‘All writing has equal valency’: Hoshang Merchant on editing India’s first anthology of gay writing

You have edited Yaraana, India’s first anthology of gay writing. What was the experience like? Hoshang Merchant: I will take my reader through the dramatic experience of what kind of panic I felt when invited by my intelligent woman-editor at Penguin, who also happens to be my first student ever at Hyderabad. I protested, I cut off the phone; I fled to my sympathetic boss asking what they would do to me, and would I lose my job. My dear, liberal, Tambrahm [Tamil Brahmin] teacher said, like a good resident of Mylapore, “This is an intellectual activity. You are here to do it.” So you see, there are some bright spots in the dark scenario, even in India. Being the cowardly Parsi I am, forever shirking my responsibilities, I decided that my sweet little acolyte, then writing the first-ever thesis on the gay Indian poet Sultan Padamsee, would be a better choice than me to write the book. I rationalized, after all, homosexuality is the way of the future. “No”, said my Tambrahm friend, “You have been asked to do it.” Then started the tedious process of getting the families of dead Indian English writers to accede that…

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