Summary
Contents
Whistling in the Dark: Twenty One Queer Interviews is a book on gay narratives from India and other countries in the form of 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 posses 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.
Narendra Binner
Narendra Binner
Editors: Please introduce yourself to us.
Narendra Binner: I'm Narendra Binner. Kindly make sure you use a false name and not my real name in your book. The name you give me shouldn't bear any resemblance to my own name—it should be as different from it as possible. This is necessary, considering that I'm HIV positive and few people know of my HIV positive status. There's nothing extraordinary about me. I'm about 40 years old; I was born and partly brought up in rural Maharashtra, but later moved to the city with my parents, brothers and sisters. Early in life, I lost my parents and that too tragically. This thrust many responsibilities on my head, although I'm not the oldest sibling; there are ...