Whistling in the dark : twenty-one queer interviews

R.Raj Rao, Dibyajyoti Sarma

This is a book on gay narratives from India and other countries. It includes 20 interviews with homosexual/bi-sexual men and a lone interview with a woman. 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. They shed light on major issues in the field of sexuality studies such as sexual identity, sexual politics, the institution of marriage, hetero-patriarchy and hetero-normativity, homosociality and the segregation of sexes, masculinity, women's rights, section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, police atrocities against gays, gay bashing, sex in jails, sex tourism, and so on. The narratives are queer, not just in the sense of being with persons who possess a queer sexuality but also because they go beyond the conventionally decorous questions put to interviewees by their interviewers, and enter the very private lives of the respondents and the private spaces they inhabit.