Queer writings from South Asia: A woman feels at home in the bathroom, the devil's abode
Begum Taara Shakar
An excerpt from 'On The Brink Of Belief: Queer Writing From South Asia', edited by Kazim Ali.
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The Hindu
27-06-2025
- The Hindu
Review of On the Brink of Belief: Queer Writing from South Asia
One of the central lacunae in Indian queer writing is its sheer lack of rich regional voices. Not only does queer literature still remain largely Anglicised, but the parameters of its criticism are also dictated by Eurocentric notions, thereby gatekeeping local expressions and experiences. To then read On the Brink of Belief: Queer Writing from South Asia is in fact to engage in a suspension of disbelief, as 24 freshly minted writers, standing at the intersection of their marginalised identities, narrate their stories of love and loss, longing and belonging, and the liminal, chaotic spaces that exist in between. The idea for this anthology emerged after the successful conclusion of two editions of The Queer Writers' Room in 2023-2024, a joint initiative by The Queer Muslim Project and The International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Steered by Kazim Ali (also the editor of this anthology), among others, the week-long writing residency with two queer and trans writers each from India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, has become a space for creative nurturing, quiet transformation, and critical interrogation. The stories in this collection remain obsessed with djinns, shaitans, and shakchunnis — the ethereal, metaphysical, and perhaps queer beings in Islamic mythography that linger between faith and fact. In her moving essay 'A Fever, a Djinn and the Collectibles of Grief,' Sara Haque draws parallels between herself and the 'rootless, bereaving djinn', after her dadi, 'shrunk and shrunk' till she vanished one fine day. In Ipsa's flash fiction 'On This Afternoon, Like Every Other', the female lover becomes a shakchunni (spirit of a married woman), and the act of lovemaking becomes the 'cloying honey of kolke phool, being sucked like a fish bone' — the very things that repulse human beings. This coalescence of the divine and the devil finds resonance in another short essay, 'Even Shaitan Showers' by Begum Taara Shakar, where the bathroom, a place of shame, transforms into a place of security. Later, the protagonist wonders: 'I always thought God was in love with Shaitan. Did no one notice that a whole world was created to prove Shaitan wrong?' Promising voices This contradiction, this uncertainty, this perpetual state of questioning, for me, is the central tenet of good writing. With queer writing, this rift between being and non-being is accentuated, as the real world offers no refuge. The beauty of queer writing, then, lies in its refusal to flatten difference and in its power to imagine radical, alternative futures. The anthology also reinforces the fact that queerness is not constrained to the choice of a partner, but extends to include political engagement, modes of kinship, and everyday resistances. The shifting world order, the metallic claws of capitalism, and the ghettoisation of communities remain overarching themes in stories such as 'Keithal da Eramkhi' by Mesak Takhelmayum, 'Silver' by Kahless Jaden Hameed and Tanisha Tekriwal's 'American Embassy, 2046', where the city is 'lit [not] by the moon but by oil refineries, their silver chimneys keeping the dark a half-dark'. While the anthology introduces some new, promising voices, it unfortunately delivers more misses than hits. 'Dog Days', 'Darling', 'The Beauty and Complexity of Being Queer and Muslim', 'Darjeeling and Desires', and 'Your Birthmark in My Memories' are among the many stories and poems that start on an interesting note but lose steam halfway through. Many of the stories could have been salvaged by skilful editing. These writers are trying hard to cut a new path. Time will tell where it leads them. The reviewer is the author of the Hindi short story collection 'Yeh Dil Hai Ki Chor Darwaja'.
Scroll.in
20-06-2025
- Scroll.in
Queer writings from South Asia: A woman feels at home in the bathroom, the devil's abode
Stories written by Begum Taara Shakar An excerpt from 'On The Brink Of Belief: Queer Writing From South Asia', edited by Kazim Ali.
Mint
14-06-2025
- Mint
A new anthology of writings from south Asia celebrates marginalised voices
Writer Kazim Ali begins his introduction to On the Brink, an anthology of queer writing from South Asia, with a question: 'Why the word 'queer' when that is a word others have used to describe us and not always kindly?" Recently, a bench of the Madras High Court echoed the same sentiment recently while delivering a judgment: 'Any standard dictionary defines this word as meaning 'strange or odd.' To a homosexual individual, his/her/their sexual orientation must be perfectly natural and normal... Why then should they be called queer?" Over the centuries, the word assumed various shades of meaning, but it was during the 20th century that it began to be claimed by people who broke sexual norms. Members of the Bloomsbury set in London used it liberally, especially writer Virginia Woolf, who turned it into a pun for homosexuals as well as eccentrics. Also read: Jane Austen's novels are both a mirror and a map for Gen Z and millennials The political notion of being queer, Ali goes on to explain, refers to the umbrella of identities and genders that belong to the LGBTQ+ community, including people who are questioning, curious and non-binary. Speaking for himself, Ali says, 'I am 'queer' for two reasons—because I am gay and because my body—a half-Pakistani body by law if not by blood or ancestry—lies outside the mainstream of what the mother country now considers acceptable." By radically extending the definition of queer beyond its familiar connotations of sexual and gender identities, Ali sets the tone for the diverse voices that feature in this anthology. The contributors come from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, along with writers from other parts of the world who mentored them in workshops organised by The Queer Muslim Project (TQMP) in 2023-24. Founded in 2017, TQMP celebrates the power of queer storytellers from underrepresented communities in South Asia. Also read: 'Deviants' book review: How generations of men navigated being queer in India The intersection of religion, politics and identity in their lives adds layers of complexity to their writing, bringing out nuances that aren't always visible in the mainstream. Even as the pieces deal with questions of faith and sexuality, they aren't just psychological triggers. Rather, these themes allow for eclectic experiments with form and style. The first anthology of queer writing in India, Yaarana, edited by Hoshang Merchant, came out in 2011. The fact that it was subtitled Gay Writing from India and mostly had men from privileged backgrounds acting as representatives of an inherently heterogenous community of people should give us a sense of the many miles LGBTQ+ activism in South Asia has travelled in the realm of arts and culture in the last two decades. Thanks to the efforts of entities like TQMP, as also encouraged by the decriminalisation of LGBTQ+ people in India, we have a generation of writers who are speaking out loudly and proudly about the uniqueness of their lived experiences. The best part is that their stories don't dwell solely on the trials of their sexual and gender identities (though there are several of those, too). Rather, they grapple with the quotidian realities of being in love, or pursuing a love interest, the heartbreak that comes from rejection or at the end of a relationship—feelings that can affect any human being, queer or not. In Birat Bijay Ojha's story, Darjeeling and Desires, the protagonist Nabin sets out on an impromptu trip to Darjeeling with Bikash, a stranger he meets on a dating app. The two men indulge their mutual attraction with gleeful abandon. 'Body mine, and body his, as fate would have it found faith in each other," Nabin says, the pun on fate-faith deliciously capturing the wicked freedom of being who they are. Also read: A Bengali adaption of 'Hamlet' takes the stage in Kolkata In a darker piece, How to Start a Romance Novel, Darius Stewart describes a betrayal, as imagined by the protagonist in aching detail. Sorrow Letters by Rukman Ragas is presented as a break-up email, cleverly punctuated with scholarly commentary. Some of the best pieces in the collection are by Amama Bashir—subtle, angular, yet also delicately humane. In Nissa, a mother-daughter relationship is pitched against the gendered norms of the society they live in. Hassan Bhai, told from two contrasting perspectives, is a sharp insight into what it means to be gay and working class, especially when your religion considers it a sin. In Darling, Kiran Kumar gives us a glimpse into another moment of parental reckoning as a father is faced with a lesbian couple playing professional cricket on TV. While most of the pieces bring with them maturity and gravitas, a couple of entries sit somewhat uncomfortably. Adnan Sheikh's The Beauty and Complexity of Being Queer and Muslim, earnest and heartfelt as it is, reads like a college application essay rather than a fully marinated piece of creative writing. The poetic experiments by Knecho, a Bangladeshi writer, don't always land, either in terms of form or content. Be that as it may, the weaker pieces are more than compensated by the queer brilliance of the best ones, such as Maggie Millner's beautifully melancholic poems. The book will be on sale later this month. Also read: 'Night in Delhi' book review: Sex, sleaze and some Shakespeare
