All the freedom of possibility

Belonging and unbelonging are the central themes in this anthology of queer poetry.

Human nature requires that we destroy that; Which we do not understand; So we take difference and fix it into a box; One size fits too small — we peel back its skin and rip through its flesh, until we break its every bone and bleed it soaking wet”

These lines from Indian poet Sam(ira) Obeid’s verse titled ‘Genderfuck(ed)’ are a fair representation of this anthology of queer poetry from South Asia, edited by poets Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal.

There are voices from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal; there are translations from Kannada, Marathi, Hindi and Tamil, among others. From Hoshang Merchant to Vikram Seth, from Sultan Padamsee to Chithira Vijayakumar, from S Chandramohan to Chandini, from Rumi Harish to Santa Khurai, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Ruth Vanita, the voices traverse different decades, geographies and milieus. In that sense, this collection is an education.

“People live their lives through a maddeningly complex slew of names, identities and gestures. ‘Queer’ only pretends to signpost them all, but it is precisely that, a convenient pretence, meant for book covers, not for all its contents,” the editors say in the preface. So, we have Guyanese poet of Indian origin, Rajiv Mohabir’s ‘Interpreting Behaviors’, beginning with Bhojpuri lines, referencing American poet Kimiko Hahn’s ‘Ode to 52 Hz’. Hanh talks of a lonely whale that moans at 52 Hz frequency and whose only listener is dead. Rajiv Mohabir references this poem and opens up a whole new world for the reader. You not only discover Mohabir’s poetry but also Hahn’s in the process.

Poet and author and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series ‘Brown Girls’, Fatima Asghar’s poem, ‘Pluto Shits on the Universe’, questions concepts of order and rules, and talks of freedom and possibility. “It is February 7th, 1979. The sky is blue-gold: the freedom of possibility. Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.” Pluto, which was named the eighth planet in 1979, was labelled ‘chaotic’ and discredited from planetary status in 2006.

Personal and political

Belonging and unbelonging forms an urgent theme across this anthology. The personal and the political are hard to separate, for indeed all questions pertaining to the self are also questions pertaining to our place in the world.

Delhi-based social geographer and poet Dhiren Borisa in ‘Should I mourn a little longer /after Rohith Vemula?’ implores, “You will have to listen/to the screams of my people.” Chandini, who was “born in a Dalit family as a boy, but was yearning to be a woman”, also talks of identity and society in the poem ‘Ajji and Mahadevappa’.

The voices in the anthology grapple with monolithic concepts that seek to homogenise and straitjacket the world into neat categories. Non-binary/femme disabled poet and journalist Riddhi Dastidar in ‘Queer As In’ addresses this struggle. “Tomorrow I’ll come with you to Dokkhinneshwar, Ma, but it’s going to take more than flowers-prayers-proshaad because I am never going to be any less abnormal, Ma, sorry I couldn’t be more normal, Ma.”

Also part of this anthology are voices from an earlier time such as Iftikhar Nasim, Pakistan’s first modern openly gay poet and the then Bombay’s theatre personality and poet, Sultan Padamsee, who died at 23.

There are other voices, ones that use Bollywood, social media and food metaphors in their poetry to speak of personal, cultural and social concepts and conflicts. For instance, there’s Shakti Milan Sharma’s Hinglish ‘Laga Jockey Mein Daag’ and Iravi’s clever poem ‘Not just Strawberries, by the way’. Sample this from Iravi’s verse: “And as for cheese, we share a long history of growing up together: from cheesy bakes of Amul and gorging on Kraft to cheese snobbery.” The anthology takes you by hand and shows you the many universes that exist. As any good anthology must.