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From Tehelka Archives
January 31, 2001

Some Lessons on Love

from Working Class Men

There is a general perception that there are fixed sexual identities — gay, straight, bisexual —
where desire flows along predetermined lines. However, sexual behaviours are fluid and
anyone can — in given situations — desire anything, writes nishit saran

rade (noun): A male hetero- saaf karna (to clean one’s pipe), tanki saaf man” and “that old queen” — about gay
sexual, usually working class, karna (to clean one’s tank), discharge sex. identities and gay politics and gay rights
who take Sexual gratification But what a curious notion, this. and gay genes?
from homosexuals without Situational homosexuality. Yet how in- Herein lies the contradiction, and it
T reciprocation. stinctively we accept it. How readily it is an important one. We seem to believe
If context is crucial when one speaks resonates with boys-will-be-boys and BOTH in the existence of fixed sexual
as an outsider, let me Immediately situ- wife-in-the-village. How strongly it identities — gay, straight, bisexual —
ate myself. New Delhi, late evening... I’m smells of sailors and prisons and board- where desire flows along predetermined
sitting in the back seat of a yellow and ing schools. We just accept it that there lines AND in fluid sexual behaviors,
black cab. are certain situations where anyone, where anyone can — in given situations
It’s easy to miss the charm of the even “normal” people, will indulge in — desire anything. Moreover, we seem
occasion, but social life rarely accords homosexual acts. But were we not, just to fundamentally accept a simplistic
so private and extended an encounter before we got into our cab, arguing co- class division here — that the educated
between two strangers of such different gently over cocktails about “this straight upper-classes believe in identities while,
social backgrounds — with the lower classes,
especially in a society as anything goes. Of course,
stratified as ours. Clearly, we are all, across the
something can happen. Indian strata, subject to
If you’re gay, that the law of compulsory
“something” is often sex. marriage and the rubric
Folk wisdom in the of shame.
rich urban gay commu- This might seem to
nity: if you urgently need immediately accord with
it — and don’t want to pay the the right-wing notion
for it — go hail yourself a of the gay lifestyle as an
cab. upper-class Western im-
Now, it can’t be that all port, but only on the sur-
Delhi taxi drivers belong face, because this notion
to some secret gay so- continues to conflate ho-
ciety. Rather, they must mosexual identities with
simply have a higher homosexual acts. Gay
incidence of what is of- identities we might have
ten called “situational ‘imported’ from the West,
homosexuality.” Late but how does the fun-
nights, away from home, damentalist explain the
privacy... the same fac- pervasive nature of ho-
tors that bestow upon mosexual acts in (at least
truck drivers their own urban) Indian society?
widespread fame for ho-
mosexual encounters. So A fortnightly column by
much so that vernacular Nishit Saran, a Harvard
homosexual slang for sex graduate and
often revolves around documentary filmmaker
automotive motifs: nalli LETTERS@TEHELKA.COM

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