The secrets of a boys’ hostel

Author, academic R Raj Rao needs no introduction. He was associated with India’s first gay film (Riyad Vinci Wadia’s BomGay in 1996) and published the country’s first gay novel (The Boyfriend, 2003). He is also a poet and was part of India’s gay rights movement much before the country was comfortable discussing alternative sexual identities.

As his new novel Hostel Room 131 (published by Penguin) hits bookstores across the country, the author talks about gay writing in India.

Hostel Room 131 is being marketed as a gay novel. This is the politics of minority writing, where the issue is foregrounded. How do you negotiate the issue, and more importantly, what’s the novel is about?

I guess what you mean is that the ‘issue’ is foregrounded, as opposed to the art. This is a view that I have been resisting for years. My training is in literature. Form is much more important to me than content. Anyone who has taken the trouble to go through my entire body of work, will see for himself how much experimentation there is. That my book is a gay love story is only incidental.

Full report here New Indian Express