Parmesh Sahani - Author of Gay Bombay,
Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma authors of Whistling in the Dark at Oxford Bookstore
Oxford Bookstore, Mumbai and Sage Publications on Thursday hosted an interesting book reading session on Whistling In The Dark: Twenty-One Queer Interviews edited by R. Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma.
Whistling In The Dark is a study on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as well as those with confused sexualities. It highlights the struggles that they went through to be able to fulfill their sexual requirements. Rao, professor in the Department of English at University of Pune, and Sarma balance the narratives in this book between private, individual stories and their wider context with poise and sensitivity. In one word, Whistling in the Dark serves as more than just an academic addition to the cannon of sub-continental queer studies.
The book, with 20 interviews with homosexual / bi-sexual men and a lone interview with a woman, enlightens major issues in the field of sexuality studies. The narratives are queer, not just in the sense of being with persons who possess queer sexuality but also because they go beyond the conventionally decorous questions put to interviewees, and enter the very private lives of the respondents and the private spaces they inhabit
The interviewees represent a cross section of society ranging from university professors, gay rights activists and students on the one hand to working class men such as office boys, autorickshaw drivers, and even undertrials who have served prison sentences on the other, conducted in the manner of a sting operation.
Rao is the author of the cult novel The Boyfriend, translated into French and Italian, the cult film BomGay (based on six of his poems) and a forthcoming novel, Engineering College Hostel. Rao is the public face of Indian gay writing all over the world. Sarma wrote his M. Phil thesis on Western Queer Theory and how it differs from Indian queer experience. His book of poems Glimpses Of A Personal History was published in 2004. He is currently working on his first novel.
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