186:, Yudi's looks for Kishore. He discovers that Kishore had given him a wrong address. His editor introduces him to an upcoming painter, Gauri. Gauri likes Yudi and confides in him that she has left her husband. She gets a drunk Yudi home after a party one night, pays him an unwelcome visit later and bargains her way to a lunch with him. Yudi then visits Gauri at her place. The next day, he spots Kishore in an elevator. Kishore gives Yudi his real name, Milind Mahadik, his address, and confesses that he is an
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210:, an organization that supplies men for magazine advertisements and prostitution. After a customer rapes him, he escapes from the Agency and returns home. His parents wish to get him married and he concedes, seeing marriage as a natural next step. When his family members tell him about Yudi's visit, he gets angry and gives Yudi his wedding invitation.
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Milind and his wife find themselves a house and raise a family, falling on hard times because Milind refused to work. His wife, Leela, urges him to reach out to Yudi to ask for money, knowing of Yudi only as Milind's rich friend. Milind finds Yudi with Gauri who is now sisterly towards him. Yudi and
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where "(homo)sexual explicitness... becomes the foundation for erotic realism" mapped onto the real city. This queer imagination of the city is nasty and unpleasant, a strategy that Rao uses to challenge oppression and mainstream narratives. Moreover, this queer space is not a universal one, but
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group. Milind is tasked with sticking posters across town about the group's activities and feels good about the work and the money that comes with it. But he is laid off again due to the group's dwindling funds. When Yudi finds Milind another job, the latter disappears. Yudi is depressed at the
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nation (India before independence). Moreover, while Yudi is able to transcend the nation, Milind "internalizes" the nation and the heteronormative ideas that nation brings along. A response to Bakshi claims that nation-based binaries are made visible through Yudi but undercut by frequently and
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The national and, more significantly, the nationalist frameworks of postcolonial India prolong the colonial production of normative gender and sexuality. In such a structural duplication of the social norm, reproductive heterosexuality attains legitimacy as the unique, “natural” choice of the
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Space is a central theme in Rao's novel. Most of the chapter titles are names of places where important things happen and the narrative can be read as a journey through different spaces. Such spaces are "always on the move" in loos, discos and trains as opposed to a
Western queer space where
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disappearance and calls at Milind's home for information. His mother and Gauri come over to support him, both of them trying to realize Gauri as a permanent mate for Yudi. Milind, meanwhile, finds himself at A.K. Modelling Agency in
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whose legitimacy is seen to come from its nativity. One review has called Rao's critique of the communal tensions as a critique of the nation-building processes, though being "verged on defeatism". Bakshi sees the construction of a
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link space and sexuality. They show that the dominant definition of a place which has defined codes of behaviour is a constructed entity and challenge these codes by unexpectedly transgressing them.
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Rao’s Bombay, however, is a step behind these exciting times of queer self assertion; the most that the gay community can expect out of the urban locus is a sense of
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Milind have sex and Milind asks for his pocket money again, which Yudi happily gives him, telling Gauri that " come to the conclusion that life is beautiful".
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boy outside the men's washroom. They have sex and the boy introduces himself as
Kishore Mahadik. Kishore leaves Yudi his address.
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They spend a week at Yudi's Place in Nalla Sopara and mock a marriage in Yudi's bedroom. Due to an extended holiday with Yudi to
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recurrently giving Milind a similar space to Yudi's, bringing into focus the privileges that the nation confers upon Yudi.
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Set after the Bombay riots of 1992-93, Rao comments on how the idea of the nation is embedded in the idea of a community.
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distinctly Indian, with its caste relations. The queer space exists as a mysterious and subversive reality against
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354:
505:"A Literary and Social Depiction of an Indian City: Masala Eroticism and Perverse Realism in Raj Rao's BomGay"
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King, Frederick D. (June 2012). "Queer Spaces and
Strategic Social Constructions in Rao's The Boyfriend".
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140:
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A Noble
Mansion For All? The Production of Difference in Select Works of Mahesh Dattani and R. Raj Rao
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decriminalized homosexuality allowed gay people to position themselves within larger communities.
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577:"Fractured Resistance: Queer Negotiations of the Postcolonial in R. Raj Rao's The Boyfriend"
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Fractured
Resistance: Queer Negotiations of the Postcolonial in R. Raj Rao's The Boyfriend
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The story is set in what can be called BomGay, a fictional, invisible,
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543:
Palekar, Shalmalee (2018). "Out! and New Queer Indian
Literature".
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Transgressive territories: queer space in Indian fiction and film
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Transgressive territories: queer space in Indian fiction and film
135:'s first novel. Based in Mumbai, India, it discusses the city's
651:"Communal Tensions: Homosexuality in Raj Rao's The Boyfriend"
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Rupkatha
Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
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against
Muslims as a way of displaying such masculinity.
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453:Choudhuri, Sucheta Mallick (2009).
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705:2003 LGBT-related literary works
575:Bakshi, Sandeep (October 2012).
340:is considered a result of alien
321:as it relates to sexuality. The
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593:10.1080/02759527.2012.11932877
260:—Sucheta Mallick Choudhuri in
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399:Sahgal, Tara (June 2, 2003).
199:naked statue of Gommateshwara
503:GarcĂa-Arroyo, Ana (2018).
428:"The Boyfriend - Goodreads"
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557:10.26262/gramma.v25i0.6595
173:Churchgate railway station
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690:LGBTQ literature in India
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344:invasions as opposed to
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175:and picks up a young,
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317:discusses nation and
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19:For other uses, see
305:—Sandeep Bakshi in
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522:10.5209/CJES.56019
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551:: 120–136.
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203:ecofeminist
197:to see the
188:Untouchable
165:freelancing
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459:(Thesis).
384:October 9,
365:References
218:Characters
133:R. Raj Rao
45:R. Raj Rao
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182:Post the
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630:(Thesis)
346:Hinduism
330:colonial
208:Goregaon
51:Language
171:around
169:cruises
54:English
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357:, and
342:Mughal
240:Themes
226:Milind
161:Mumbai
41:Author
654:(PDF)
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597:S2CID
229:Gauri
177:Dalit
145:class
141:caste
105:Pages
100:Print
92:India
59:Genre
16:Novel
670:2019
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
