How India's Openly Gay Poet Finally Found Acceptance: An Interview with Hoshang Merchant
by Abhimanyu Kumar

Abhimanyu Kumar
Hello and welcome, Hoshang Merchant. You are an illustrious poet. You have been a professor of gay studies and culture studies at Hyderabad University. Your works have been published by every well-reputed publishing house, you have published poetry, prose, a collection of gay writings from India, in Yaarana which came in 1999. It is said that it was your first big book, although you were publishing poetry from before that, from P. Lal’s Writer’s Workshop in Calcutta. What is the one form that you find most satisfying to write in?

Hoshang Merchant
I am a poet. But since I have a PhD, I have to write prose. I like poetic prose. Saikat Majumdar says in the blurb that my prose is like poetry: it breathes and it pants; because, see my form is teaching which is a kind of preaching. It is spoken word. My friend Jameela says in the Oxford book, it’s like you are talking to us; that’s because I have been talking to my students. For me, to think, speak and write are connected. See, I speak as I think. And I write as I speak. It’s connected, so it comes out as conversational.

See, I am a lonely person. I write to talk to somebody. The only people I knew for years together were my students. These were the only people I saw twice a week. I have been boycotted in a very conservative society, so I have no friends. I had to communicate and what do I communicate (in): poetry? I communicate my life’s angst, overcoming my life’s angst; (one’s) life touches other people’s lives, you know…the details might be different. Everyone feels loneliness, anxiety, sense of misunderstanding, wanting to reach out.

Anaiis Nin used to say, and it is from Jung actually, if you reach deep down enough, into the human psyche, you reach the common water level of all the wells. The individuals are the wells, there is a common water aquifer…

Abhimanyu Kumar
The Collective Unconscious?

Hoshang Merchant
Yes…when you reach deep down, you reach the water level of common humanity. But of course, she is not a Marxist. She ignores class, caste, gender difference!

Abhimanyu Kumar
You say in your new book Rebel Angel that the literature or politics of the future will be one in which the man accepts there is a woman in him and the woman does the same…

Hoshang Merchant
Yes, but the antagonism that has come from politics, this hatred between the sexes…

Abhimanyu Kumar
How did the idea for this book – Rebel Angel – come about?

Hoshang Merchant
I had written a lot of articles in journals. I wanted them to be preserved because I was doing my most mature work. So, we (Merchant and the editor of the book Akshaya K. Rath) put it all together.

Abhimanyu Kumar
How was academia for an openly gay professor like you?

Hoshang Merchant
I was protected; I did a lot of bullying and dadagiri. I was God’s gift to the university and if they did not appreciate me, I shall leave!

Abhimanyu Kumar
So, they indulged you?

Hoshang Merchant
They indulged me and it worked for everyone! I had a bad name; I never attended a meeting in my life. They would talk about me, not about the agenda. So, why would I go?

Abhimanyu Kumar
But you still stayed for more than fifteen years…

Hoshang Merchant
I needed the money, dear.

Abhimanyu Kumar
Who were the writers who influenced you as a young poet?

Hoshang Merchant
Shakespeare made a very strong impression on me. Who can compete with Shakespeare? Unless you are a fool, you cannot say you would compete with Shakespeare.

Anaiis Nin actually made me a writer. Look, she writes very simply. She told us – Don’t begin at the very beginning. Don’t say, “I was born on the 5th of November, 1947”, because (chuckles) nobody is interested.

Abhimanyu Kumar
You begin like that and you have lost your reader.

Hoshang Merchant
A student of mine who is a very well-read writer, he began by saying – India became Independent on the 15th of August, 1947. I said I am not going to read this shit. And I never read one word the poor child wrote. You can’t begin a novel like that. Nin said – you just begin where you are and then you will see how the present plugs into the past and how it leads to the future and then you have a story. I was never a narrative writer, no? I was a poet.

Abhimanyu Kumar
You have faced criticism for your writing being mostly about yourself, and not about other things.

Hoshang Merchant
There is nothing wrong with being self-indulgent if yourself is interesting! See, this is a puritanical thing – that you must not love yourself. How can you love others if you do not love yourself!

Abhimanyu Kumar
Do you think it is a White Anglo Saxon Protestant thing?

Hoshang Merchant
My teacher in America would be flabbergasted if I praised myself… prose is a hard discipline and you have to be mentally young which is difficult at seventy, or eighty or ninety.

Abhimanyu Kumar
All the writing and revising …

Hoshang Merchant
I never revise anything. This is all first set. Only time I revised anything was in my autobiography when I went back and changed all the Dick and Pussy into Penis and Vagina. And that is called Latinism!

Abhimanyu Kumar
How do you see the gay scene in India today?

Hoshang Merchant
I am out of it…

Abhimanyu Kumar
Legally, there have been some encouraging judgements.

Hoshang Merchant
The Supreme Court said – We are legalising and you cannot go back. You cannot cancel it like you did in 2013. But you will have no further rights. And if you ask, they will take away this right also, I think.

Abhimanyu Kumar
You have written about Nissim Ezekiel in your book. You have eviscerated him.

Hoshang Merchant
Well, he eviscerated me! I came to writing at 40. I had already lost twenty years, through my migrations. And then, he put me back ten more years.

Abhimanyu Kumar
Akshaya Rath calls it a serio-comic tribute.

Hoshang Merchant
There was no comedy there as far as I could see.  He was a Jewish man in a Hindu society. He was not a professor but a poet. He was among these horrible intellectuals who carry degrees but nothing in their heads or any talent in their hands to write. He had to walk a tight-rope as he had contrived to get eminence by putting down everybody from Tagore to Sarojini Naidu, and others you know? “I am the first one!” He was not the first one; there was (Shahid) Suhrawardy, Sultan Padamsee…

He made his students write like him, including the women. The women are writing like men. For example, Eunice D’Souza wrote like a man. She wanted approval from the male establishment. Her early poems were good.

Abhimanyu Kumar
She also did translations of Bhakti poetry.

Hoshang Merchant
All that is bullshit.

Abhimanyu Kumar
You are a defender of Nissim Ezekiel’s poetry. Eunice D’ Souza said his poems are just about him.

Hoshang Merchant
See, he created the whole Bombay School of poetry.

Abhimanyu Kumar
Although you call them Bombay Mafia!

Hoshang Merchant
Yes, because they screwed me. If I was inside, I would not have called them Mafia! I would be the Mafia. But it is not in my person to be the Mafia, except in my classroom.

Abhimanyu Kumar
But your students love you.

Hoshang Merchant
Because I teach them the truth.

Abhimanyu Kumar
I also wish to ask you about Bhupen Khakkar. You have written very beautifully about him. One of his paintings you say helped you understand a dream of yours. There was, however, a critic from the Guardian who said that he was a second-rate painter.

Hoshang Merchant
He was. His draftsmanship was very bad, you know. The favourite painting of mine is Yayati, where the son gives his youth to his father. I showed it to the class and I was so taken in by the wings and the falling scrotum of the son, and the father becoming young. And they said (affecting the scandalised voice of his students): Sir, two people should have four legs, but there are only three legs in the painting! I said- my word! This is my favourite painting and I did not see a leg missing. See, he was an accountant who took evening classes in the J.J. School of Arts. JJ School of Arts is an academic institution. You don’t go to an academic institution to become an artist. He was saved by Baroda School of Art. I think that Gujarati painter, what is his name?

Abhimanyu Kumar
Ghulam Muhammad Sheikh?

Hoshang Merchant
Ghulam Muhammad Sheikh. Kakkar was a sweet man.

Abhimanyu Kumar
So, you won’t defend his painting but you defend the man. It is the opposite in the case of Ezekiel?

Hoshang Merchant
One good poem he wrote was the Night of the Scorpion. And he was called a scorpion by the school children! “Scorpio!”, “Scorpio!” (laughs) But he could laugh at himself. You know the Parsis and the Jews are very similar. They laugh at themselves. He was also a miser. Getting a free meal out of somebody. Ezekeil had been un-housed. His wife kicked him out.

Abhimanyu Kumar
And then he had dementia later on.

Hoshang Merchant
I think the dementia came from not eating vegetables. Raj Rao, who wrote a biography of his, told me that he used to go shopping for her. He would bring two full bags, of vegetables, fruits, fish, meat and leave it at the door. And go. But that woman wouldn’t invite him in, wouldn’t cook for him, wouldn’t feed him because she was hurt by his behaviour.

Abhimanyu Kumar
Whose behaviour?

Hoshang Merchant
Nissim nearly married that woman, no? Who has translated Kabir. That American-Jewish woman. When she came here as a young girl – all this is also in the biography (by Raj Rao) – he fell in love with her and he nearly wanted to marry her. Mrs Ezekiel didn’t want to lose a husband. She went to the Ambassador at the consulate and said- Get this girl’s visa cancelled. That girl came back later as a scholar, after or during her PhD.

Abhimanyu Kumar
And to whose door would Ezekiel take the provisions?

Hoshang Merchant
To his wife’s door.

Abhimanyu Kumar
After she had kicked him out?

Hoshang Merchant
He felt it his duty. He was a dutiful man. Nissim always paid his dues. See, there is no hero and there is no villain. (Laughs). There is a heroism in the villain and there is a villainy in the hero. And if people can’t understand that, they can’t understand anything.

Abhimanyu Kumar
So, you are saying he was not a bad person and an ok poet.

Hoshang Merchant
See, he hated homosexuality. That could also be – Thou shall not lie with the man, from the Bible. That could be one. Secondly, in every poet, there is some femininity. Now, one way of overcoming it is serial adultery. To show that you are a…

Abhimanyu Kumar
Macho?

Hoshang Merchant
Macho man. My father’s generation, they didn’t analyse themselves like that. They might have read Freud but they didn’t think it applied to them.

Abhimanyu Kumar
You have had a very difficult relationship with your father.

Hoshang Merchant
My father was a crippled human being. I talked to Whabiz (sister) about it. My parents had such fights; I think they had sexual problems actually. I think my mother was a bit of a man and my father was a bit of a woman and neither wanted to acknowledge that. We were children, we were ten-years-old and they would tumble out of the bedroom at two in the night, three in the night, quarrelling, and we would see blood on the floor. I mean, which is a kind of orgasm really, a substitute to orgasm. My sister said – They were sick people, Hoshang. They didn’t know what to do with their sexualities.

Abhimanyu Kumar
And, this was a regular occurrence?

Hoshang Merchant
Oh my God! Huge! I mean, what could you do. Even if I were not gay, I would not have married. The only marriage we know as children is our parents’ marriage. We don’t know what the neighbour is doing. They are all pretending to be Virgin Marys and Jesus Christs.

Abhimanyu Kumar
And around this time, you pick a lover. There is a train station involved, you are young, he is an older man.

Hoshang Merchant
That is the gay activity of Bombay. The older gays initiate the children. Now, I don’t know whether it happens or not. Now, nobody is so frustrated. There is Tinder. And what is the other one?

Abhimanyu Kumar
Bumble?

Hoshang Merchant
I don’t know, something like that. So, why should anyone have sex in the trains? But Tinder and all are very dangerous. I would rather cruise, because at least I am seeing the person. I know someone who used Grindr…

Abhimanyu Kumar
Yeah, Grindr.

Hoshang Merchant
So, he met someone through Grindr and instead of one, three men showed up, three toughs, and one of them said- I will cut your throat, if you don’t give me 50 thousand rupees. And this man got off by giving five thousand rupees and he still cruises.

Abhimanyu Kumar
Isn’t some kind of danger a precursor to thrill and pleasure?

Hoshang Merchant
That’s true. I went to study in Provincetown in America which is a gay town and my postman was a gay!

Abhimanyu Kumar
What do you mean it’s a gay town?  

Hoshang Merchant
I mean the gays go there during summers for fun.

Abhimanyu Kumar
But you had a very terrible experience cruising in America once?

Hoshang Merchant
No, but that was not a gay town. It was a horrible honky-tonk town. One horse, one carriage town.

Abhimanyu Kumar
There was a Mexican labourer involved.

Hoshang Merchant
No, the big beating up was done by a footballer who was crippled and had gained so much weight.

Abhimanyu Kumar
So, there were two such incidents?

Hoshang Merchant
Yeah. See, I have to do everything two times. I am a donkey, I never learn it the first time. Small town America is full of corruption.

I was seducing my teacher in those days. I used to wear a halter-top without a blouse and I would take off my windcheater jacket and the teacher would go – ah! And the girls would all giggle. The girls also had a crush on the same teacher! (laughs)

Abhimanyu Kumar
You have written a very moving essay on Kamala Das. Do you identify with her?

Hoshang Merchant
Who is writing about sex?  Kamala is writing about it. Anaiis Nin is writing about sex. Hoshang Merchant wanted to talk about sex but he did not have the vocabulary. The women gave him the vocabulary. Nissim Ezekiel said, Anaiis Nin is the wrong choice for you. Who is he to tell me what I should choose? He is too respectable, you see?

Abhimanyu Kumar
What do you think of Don Moraes?

Hoshang Merchant
Oh, he was a good poet. But he had to make a living.

Abhimanyu Kumar
Journalism ruined his poetry?

Hoshang Merchant
Yes. But some of the later poems are good. But at the end he was just a hack. This is the trouble with Indian publishing – bada naam hai, chhota kaam hai? publish kar do. Bikega. (Big name but poor quality work? Publish as it will sell.) But that’s wrong, no? I know I am bad but I am being published, so I keep writing. Because I have to make a living.

Abhimanyu Kumar
And Nambisan?

Hoshang Merchant
See, he was a limited poet.

Abhimanyu Kumar
So, he had run out of it?

Hoshang Merchant
His alcoholism ruined him. His wife Kaveri may not agree with me but basically, he was a gay man. He was so kind to me. Because he did not hate the gay in himself. He acknowledged it.

Abhimanyu Kumar
He was not hostile to you?

Hoshang Merchant
Oh, he was so sweet, so kind! No wonder he ended up in the madhouse. He was in a padded cell. He used to harm himself, bang his head against the wall. He would dry out, come back and then it would start again.

Abhimanyu Kumar
So, it was more like a rehab?

Hoshang Merchant
I don’t know what it was exactly. Raj Rao told me. He was their neighbour in Pune… You know, Kaveri was a very docile person. I spent a weekend with them. And he just drank himself into a stupor.

Abhimanyu Kumar
It is really frustrating with drunks.

Hoshang Merchant
What could his wife do? She was a doctor but could not help her husband with his alcoholism. He died on her, which is not fair to her.

Abhimanyu Kumar
So, the Bombay school did not end up well…

Hoshang Merchant
There is always womanising and alcohol. Alcohol has haunted the Bombay School. They are all alcoholics.

Abhimanyu Kumar
How do you see Ezra Pound’s Fascism?

Hoshang Merchant
When we were growing up, you had to choose either America or Russia. When he was growing up, it was either Europe or America. Europe has turned to fascism. I talk about this in my new book which will come out from Australia – All My Masters.  He was a card-carrying Fascist. He was fooled by Mussolini. Mussolini fooled not only Ezra Pound but the whole of Italy. He had rallies of his lumpen-proletariat against the capitalist and the rich. But he was also helping them amass wealth and do what they wanted to do, as they were propping him up in power. You see? So, he was fooled by Mussolini. Even Tagore was fooled by Mussolini. And Romain Rolland said – please recant, Mussolini is no angel… FBI director Edgar Hoover wanted Ezra Pound locked up. He went in 1945 and came out in eight years. Hemingway sent him a check of 1000 pounds. I went to Ezra Pound’s house. That cheque is in plexiglass and is made into a paperweight. He did not cash that cheque. He was so noble! Only Hemingway gave him money, everyone else gave him only lip-sympathy. If you are locked up in the madhouse for eight years, you would need money when you come out, no? See, we cannot judge them. These are extraordinary people.

Abhimanyu Kumar
You think your Pound Pastiches has suffered due to the prejudice against Pound?

Hoshang Merchant
(In an agitated voice) Of course! The West refuses to touch him. They are so stupid. I am not talking about his politics, I am talking about his art! He has given me the whole world. Who hasn’t imitated Pound? Robert Duncan, the whole Black Mountain School of poetry…

Abhimanyu Kumar
Ginsberg liked him.

Hoshang Merchant
Ginsberg was a Jew and he went and saw Pound. Pound (later) said it was a mistake, it was wrong. Do people have generosity? It is easy to judge but they were in the thick of things.  

Hoshang Merchant is India's first openly gay poet. He is the author of 30 books of poetry and 5 books of Gay theory. His latest book of poems Paradise isn't Artificial came out of the Red River press last month. His lifework is archived at Cornell University Ithaca. He won the Rainbow Warrior award in 2019. Being born in 1947, he is as old as his nation. His work is considered instrumental in the overturning of anti-Gay laws of India in 2018.

Abhimanyu Kumar is a journalist based out of Delhi. His first book of poems Milan and the Sea was published in 2017. His poems have been published in several Indian and international journals such as Cafe Dissensus, Underground Books, Riot Feliceand others. Being an admirer of the works of Beat writers, in particular Allen Ginsberg, Abhimanyu likes to explore political themes in his work and to focus on the personal. He also edits the online magazine Sunflower Collective, which promotes the work of Beat and Hungry Generation writers, the latter being a group of persecuted radical writers based in the east of India in the 1960s.