Secret Writings of Hoshang Merchant

Description

‘[T]his is no fiction. I have scars on my body and my soul to prove this.’ Never a shrinking violet, Hoshang Merchant came out of the closet early in his youth. A bard, a teacher, and a lover who has lived many lives, he is the quintessential gay who once cross-dressed, and yet defies categorization. In Secret Writings, he recounts his extraordinary life and splendid experiences ranging across countries and cultures. His is a story of the prejudice and neglect that are part of everyday gay life, and how he channelled his despair into creating poetry. He quotes Rumi, Ghalib, and Mir, and writes with searing honesty about his long and short love affairs, his ‘improbable’ sex life as both an initiator and a yielding partner, and his inner turmoil. Sex becomes love and love becomes poetry in his writing. Merchant yells at the moral guardians of law and culture, asks uncomfortable questions, and shocks his readers. This rare book opens a window to the myriad worlds of an avant-garde.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Literature: A Different Muse
The Oedipus Story as Detective Fiction
Migritude of Migrating Swans: Yeats and Tagore
‘To the Rose upon the Rood of Time’
St John of the Cross: Poems of Roy Campbell
And Jesus Wept … Poetry in a Time of Terror! Agha Shahid Ali
Darwish/Ali’s ‘Eleven Stars over Andalusia’: First Impression
Reviewing Translations: Some Thoughts

Autobiography: The Gay Gaze
India and I Share a Birthday
I Visit Laxma’s House
My ‘Parsi English’

Sexuality: Othering the Nation
1,001 Nights: Queer Places, People, and Politics
Indian Homoeroticism
Sex in the Indian English Novel
Gay Indian Poetry
Pornography

Matriarchy: Mothering the Nation
The Solaces of Matriarchy
Sappho: Feminized Men and the Question of Flux
Indian Masculinities: Beyond Gender and Matriarchy

Postscript
A Gay Lexicon
My Secret Writing Life
Chronology of the Complete Works of Hoshang Merchant

Bibliography
About the Author and the Editor