This is not a book about sex

A writer and booklover come together to publish India's first queer anthology on 'life after Section 377' A writer and booklover come together to publish India's first queer anthology on 'life after Section 377'

A writer and booklover come together to publish India's first queer anthology on 'life after Section 377'u00a0

Minal Hajratwala, author of the award-winning non-fiction title, Leaving India: My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents, has been in India for the last one year on a Fulbright scholarship. Her next novel is on Mirabai, the saint who dedicated her life to the devotion of Krishna.

Founder of Queer Ink, Shobhna Kumar with author Minal
Hajratwala. PIC/ shadab khan

And while you'd think the author, who has lived in America since she was seven, has her plate full till the scholarship ends in July 2011, Hajratwala has taken on yet another equally daunting task in partnership with Shobhna Kumar, founder of the country's first online queer bookstore, Queer Ink.

Together, the duo will publish an anthology of queer writings from the country, the first after the reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises homosexuality. This anthology also marks Queer Ink's foray into publication.

What prompted you to take up this project?
Shobhna Kumar: When I started QI, I realised there isn't much queer content available in India. The community was invisible, which got me interested in the idea of publishing. I wanted to create content relevant to India, and let the world know that the community exists.

At present, QI has only 100 titles that have been published in India. That does not reflect the 7.5 per cent of the adult population that is queer in any country.

What sort of writing do you want this anthology to carry?
Minal Hajratwala: We are looking at stories from different parts of India, and from different gender communities. We want to make sure that our editorial panel and the stories in the anthology reflect India's diversity.

Our pamphlet is calling for lesbian, gay, bisexual, hijra, kothi, queer, genderqueer, or other gender-non-conforming identity stories. The anthology is not dependent on the sexual identity of the writer; it's about the characters in the stories.

We are open to straight authors writing in too. I'd love to have some fiction, non-fiction, young adult stories, the first date, and some graphic novel stuff. Kumar: This is not a book about sex. It's a book about people who have a minority sexuality.

How do you plan to reach out to potential writers?
Hajratwala: We've been making a list of organisations we can get in touch with. We want this book to represent all regions of India. We're putting out the call in several languages, and we'll work with translators to figure out what to do with the original content. We could put it on the web or launch subsequent publications that are regional-language based.

We don't want this anthology to be an English-speaking cosmopolitan experience of what it means to be gay in India. The rural story is very different from the urban story and we hope to cut across sections.