Delhi’s gay scene turns straight

In the year since the Delhi High Court’s landmark verdict repealing Section 377, the city’s gay scene has come of age. Time: Late evening. Place: Central Park, Connaught Place. Props: Trees, pathways, bushes and men — young and old, masculine and effeminate. Under unlit lamps, some are eyeing each other; some are starting conversations, and some are having sex behind the bushes, which is always quick. 9 pm is the park’s closing time.

The New Age

This slice of Delhi’s gay life is almost history and not just because Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had taken over the park to build Rajiv Chowk terminus. Exactly a year after the legalisation of gay sex by the Delhi High Court, the social life of the city’s homosexuals is more open and as engaging, or dull, as that of straight people.

“When DMRC closed the Central Park, there was no mass wailing,” says Anuj Bakaya, a doctor who was a regular to the park. “We were too busy hooking up on man-to-man chat sites.” Those were the last days of cruising, the gay slang for walking about a locality in search of a sex partner.

Changing Times

For the next few years, though, the Sunday evenings in Nehru Park (the part facing the Ashoka Hotel) remained a popular meeting destination for the gay community. “Fashion designers, foreign diplomats and college students went there,” says Himanshu Dutta, a freelance writer. “But there was always this scare of being harassed by the park guards or the cops.” Section 377 of the constitution, which criminalised homosexual sex, was feared as an easy tool for persecution. (It was this colonial law that was overturned by the court last year.)

By the turn of the century, Delhi’s gay nightlife had evolved beyond hurried gropings in gardens and Blueline buses. Gay bashes were being regularly held in Chhattarpur and Kapashera farmhouses. Pegs N Pints club in Chanakayapuri was hosting Tuesday-night gay parties.

A few more nightclubs also started ‘gay nights’ to grab their share of the pink money. “But it was all hush-hush,” says Mohnish K Malhotra, a gay-rights activist who is also associated with the Delhi Queer Pride Committee. “All that changed after the first pride parade in 2008 when thousands of gay and lesbian people marched into Jantar Mantar declaring to the city that yes, we exist.”

You are gay, so?

Though homosexuality remains a taboo in most of Delhi society, being gay in a certain upper layer is no longer a novelty. The premier cultural spaces such as India Habitat Center regularly hosts gay-themed film festivals and book readings. “We are becoming normal and boring,” says Arit Sen, a DU student who likes dressing up in drag queen costumes.

V-day fest

Tomorrow evening, 5.30 pm onwards, the first anniversary of the High Court’s verdict will be celebrated in the park above Palika Bazaar parking, which incidentally remains one of the last surviving gay cruising joints in the Capital. The programme schedule was finalised last week on the terrace of the Indian Coffee House, the regular meeting site for the Queer Pride Committee. A rainbow of organisations will participate.

‘Saheli’ will sing songs. Delhi University’s ‘Queer Campus’ will do a talk session. ‘Mitr’ will perform a play. Some individuals will read poetry. One woman will dress up as actor Govinda and dance like him. The most emotional moment may be a reading of excerpts from the Delhi High Court judgement.