My Different Shades of 'Gay'

I was ‘gay’, joyful, carefree and loved my daily toke (hash joints for the uninitiated). In simple words, much like the Delhi youth of my times, I dreaded the daily drudgery of life. By the time I was 16, I was dead certain that as a writer I needed to fathom and explore  my inner self.  Since it was cool and ‘hazaar good’ to be different, I began smoking cigarettes and within no time got inducted into the fine art of smoking hash. It was during my dark, foreboding nights at Hanuman Road in Delhi (in the seventies)  where I had my daily rendezvous with my ‘pusher’ that  I unwittingly became a dope head. 

The fact that I loved to visit the Nizamuddin dargah for my weekly  fill of Seekh Kababs only egged me on to adopt  the mendicant  way of life. I say the mendicant way of life because I  often came face-to-face with a Sufi dervish who loved to do the Sema dance in front of the dargah. I used to see him puffing deep from a Turkish chillum and wondered what intense dialogues he would be having with his ‘inner’ self.  I got tempted with this thought of an ‘inner’ dialogue and thought to myself that the Mahadev in my surname gives me the license to be a deviant.  Since addiction and Nizamuddin became the leit motifs of my adult life, I preferred to be called a ‘gay and reckless genius’.

I never can say with certitude if I had the makings of a genius but pretensions of  being one were plenty. I had the pretensions to being knowledgeable and smoking pot made me feel creative and empowered. My daily night flights to the dargah became a  regular affair and I soon came to be known as the nocturnal nice guy. I recall that I would often join the qawwals during the annual Nizamuddin Urs mela and Pasha the Sufi dervish would be there to help me ‘strengthen’ my lungs. He would gently chide me for being attracted to the gay and reckless Sufi way of life, and  with his dope-filled eyes would tell me that Sufism was reaching God through music. He never failed to exhort me to become a ‘flute’ so that God could  play music through my soul.  I was simply smitten by this thought. I promptly  learnt how to play the flute. And as I made my foray into the hallowed portals of Delhi University, I earned the unerring sobriquet of ‘His Highness’. Some of my university friends put in place a music band by the name of Ministry of Music and I vied with them to become its ‘joint secretary’. (Joint because I was the eternal joint smoker)

With the arrival of the back-pack generations in Delhi, in the early seventies, hippies spilled in, by the droves. They drove down in their caravans  and my initiation into the gay and reckless life was complete.  The first tourist camp was set up in the open land outside Humayun’s tomb and my initiation into deviant culture got a further fillip.  I then began to look at the word ‘gay’ with some reverence.  Among the hippies of those time who inspired me with their aesthetic and intellectual prowess was an irreverent bespectacled poet called Allen Ginsberg. Another name that conjured up visions of creativity was the redoubtable M F Hussain, who was also a resident of Nizamuddin. Soon, I bumped into  theatre doyen Abraham Alkazi and loved to go to visit his  Nizamuddin West house in F Block.

Soon enough, I wore  my deviant status like a badge on my sleeve and loved to turn ‘left’ when others of my ilk loved to turned ‘right’. I did various odd jobs once I passed out of Delhi University, and soon got embroiled in the restoration for democracy movement once Emergency was imposed in June 1975. It was during those underground days that I chanced upon a book of Collected Works of Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde caught my fancy immediately and his writing style and control of the English language was impeccable. I also read that once when he was stopped at the immigration desk of the New York airport and asked whether he had anything to declare, he shot back with his typical deviant flair: “Yes,  my genius”.

This anecdote blew my mind and I became a die-hard Oscar Wilde fan, though I hated to use the word fan. That is because the word fan was meant for mere mortals. On reading his poem, Reading Gaol, I was struck by the fact that Wilde had been jailed in England for leading a movement for GAY rights. The sentence hit me with the impact of a sledge-hammer. This is because I thought I was an embodiment of the gay culture.  I couldn’t for the life of me understand a different connotation to the word ‘gay’. On closer scrutiny at the British Council library, in the following days,  I learnt that the word Gay was lately used to describe a male's sexual orientation and his preference for males. That came as a rude shock to my wayfaring mind and I decided to expunge the word ‘gay’ from my daily lexicon.

It became a loathed and much-forgotten word till I happened to land up in Lucknow for a job in the prestigious Pioneer newspaper, in the year 1984. Once selected to be a member of the editorial team, I was asked to proceed to Varanasi, where the newspaper was scheduled to launch a new edition. The day I reached Varanasi on my maiden visit, I was asked to reach the new Pioneer office located in Lahartara. The word Lahartara sounded so musical that I decided I would find out the meaning behind this word. As I entered the Pioneer office, a 28-year-old handsome and bearded  young man stood at the doorway, twirling his beard absent-mindedly. He very knowledgeably informed me that Lahartara was the birth place of Sant Kabir and his aim in life was to be a Kabirpanti. I was deeply impressed by this Lucknawi Nawab, for he disclosed that that was where he hailed from. I then struck up a conversation with him only to find out that his name was Nasser (name changed). We discussed our life’s philosophy during the course of the day, and decided that our vibes matched brilliantly well. We also smoked a hash joing during the lunch recess and I knew I had hit it off with another deviant like me. He then proposed we rent out a room on a sharing basis and I immediately agreed.

We found a hotel room in downtown Gadowlia in Varanasi and checked into a cubby hole, on the first floor. As we finished our dinner Nasser asked me with a glint in his eye, “Are you gay?” The room was shrouded in silence as I tried to gauge the impact of his remark. And suddenly I realized the word ‘gay’ had returned into my life in an altogether different dimension. I shrugged   my shoulder without speaking a word. Soon enough I found   my room-mate sobbing inconsolably into a handkerchief. I sat him down, comforted him and consoled him that while I had no issues on somebody being gay, my orientation was that of a straight. Within a fortnight, we became the best of friends, and often on the way back from our editorial office in the dead of the night, we would head to the Dasashwamedh Ghat where we would light up a chillum and share our day’s highpoints and low-tides.

By now we had shifted base to a quaint lodge in Aurangabad, One summer night in May, Nasser did not go with me to office, since he said he was suffering from a weak stomach, as he told me. When I returned at around 2 in the morning, I found a motley crowd gathered outside my hotel premises.  Two goons were hurling the choicest expletives even as a disheveled rickshaw-puller was pulled out of our room and was bodily flung near the foyer. Behind him followed  Nasser, all distraught and wearing a tattered white kurta. The hotel manager was livid  even as he asked the rickshaw-puller to take his client and dump him at Dasashwemedh ghat for all he cared. As Nasser and the rickshaw disappeared in the horizon, the impact of what had happened hit me with a dull throb.

Next day, Nasser had shifted base and he refused to speak about what transpired the night before. We slowly drifted apart since somewhere deep inside he harboured the grudge that it was I who had squealed to the hotel management to humiliate him and throw him out of my life. My pleas and entreaties to the contrary, fell on deaf ears.

These ‘gay’ thoughts crossed my mind once again when I looked around to convince my family & friends to watch a movie called Aligarh which dealt with the sexual orientation of a professor. The movie had released a fortnight ago and critics raved that it was a first-of-a-kind  Hindi movie. According to film critics,  veteran actor Manoj Bajpai had essayed the protagonist's role with the verve and sensitivity rare to find in Indian cinema. Reports surfaced that the movie was banned in the city where it was located and there was much furore about why such a subject had been dealt with, in this country. That Prof Siras, the deviant Professor committed suicide for being an 'outsider' and 'gay' in a so-called 'straight society, failed to evoke public curiosity.  I now realize that the ‘gays’ and the deviants will always have to pay a huge price, for no fault of theirs. As of now, I wait for my family to consent to make me feel 'gay' about my intellectual, not physical orientation!