Writes Menon: “To come “out” and declare your sexual preferences would have been unthinkable a while ago but today there is a confidence in a community that is much maligned. These stories allow you to intimately experience a world that is misunderstood, stereotyped and judged harshly. To single out any of the stories would be unfair since each of them is quite unique, lively, some explicit and sensuous. But all of them engage you with an infinite variety of emotions and experiences. And all of it is not remote but happening in a contemporary world in the villages and cities of India where people who have had the courage to come “out” or have not as in the case of Mayank, the anguished protagonist in one of the stories, wanting the best of two worlds, are speaking out…
“A married man” pries open the world of a man who wanted to keep both his secret life and his marriage intact till finally he contracted AIDS and death did him apart from the two lives he was leading. The stories are tragic, some very funny. The voices are eager and new and there is pain, bravado, sorrow and humour in the stories which mirror the reality of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement. Right from the wait for the path-breaking court judgment to the estranged mother facing upto the reality of caring for her son who has to live with AIDS, there is a whole gamut of emotions which people are faced with in real life, which is not given its due…”
Read the complete review, ‘A gamut of gay voices’ HERE.
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