During that trip, I develop a strong
relationship with Roy, Riyad’s elder brother and the bond lasts till today.

Once I see the lifestyle of Roy and his partner Alan in Atlanta, I have new
role models that I want to emulate. They seem so normal, so comfortable in
their domestic simplicity, cooking together, doing the dishes and shopping
at Home Depot. Riyad senses this when I return and is often disparaging
about me want to have a boring conformist hetero-normative life, but I think
secretly, he is happy that I have chosen the Roy way over his.

Sometime in between, Riyad takes off for New York, to try and start a
new life. It has been far too long since his last film and he is unwilling to
make the compromises needed to survive in the cesspool of Bombay’s film
world. When he returns unsuccessful, the smile still remains but the spark
seems to have dimmed. Yet, there is always an exciting project to keep him
occupied—the big gay film that he will surely someday get funding for, the
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festivals and poster art exhibitions that he curates, the
Condé Nast
fashion
shoot that he directs, the various avant-garde films he promotes, the parties
and the glamour that are second nature to him.

During our conversations towards the end of his life, he cautions me to
not make gayness the centre of my existence. It destroyed me, he says. Now
people can’t think of me in any other way. Don’t bracket yourself, please.