Pink Pages

By Rahul Mehta
Udayan

Given the current state of gay Indian fiction, or Indian-American fiction for that matter (barring a few exceptions like Jhumpa Lahiri) one couldn’t really blame me for my initial inhibitions about this book. But read this book without prejudices and you’ll discover a new sun rising on the horizon of gay fiction. Rahul Mehta may not have broken clichés or stereotypes with his collection of short stories, mostly about Indian American gay men getting lost in the labyrinth of sexuality, race and immigrant dreams; however the fresh rush of literary adrenal that the stories inspire is worth the warm welcome. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

By Rita Mae Brown
Ananya Dhote

“Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don’t know what I am—polymorphous and perverse. Shit. I don’t even know if I’m white. I’m me. That’s all I am and all I want to be. Do I have to be something?”

Now, this got me hooked! The above lines script a struggle for personal and professional freedom between two worlds, rural Pennsylvania and glitzy streets of Florida and New York. Rubyfruit Jungle, authored by Rita Mae Brown is post-stonewall, autobiographical lesbian fiction that draws out the life of a woman who comes of age as a lesbian and an aspiring artist in the mid-twentieth century. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

By Armistead Maupin
Kishore Kumar

I wandered out like a haggard ghost, and there she was, Frisco — long, bleak streets with trolley wires all shrouded in fog and whiteness.

~ Jack Kerouac

Tales of the City was originally published as a daily newspaper serial, much like Dickens’ Oliver Twist. But Armistead Maupin, the author, has been compared to Dickens in other ways too. His realistic and captivating depiction of the seventies reminds one of the Victorian England of David Copperfield. Brilliant characterisation, a page-turner of a plot, and a keen eye for humanity make the books ready favourites. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Popularity: 77% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]

By Alan Hollinghurst
Kishore Kumar

Alan Hollinghurst has firmly secured a place in gay literature with his Swimming Pool Library, and his later novel, The Line of Beauty, which ranks both as a modern gay classic and as fine prose. The novel intertwines three different subjects: a gay coming-of-age story, the severity of Thatcherian Britain, and lives of a well-to-do British family and their friends. Many recurring sub-themes include country-house parties, gay cruising, drugs, financial manipulations, the advent of AIDS and rampant erotic duplicity.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

By Devdutt Pattanaik
Arijit Singh

“It will not make sense to your logical mind. You will say, a parent is a parent, whether you are father or mother. But it is not the same. I cannot explain. You have to experience it. All I know is what I feel. I feel, while there is sweetness when your son calls you “father”, there is more sweetness when he calls you “mother”.”

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Kishore Kumar

Author– E M Forster

In the beginning there was Maurice. Before Brokeback, before Tales of the City and before Stonewall. When most of the western world could only speak of homosexuality in hushed tones, Edward Morgan Forster, author of A Passage to India, sat down to write Maurice in 1913, though he did not allow its publication in his lifetime.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Arjit Chandra

Author – R. Raj Rao

One fine Sunday morning, Yudi (an ‘Americanized’ version of Yudhishtir) meets a boy Milind who is half his age while looking for a ‘bite’ around a public loo at a local train station. And from that day onwards Yudi’s life takes a rollercoaster ride of comic-tragic events.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Mallika Sarabhai

Author – Manju Kapoor

Astha is the urban middle class everywoman. Pretty, parents in the government in Delhi, dreams of love and romance and a family, parents dreams of a house of their own, the occasional heart flutter during college. Then marriage. He seems nicer than most, more attentive, more considerate. Then babies and in laws. Then the boredom – Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9% [?]