How To Interview A Gay Writer
Vikram Seth has been in the news lately for being one of the principal signatories to a campaign launched by Siddharth Dube. The petition says: “We, concerned Indian citizens, support the overturning of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial-era law dating to 1861, which punitively criminalizes romantic love and private, consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex.” (I’m also one of the long list of additional signatories. A few reports on the campaign against Section 377: the Hindustan Times, the New York Times, Sepia Mutiny. Amartya Sen has also released in statement in support.) Now, in the aftermath of that campaign, Outlook magazine has carried an interview with Seth. At the beginning of the interview the following, rather wonderful, exchange takes place:
Did this law affect you in a similar way? Did it have a personal effect on your own life?
Yes. For instance, when my mother was a lawyer and later when she became a judge, I enjoyed browsing around in her law books. When I was quite young, I came across Section 377 which was in fact written in very odd Victorian phrasing about carnal intercourse against the order of nature with man, woman and so on. And as I read the description of what this section actually meant, I realised it even included, if you can believe it, oral sex between a husband and wife. A crazy law like this has no place on our books. And of course a law that is selectively used is in one aspect even worse than a law that is generally used because it puts a lot of power in individuals’ hands and makes government a rule not of laws but of people.
Now you ask me whether this directly affected me. Yes. When I realised that I had feelings for men as well as women, at first I was worried and frightened, and there was a certain amount of Who am I? Am I a criminal? and so on. It took me a long time to come to terms with myself.
Seth’s private life hasn’t, thank god, been the stuff of tabloids. And you do not have to be a Ph.D in literature to note the gravity as well as restraint in his voice. (Second thoughts: a Ph.D in literature would have been a drawback in any case.) But the interviewer, Sheela Reddy, who has long been waging a mighty battle to keep literary culture in India at the level of gossip, wasn’t to be put off her quest for something more shallow, if not also smutty. Here, almost at random, are some of the other questions that Seth was asked, and to which he provided his own honest, measured responses:
Q: I’m not sure I quite understand what bisexual means?
Q: But if you can be straight, and life is so difficult as a gay, isn’t it simpler to just be straight?
Q: This is something that people often snigger about: has boarding school anything to do with you being gay?
Q: Are you in a relationship just now?
For a link on this site to an earlier exchange between Seth and Reddy, go here. Also Shivam Vij on the above interview.
