I burst into his office and poked my head through the small opening that served both as a reception desk and a dispensary for medications. The young man who worked there had come to know my face. He was polite but somewhat disdainful in his manner. He no doubt knew of his boss’s sexual tendencies and projected them onto most of his male clients as well.
‘I’d like to see the doctor please,’ I said.
‘Doctor sahib is not in. He’s taking lunch.’
It wasn’t usually necessary to make appointments in advance when consulting a local doctor in India; you simply showed up and waited your turn. I glanced at my watch. It was 1 pm. Lunch could take any amount of time, especially if a siesta followed it. I toyed with the idea of returning later, but given my state of mind I decided to wait. Two other people had been waiting before me. I had long since become resigned to waiting in India and always brought some reading material to help fill the void. Forty-five minutes later, the doctor ambled in. He cast a quick glance in my direction and entered his consulting room. The first patient only took a few minutes, but the second was with him for close to 20. Finally, it was my turn.
‘So what’s the problem today?’
I was in no mood for small talk and so went straight for the jugular.
‘I referred one of my friends to see you a couple of weeks ago. Kelvin was his name. Do you remember him?’
He hesitated for the briefest moment before answering.
‘Yes, I think I do.’
‘Kelvin told me that someone had warned him not to have sex with me because I am always getting diseases.’
‘Sounds like he may have been given some good advice.’
‘I was puzzled how he knew so much about me.’
‘I’m sure your reputation is around this town by now. You don’t exactly melt into the crowd, do you? And you know how cliquish the club is.’
‘Maybe, but it struck me as rather coincidental that Kelvin received this advice after coming to you for help.’
I was warming up to deliver my final punch. The doctor blinked several times, as if maneuvering to avoid the blow. It was too late to pull back. He’d decided to stand his ground. His face turned a brighter shade of pink.
‘You are always coming in here with one thing after another because of your sexual escapades. What did you expect me to say to him? Nothing?’
‘I’d have expected you to be more discreet in giving advice and naming names. What about the Hippocratic Oath, medical ethics and client confidence?’
‘How dare you lecture me about how I should conduct my business! You foreigners think you can come here and act so morally superior.’
I was shocked at how much he despised me, while all the time he’d given me the impression that we had a much more genial relationship. I had totally misread him. Before I could reply, he continued.
‘You’re always picking up boys off the street. You don’t know where they’ve been or what they’ve got. Why don’t you keep to those a little more educated and sophisticated.’
That was all I needed to send a parting shot across his bow.
‘Now who’s doing the lecturing? Don’t you think I’ve wanted to meet guys like that? I don’t have connections like you do in those circles. You have always been telling me about your friends and their wonderful parties and offering to introduce me to them, but you never have.’
‘Can you blame me?’
‘Yes, I do!’
With that, I turned on my heels and stomped out of his clinic. As I raced down two flights of stairs, I wondered how many other young men in Bombay he’d warned about me. This was not the kind of reputation I was proud of, although maybe one I deserved.
* * *
As devastating as this experience was, it didn’t deter me from continuing my evening sorties, although every time I met someone I knew, I wondered whether he had been advised to steer clear of me, either from my doctor or via the inevitable gay grapevine. Several weeks passed and my meetings with Kelvin trickled to a halt. I met old friends less frequently and began to sense clouds of depression gathering on my horizon. Then, one night, as I was making my way to the Bandstand, I turned a corner and came face to face with one of my young colleagues. It was about 7.30 pm and as far as I knew he stayed home most evenings, so I was surprised to run into him.
‘Vikas, fancy meeting you here!’ I exclaimed.
As soon as I had spoken the words I realized how absurd they sounded. He could well have said the same of me. He was a quietly spoken man, well groomed, and took pride in his appearance. Occasionally, he would let slip a coy smile but mostly he presented a serious demeanor. I had had little to do with him but found him pleasant to be around. When the Lavender League had played the game ‘I wonder who else might be gay,’ his name had come up as a possible candidate, but I’d dismissed it as speculation.
‘I’m going to a movie at the Regal,’ he said.
There were several cinemas in the vicinity so it was quite a plausible story.
‘Oh, what’s showing?’
I didn’t mean to interrogate him but I was groping for ideas to keep words flowing between us. He hesitated, as if to come up with a suitable film title.
‘Uh, Mad Max II, I think it is called.’
The Regal did show a lot of foreign films, but I couldn’t imagine Vikas going for something as violent as Mad Max. It didn’t seem to gel at all with his gentle manner.
‘Well, enjoy the movie,’ I said, as I waved him good-bye and proceeded to the Bandstand.
When I glanced back, he was progressing across the maidan towards the theater. A strange coincidence, I thought, to have run into Vikas in this part of the city at this time of night, but after my experiences in Delhi and Calcutta I’d come to expect such serendipitous encounters in India.
About a week later, I arrived at the Bandstand around 8 pm to find Akbar in a huddle with several others. As we chatted, I couldn’t help scan the park for other faces that attracted my attention. So natural had this habit become that I sometimes didn’t realize I was doing it. My eyes surveyed the crowd and came to rest on a figure on the other side of the rotunda. I blinked several times to confirm what I thought I had seen. Noticing I’d been distracted, Akbar broke in.
‘Seen someone you fancy, have you?’
‘Well, sort of,’ I replied, ‘but if I’m not mistaken, it’s one of my own colleagues.’
Excusing myself, I started walking around the rotunda to the other side. I couldn’t think fast enough to plan what to say, so I decided to go straight up to him and let instinct take its course.
‘Hey Vikas, good to see you,’ I exclaimed, trying to subdue my mixture of delight and surprise.
‘Good to see you too,’ he said.
‘Do you come here often?’
‘Not a lot. I only started coming a month or so ago.’
The young man sitting next to him stood up and began to move away.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you,’ I said.
‘No problem. Please sit,’ said Vikas.
This was not a conversation I had ever thought I would have and was certainly not one I was prepared for. I wanted to give Vikas a firm hug but not even gay men in India would dare do that publicly. How often I’d squirmed when one of our newly arrived foreign staff broke this basic rule of cultural etiquette. But words were hard to come by right now, even though I had dozens of questions. Vikas probably did too.
‘How did you find out about this place?’ I asked.
‘I met a guy from the Navy Men’s Hostel just down the road. He told me about it.’
I’d heard rumors of sailors from the hostel frequenting the Bandstand, but to my disappointment I’d never met any. Vikas had, and from what he told me, he’d thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
‘You know, when I ran into you on your way to the cinema, I had my doubts you were telling the truth.’
‘Well, partly. I had arranged to meet my friend there. That’s where w
e first met.’
Vikas’s audacity and sense of adventure astonished me. There was more to him than I would have guessed from observing him at home and in the office. He had whetted my appetite and I couldn’t wait to find out more. How long had he been conscious he was gay? Did he know if any of our other Indian colleagues were? Was he aware of the existence of the Lavender League? Did he know anything about this new disease affecting gay men? Although I found him attractive, I decided I would never make any sexual advances to him. He was like a younger brother and the line I had drawn between my personal and professional lives remained firmly intact. I felt quite avuncular towards him in a protective kind of way. I suggested we meet to have a good talk and he readily agreed.
Just then, I sensed both of us needed a chance to digest the enormity of what had just happened. I wasn’t sure what was going through his mind but a major implosion had taken place in mine. After more than three and a half years of exploring all corners of this megalopolis and a number of other cities across this vast country in search of gay men, I had discovered one living and working under our own roof and who shared many of the same values and constraints. I wanted to jump up and down and scream out loud. In an odd way, all my nefarious undertakings now seemed strangely justified.
As keen as I was to talk further with Vikas, that wasn’t possible right away, since I was about to go on another trip to Calcutta. But as soon as I returned to Bombay we settled for a glass of lassi at a local dairy shop. It became clear that Vikas had only recently begun to pursue his attraction to other young men. In this way, I was only a little more advanced in the game than he was, although a few years older, but he had a head start on me by about a dozen years.
As I spun for him the tale of my last few years, he listened with rapt attention. There were parts I skipped over and skirted around, since I didn’t want to inundate him with too much too soon. He had no knowledge of the Lavender League but was eager to consider himself a part of it. Like me, he had assumed he was utterly alone in the organization in his quest to come to terms with his interest in his own sex. To have found someone with whom he could share his precious secret was a blessing he had never expected. I showed him articles and books that other League members had sent me and talked about our plans for meeting at our staff gathering in Chicago in eight months’ time. Vikas said little, but nodded affirmatively.
When I realized how quickly time was passing and how little I had heard from him, I tossed the ball back into his court. I asked him if he knew of any other colleagues in India who were of our persuasion. He hesitated for a second, glancing first at the floor and then out into street.
‘I don’t think anybody else in Bombay is gay,’ he said, ‘at least among our Indian staff.’ I was aware that he and other young Indian men took their morning bath together in one of our two small bathrooms. But I also knew that Indian men never bathed naked, preferring to cover themselves with their lungi or underwear while dousing themselves with water. If there had been moments when even a furtive glance had passed between them, he surely would have known.
‘So, what about other places?’ I asked.
‘Well, there was someone once, in a village where I was assigned. You remember Wadgaon?’
How could I forget? It was one of the first villages where I had lived and worked in India, and the first in which I had been assigned as project director. The village boasted a proud Maratha heritage and caste still ruled with an iron fist. Hours of meetings with neighboring villages and endless trips with village leaders to the offices of government officials—even to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra—had consumed much of my stay in that village, with little to show for it at the end of it all.
But there was one recollection from that time that stayed with me. Among its population of several hundred were a number of young men who I had found exceptionally good looking, even before my heightened awareness of my own sexual inclinations. Coming from upper and middle castes, they would cavort together in the village, when not attending college. During the summer holidays, they would swim in one of the village wells, splashing around in their underwear that often revealed their proud manliness. When I had once accidentally stumbled upon them frolicking together, one of them invited me to join them, but at that time the call of duty had overruled such personal pleasures.
After my work in Wadgaon was over, I was replaced by a Canadian, whose team Vikas was assigned to. As he sat across the table from me, one hand around the empty lassi glass and the other touching his chin, he told me something that caused my jaw to drop, partly in disbelief and partly out of envy.
‘Did you know Joe was asked to leave Wadgaon?’
I confessed I didn’t.
‘He enjoyed with some of the young men in the village.’
I was touched by Vikas’s quaint and succinct way of putting it. I was inclined to respond, ‘God, how I wish I had, too!’ but propriety got the better of me.
‘So what happened exactly?’
‘When word leaked out, there was a big fuss and the panchayat told him to leave the village.’
I recalled hearing that Joe had been reassigned to another village in mid-term but I had never asked why. I thought about the warm send-off I had been given, along with kind words and a silk shawl. While I felt sad about the manner of Joe’s departure it also reaffirmed my decision to separate my personal life from my professional life, especially in villages.
I decided not to probe further, in spite of my deep desire to know more about Joe’s activities and any possible part Vikas may have played in them. There would be opportunities later, I felt sure. I was pleased Vikas trusted me enough to share what he had, and I was concerned not to damage our budding relationship. I wanted to nurture it as best I could, while dealing with my own unfolding journey.
BRIDGING THE GAP
Early in 1983, I invited my mother to visit me in India. This was no spur-of-the-moment decision. The groundwork for it had been laid the previous year when Sir James and his wife had visited my mother in Perth on one of their treks to promote the exposition. They had presented her with a small gift from me and urged her strongly to consider visiting India while I was still there. I had also enlisted the support of one of her closest friends, who had been gently but persistently urging her to make the trip.
At 66 and in good health, my mother was still quite able to travel. Besides, while she had visited my sister’s family in Canada several times, she had never paid a visit to me in the 12 years since I had left home. Granted, my peripatetic lifestyle and my participation in the Institute hadn’t offered her much incentive. Moreover, unlike my sister, I had not married and presented her with any grandchildren to entice her to come. I had turned out to be a grievous disappointment compared to the son she imagined I would be. When my high school foreign languages teacher spun tales about my attending the national university and entering the Australian diplomatic corps, visions of my having a secure career and residing in fine quarters must have preyed on her susceptible imagination. My living on a dung floor in a mud hut in a poor Indian village would never have crossed her mind.
After my mother gave a tentative nod to my invitation, letters began to flow back and forth. We would have a little over two weeks together and all of India to spend them in. Even though I’d lived and worked in the country for over five years, I had never played tourist. Where to go, what to do, whom to meet in 16 days in India? The possibilities were endless, the choices paralyzing. As always, I erred on the side of too much. I wanted to give my mother a taste of both rural and urban life, of classical India and modern India, of friends and colleagues, of air travel and rail travel, of five-star luxury and village simplicity. I wrote to friends, visited travel agents, and read up on places I had never imagined I would visit. In this flurry of activity, one person was pivotal.
Anil was the middle-aged managing director of a chemical manufacturing company in Bombay who had supported our work in the villages. Along with his job came a spac
ious condominium in Bombay’s exclusive Malabar Hill and a company guesthouse in Delhi, as well as a car and driver in both cities. He welcomed me to stay in his home whenever I wanted, use his company phone for international calls, and offered to carry packages back and forth between me and my mother on his visits to Australia. When he heard my mother was coming to India, he insisted we stay with him in Bombay and at his company’s guesthouse in Delhi, as well as use his car and drivers. His only regret was that he would be in Australia visiting his family during the time of my mother’s visit, so he would not have the pleasure of hosting her.
He also introduced me to his travel agent to handle our itinerary. After years of standing in long lines at railway ticket offices, it felt surreal to have someone handle all the details and present me with an envelope full of tickets. I no longer needed to pretend to be a tourist in order to qualify for the limited quota of reserved train seats; I was one.
Not everything, however, went quite so swimmingly. Since Kolhapur had been such a fertile place in my experience of India, I felt compelled to share it with my mother, both the village in which I had lived and worked, and the city where I had many wealthy friends. But getting there and back proved more difficult than I had imagined. The overnight bus trip, even on the so-called ‘luxury’ bus, would mean a sleepless night, while the train from Bombay had only one first-class carriage, and within that only one private compartment with closed doors. Known as the VIP suite, it was available for politicians and government officials at short notice. Meaning to give my mother a modicum of privacy, I made a temporary reservation three months in advance—only after 1 pm on the day of travel would I learn if we were to be the lucky occupants of the compartment.
As months rolled into weeks and then days, anticipation of my mother’s visit kept rising until it began to consume me. I so much wanted it to be a success, for her as well as for me.
The day before she was to arrive, I moved from our staff quarters in the chaotic heart of old Bombay to Anil’s grand home in leafy Malabar Hill, where guards stood at the entrance to private compounds and fruit-wallahs sold papayas and mangoes at three times the price paid for them at the market. With my mother’s arrival in the early hours of the following morning, my sense of nervous anticipation peaked. That night, I hardly slept a wink.
The Boatman Page 19