Salon.com > Sandip Roy

Salman Rushdie, back on trial

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:10:00 +0000

The Jaipur Literature Festival is a remarkable thing. It calls itself “the greatest literary show on earth.” In many ways, it is. Over 70,000 people show up. It’s organized by writers, not event managers. It’s free. Great crocodiles of school children in winter blazers crowd its sessions. Turbaned men with splendidly curled mustaches ladle out steaming hot chai into clay cups for the attendees. Parrots squawk in the trees. Chipmunks chase each other up and down the branches while Nobel laureates and Booker winners hold forth on the lawns. Indian grandmothers and blonde European expats trample over each other, fiercely fighting for seats. (The grandmothers tend to win.) It is a literature festival. But it’s more of a boisterous Indian mela – a fairground where anyone can come.

“We wanted it to be a place where you could meet Salman Rushdie, not just read him. Before Jaipur, you might only have been able to see him at some British Council event,” said William Dalrymple, the festival’s genial host. That was just about a month ago.

The new colonialism of “Eat, Pray, Love”

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:20:00 +0000

For the longest time I thought "Eat, Pray, Love" was a sequel to "Eats, Shoots and Leaves."

Now I am enlightened. One is about the search for the meaning of life. The other is about the meaning of a comma.

I confess I never read Elizabeth Gilbert's bestseller except for browsing through a few pages in a copy sitting on a friend's bedside. I enjoyed the writing. Gilbert is warm and sympathetic. The story of picking yourself up after losing your way has universal appeal even if we all can't recharge under the Tuscan sun.

It's not Gilbert's fault but I have an instinctive reflex reaction to books about white people discovering themselves in brown places. I want to gag, shoot and leave.

In a way I almost prefer the old colonials in their pith helmets trampling over the Empire's far-flung outposts. At least they were somewhat honest in their dealings. They wanted the gold, the cotton, and laborers for their sugar plantations. And they wanted to bring Western civilization, afternoon tea and anti-sodomy laws to godforsaken places riddled with malaria and beriberi.

Proposition 8 and S.B. 1070: Sisters under the skin?

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:01:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO -- When I heard about Judge Robert Vaughn Walker’s ruling on same-sex marriage I immediately thought of one person: Judge Susan Bolton.

On July 28 Susan Bolton issued an injunction that defanged the anti-immigrant S.B. 1070 in Arizona. On Aug. 4, Vaughn Walker found California’s Proposition 8 that outlawed same-sex marriage unconstitutional. For this they will both be tarred as “judicial activists.” Judge Bolton has received death threats. Judge Walker is being denounced.

I have no idea if the two judges know each other, but within one week, they had suddenly brought together two parts of who I am. As a gay immigrant, I am used to juggling identities, never sure which one is acceptable in which setting, which one I should check at the door.

Now, suddenly, I feel the full weight of the U.S. Constitution behind both identities, affirming both of them. It is a rare feeling and a majestic one.

As Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney, told the crowd celebrating Judge Walker’s decision in front of San Francisco’s City Hall, "Good for us for fighting for the ideal of our country. And winning."

What Maine means for gay marriage in California

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:05:00 +0000

Paul Hogarth remembers how angry he was when Proposition 8 passed in California. “I witnessed the train wreck,” he says. “I was angry with how we blew it.” When same sex marriage came under attack in Maine, Hogarth, a blogger for the Web site Beyond Chron, decided he had to do something to help.

Hogarth’s friend Jay Cash had started a program called Travel for Change during the Obama campaign where people could donate airline miles so volunteers could go to swing states. Hogarth also started Volunteer Vacation so out-of-towners could get free housing if they went to volunteer for a week in Maine. For people on the Northeast’s I-95 corridor who might want to come up for a weekend of walking the precincts, Hogarth put together Drive for Equality, a carpool program.

“We were applying the lessons of the Obama campaign,” says Hogarth as the polls closed in Biddeford, Maine. “The No on 8 campaign was a top-down Hillary Clinton-style campaign. This was more of a bottom-up Obama-style campaign.”

Gay mecca no more

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:15:00 +0000

When I first moved to San Francisco from India, my aunt said, "Be careful, it's full of homosexuals. And it has earthquakes."

I didn't tell her that I wanted to feel the earth move. I had watched "The Times of Harvey Milk" on video and knew that this was where you came to be gay, from places where you didn't dare to say its name.

California drew not just the lonely teenagers from Idaho and Missouri on Greyhound buses. It also drew immigrants like me from all over the world seeking to put an ocean or two between them and their parents and clans trying to arrange their marriages. This was where software companies gave us domestic partner rights and the mayor marched in pride parades. This was where the world looked to see if change had come to America. And where we came for sanctuary.

But now the center of gravity is shifting. In the wake of the court decision on the legality of Proposition 8 (as opposed to its righteousness) there will be protests and candlelight marches and angry rhetoric. Already I am getting the faxes and e-mails. But perhaps it could also be a time for those of us who have been used to the world looking at us, to look out at the world instead. The pot of gold is shifting to the other end of the rainbow.

Guns and bombs in booming India

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 02:34:00 +0000

In India "the other" is already being identified, out of the rubble of luxury hotels and shattered glass. The Mumbai attackers were young men "based outside the country," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says. They came, we are told, by sea. Like pirates. Some may have been British citizens. When one of the hostage takers contacted an Indian news station, the journalist kept asking him "Where are you from?"

In short, are you Indian? Or are you "the other"?

Three days after the start of this awful siege, which has killed more than 150 and injured more than 300 people, I remember one of the first faces to emerge out of the horrifying scenes of burning hotels, sprawled bodies and uniformed police in Mumbai. "Is he one of the victims?" asked my roommate as we looked at the fuzzy image of a young man in a dark t-shirt, the word VERSACE written across it in white. My roommate obviously hadn't noticed the assault rifle he was holding.

That man whose image was beamed across the world could have been one of the victims. "They were very young, like boys really, wearing jeans and T-shirts," a British tourist told The Times.

Gays in the age of Obama

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:08:00 +0000

This is the image I'll always remember from Election Night 2008.

A gay man standing outside the grand ballroom of the St. Francis Westin Hotel in San Francisco. He had one finger to his ear to block out the hubbub inside, and an iPhone clamped to the other. "Honey," he was yelling into the phone, "I cried -- when Obama spoke, I cried."

Inside the ballroom it was bittersweet. Barack Obama was the president-elect. But same-sex marriage was being overturned by California voters. Proposition 8 was winning by a slim margin, but winning. In Arkansas, an adoption ban passed. In Arizona and Florida bans on same-sex marriage passed easily.

All this on a night when Obama swept the country in a landslide on a promise of change. On a night when pro-choice groups racked up victories. Even chickens had something to rejoice about in California.

In the end it seemed the gays were the scapegoats, the ones left behind at the back of the bus.

Had we asked for too much, too soon, from a country that was not ready to give us the full measure of our dignity?

It didn't seem that way in the ballroom of the St. Francis. In the heart of San Francisco's gay neighborhood, the Castro, it was New Year's Eve come a few months too early. But not any New Year's Eve -– a once-in-a-lifetime turn of the century.

Be gay, be anything — just not single!

Fri, 30 May 2008 10:44:00 +0000

When I left India for America, my aunts worried about who I might end up marrying. "I hope you'll marry another Bengali," an aunt told me. Over the years that relaxed to, "I hope she's a Hindu, even if she's not Bengali." Then it became, "At least another Indian," until finally we reached, "I hope you'll get married to someone before we all die."

She probably didn't mean another man.

But now it might just happen. Same-sex marriage is on a roll in California. First a Republican-dominated Supreme Court said there was no reason gays and lesbians couldn't get married. Now there comes a new Field Poll that says that, for the first time ever, a majority of Californians think same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

As the pink confetti settles around us, I'm left wondering how immigrants are going to come out anymore. Many of us come from countries that really don't have a word for "gay." India certainly doesn't. There are epithets and some rather technical terms. Coming out in India is usually about marriage, as in, "Mom, Dad, I don't think I am going to get married."

Now the California Supreme Court has yanked that coming-out line away.

We South Asians like our leaders dead

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:04:00 +0000

In death Benazir Bhutto might have managed to do what eluded her in the last years of her life. Dogged by rumors of corruption, accused of a coy dance of veils and on-again, off-again backroom deals with President Musharraf, derided as Washington's choice of a dictator with a pretty face, even previous assassination attempts on her were dismissed by cynics as publicity stunts. But in death, Bhutto showed the world that democracy in her part of the world can be deadly business. In life she was a politician. In death she became a martyr.

South Asians like their martyrs. My great-grandfather allegedly brought home a vial of some of the ashes of a teenage revolutionary hanged by the British. Khudiram had thrown a bomb at a British magistrate and gone to the gallows with a smile. Ironically, my great-grandfather worked for the British, in their police service. But he was so awed by young Khudiram's sacrifice, he used his official connections to get that vial, which he kept in his bedroom.

Don’t ask, don’t tell, Iranian style

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:45:00 +0000

At Columbia University Mahmoud Ahmadinejad established himself as the Great Denier -- of nuclear weapons, the Holocaust and homosexuals. "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country," he told the audience (see video below). "In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it."

Perhaps it was the ghosts of Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari.

On July 19, 2005, Marhoni and Asgari, both teenagers, were hanged publicly for homosexual sex in the Iranian city of Mashad. That was the year Ahmadinejad became president. Maybe what he meant to say is that in Iran we have no more homosexuals.

The loud, skeptical laughter from the audience showed that while some might still believe that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes, no one bought his homosexual-free zone.

But the problem lay in the question. Ahmadinejad was asked why his country denies women and homosexuals rights. If the questioner had asked the Iranian president about homosexual acts instead of a class of people known as "homosexuals," maybe Ahmadinejad would have conceded the existence of such a "phenomenon."

In defense of Larry Craig

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:25:00 +0000

I come to defend Larry Craig, not to bury him. He is a homophobe. He is a hypocrite. He is a holier-than-thou senator with feet of toilet paper. But Larry Craig has been forced to resign his seat for all the wrong reasons.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Craig's conduct "unforgivable." Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Craig, which he finally did on Saturday. But as far as I can make out from the audiotapes released of the conversation between Craig and Sgt. Dave Karsnia, Larry Craig did not have sex with the police officer. Larry Craig did not expose himself à la George Michael. Larry Craig did not offer Dave Karsnia any money to have sex with him. I didn't even hear Larry Craig ask Dave Karsnia to have sex with him.

How Opal Mehta saved our lives

Fri, 05 May 2006 17:20:00 +0000

Dear Kaavya Viswanathan,

I know this must come as small consolation to you these days, as dreams of book deals, film projects and maybe even Ivy League futures seem to wither on the vine. But as one Indian-American to another, I say thank you. I have to confess to a sneaking sense of relief when Opal Mehta's life came crashing down around you. It's not schadenfreude. It's just this relief that finally we can fail, that we can screw up spectacularly and live to tell the tale.

Only we Indian-Americans know it's hard out there for an overachieving Indian-American. It was bad enough that we were the anointed model minority. (Did you know our median income is higher than that of any other ethnic group in the United States? That we have 200,000 millionaires and 41,000 doctors?) Now we are expected to excel at everything we do. We are the first-class first minority. "Doesn't anyone's kid ever come second in anything anymore?" wondered a friend bemusedly listening to a group of Indian mothers at a potluck.

GayBombay

Mon, 02 Dec 2002 20:30:00 +0000

"I am Nikhil," says a bespectacled young man in khaki shorts. "You know, 'GayIndian69' on GB."

"GB" is GayBombay, a gay e-mail group literally springing to life before me in a sweltering rented hall. The smell of sweat, cologne and rich chicken tikka masala from a buffet is making my head spin.

More than 350 men are moving to the thumping beats of the latest hits from Bombay and New York. Most of them came to know about this party, indeed about each other, through the Web. In a country with no official gay bars, where gay sex is still criminal, the Internet has revolutionized gay life.

But even as it makes for resoundingly successful parties, some say the Internet comes with a price: It can keep gay men from really coming out.

Bombay has a gay group, the Humsafar Trust, which owns a drop-in center and publishes a magazine. But the online world has its own allure. Bhavesh (one name only, at his request), who set up the original GayBombay Web site, explains, "It was a safe way to access gay material and connect with other gay men while still remaining anonymous."

Terrorist or dissident?

Wed, 03 Oct 2001 08:56:00 +0000

As international attention and newsprint focus on President Bush's "Operation Enduring Freedom," human rights organizations fear that many world governments are literally getting away with murder.

"Governments committing human rights abuses are taking heart," says Carroll Bogert, communications director of Human Rights Watch. "If and when they join this U.S.-led coalition against terror, they could -- at the minimum -- find less attention being given to their own human rights abuses."

U.S. media focus on the attacks and impending "war on terrorism" has caused other stories to slip off their radar screens. Even the case of missing Washington intern Chandra Levy, which dominated front pages for months, has disappeared. Human rights struggles that rely on media attention and public opinion are becoming invisible victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Take the case of "The Cairo 52." Last May, the Egyptian government detained 52 gay men in a discotheque in Cairo and charged them with "obscene behavior" and "contempt of religion." On Sept. 18, one of them -- a teenager -- was sentenced to three years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed.