Free Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India by Parmesh Shahani Page B

hybridity—
    not as something that happens when transparently ‘Western’ identities impact on transparently ‘other’ cultures, but rather as the basic condition of cultures on both sides of the ‘East or West’ divide (wherever that might fall…) at this moment in the concurrent processes of decolonization and the globalization of economies. Altman’s article assumes that the incur-sion of literature or imagery produced in the US, Australia and Europe 58 Gay
    Bombay
    into ‘other’ parts of the world means that ‘a very Western notion of how to be homosexual’ is swallowed whole and easily digested by women and men in those other cultures who then begin to exhibit the symptoms of the ‘global gay or lesbian’—you see an American-produced poster in a women’s bookshop in downtown Taipei, rush out and buy yourself a stick of Pillarbox Red at Watson’s and BAM, you’re a ‘global lipstick lesbian’.
    This account assumes that it is always only the ‘American’ side of the exchange that holds the power; that the ‘other side’ will never return to seriously disrupt ‘our’ assumptions and forms (might this be one of the attractions of such an account…?) (Fran Martin, 1996)167
    I am uncomfortable that Altman’s hypothesis only lightly brushes by the rich diversity of specifically local sexualities (such as kothi culture).
    However, I am pleased to note that his ‘global queering’ does not only refer to fashion and entertainment but also to the positive effects of the global battle against the spread of HIV and AIDS—
    The imperatives of AIDS education have pushed embryonic gay communities in a number of non-Western countries to create organizations, usually along Western lines, to help prevent HIV transmission among homosexual men. In many parts of the world, you can now find ‘gay’
    organizations, which use Australian, American, German literature and posters as part of AIDS education campaigns, and in doing so spread a very Western notion of how to be homosexual. (Altman, 1996)168
    On my visits to the Humsafar centre in Bombay,169 I have often observed some of these posters and it does feel a little strange seeing images of say, two white guys embracing each other advocating safe sex to Bombayites, so I turn back to Appadurai’s heterogenization model as a way to break through this restrictive ‘either global McGay or pristine local tradition’ (Berry and Martin, 2003)170 logjam, understanding that the poster means something else when viewed in Bombay. I also keep in mind that both the global queering and the local particularities line of reasoning have often been used by harsh governments to clamp down on their own citizens, even in India.171
    Manfred Stegar notes that, ‘Globalization is not merely an objective process, but also a plethora of stories that define, describe and analyze that process’ (2003).172 I hope that the evocative stories contained within Introduction 59
    this book will help create an understanding of some aspect of globalization as a lived experience in Gay Bombay (as well as the context of Gay Bombay), from a close to the ground perspective.
    NET GAINS
    For someone who has covered the commercial arrival of the Internet in India extensively within the Indian press, organized one of the first mass surfing spectacles in Bombay through my newspaper youth club and been a part of every industry networking association in the city, gay chat is a pretty late discovery. I buy my first personal computer in 1996 at the age of 20, but it is not until 1998 that I get my first Internet connection—my primary use of the Net in the interim consists of checking my Hotmail account weekly at a friend’s place. Having my own Internet account opens up the portal to the wonderful world of gay porn, informational websites and real-time messaging, which is where I first learn about IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and then the India-Countrywide room on Gay.com.
    This is a place that is even