E-Paper
Roundabout: What it meant to be gay yet sad in 70s’ Lutyens Delhi
The literary bureaucrat Robin Gupta, well known for his poems and memoirs, comes out with his debut novel at 75 in which he tells the tragi-comic story of an Indian prince fond of partying, drinking and handsome young men
Indian bureaucrats, schooled in the British traditions of Colonial India, just love to write: be it gazetteers, files, reports and even books. Apart from legends like Upamanyu Chatterjee who penned the memorable novel, “English August, An Indian Story” or Shri Lal Shukla who penned a classic in Hindi, “Raag Darbari”, others pen the predictable prose.
They write of their memorable journeys as men who mattered, the grandeur of their privileged families or the justification of their roles in the major political events of Independent India’s turbulent journey the past 76 years. Much of this writing is done safely after retirement when there is plenty of time and the dread of anonymity.
But my friend Robin Gupta, with a goblet in one hand and a pen in the other as he sailed through most of his life and career, is a class apart. Of course, his first major work, a memoir of sorts, too was written and published once out of the harness. Yet titled “And What Remains in the End: The Memoirs of an Unrepentant Civil Servant” was a bit of a shock for many of his friends and colleagues a bit baffled.
Gupta chose to relate the absurdity of life in a rather colourful manner mocking at the wives of civil-servants who take over the careers of their husbands like field-marshals and his own failed marriage, leaving quite a few baffled and shocked.
A walk through the secret city
And now a decade after his memoirs, he releases his novel this Sunday he releases his first novel on “Dilwalon ki Dilli” at his favourite Gymkhana Club, which the author says until the country’s independence, proclaimed at its entrance: “Dogs and Indians not allowed”.
Delhi has a long and troubled history and it has been the city which has won the hearts of poets and storytellers for long. Yes, the same Delhi for which the last Mughal Emperor and poet Bahadur Shah Zafar yearned for, when exiled in Rangoon in the British controlled Burma in 1958 for his support to the Indian Uprising of 1857: “Kitna Hai Badnaseeb Zafar Dafan Ke Liye, Do Gaz Zameen Bhi Na Mili Kooe Yaar Mein (How unfortunate is Zafar, that for burial he could not get even two yards of land near the beloved’s abode)”.
Yes, the same Delhi of which Zafar’s ustaad and court poet said: “Kaun jaye zauq dilli ki galiyan chhod kar (Who can leave the charming old lanes of Delhi).” This immortal line by Zauq won even the heart of his critic, the great Mirza Ghalib.
Coming back to the writing and concerns of writer Gupta, his passion is reciting his English translation of Zafar’s famous exile poem at get-togethers hosted by friends. And his way of moving away from the stress of life in our times is to visit the old monuments, be it the tomb of the sufis Jamali and Kamali in Mehrauli. Or to Nizamuddin to sit by walls of Humayun’s tomb, the first garden tomb built in 1570, which was to lead to many innovations in Mughal architecture leading to the building of the amazing Taj Mahal (completed in 1643).
However, in this one-of-its-kind novel, set in times when homosexuality was a sin and a crime, brilliantly edited by editor-publisher Ravi Singh, the author takes us not to the old heritage monuments but to Lutyens Delhi.
Like many of our generation Robin is a merry-mix of east and west and the eight cities of Delhi. And this time, we find ourselves in the ninth city of his hometown Delhi, in a princely home with the invented narrator titled “Hunchback of Hailey Road”. He tells us the story of the prince of Mubarakpur, a story which begins with the death and goes on to tell of his grand yet tragic life — much of it because of his sexual preferences. It is the gay underworld of Lutyens Delhi of the 70s and 80s that comes alive along with the masseurs in the Central Park of the Connaught Place. Robin spent many of his serving years in Chandigarh and Punjab and has a farmhouse in Panchkula but home was always Delhi.
No more giving away the story. It is to be a story that is to be read, to be felt and what remains in the end of this tender narration is the yearning for love as we often laugh saying, “True love is like ghosts, we have all heard of it, but have never seen it”. However, in this novel we see it in the beautiful relationship of the damned prince Rupinder Bir Singh alias Rupert, who lost his mother too early, with his governess June Bailey who stands by the boy she always loved and brought up.
The Summing Up
In the epilogue, the author sums up the contribution of men, with a different sexual orientation. to art literature and thought. The novel is commentary on the decadent, tragic lives of the princely order and the cruelty towards gay men in the different cities of Delhi. These men, many gifted, faced brutality from the police and were scoffed off by the straight.
As for the change from then and now, there is a vivid description:
“Central Park, which had survived the ravages of modernity once, when it was dug up for the construction of an underground market in the late 1970s, lost many of its trees and generous bushes and its nocturnal privacy through the1990s as Connaught Place became glitzier, noisier, coarser, high on the drug of commerce till long past midnight. Some years later, the underground metro killed the green island of love altogether.”
