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Santanu Bhattacharya’s Deviants tells the story of three generations of queer men, related by blood, separated by the times they live in. Deviants chronicles the lives of a young man named Vivaan, his uncle Mambro, and his grand-uncle Sukumar. Each of these characters experiences love in their unique ways, their sexual freedom dictated by the times they live in. In the end, what unites them is being at odds with a society which is governed by love laws and heteronormativity. This isolates them and drives them to feel shame at times. Tender and heartbreaking, these are tales of love, family, and dignity.
Vivaan: Emotional turmoil of new-age romantic relationships
Through Vivaan’s story, the reader explores the new-age experience of a 17-year-old boy experimenting with his sexuality. Vivaan’s partner Zee introduces him to a new world of sexual adventures and a trusting community of individuals who share sexual partners. It starts as an exciting adventure for Vivaan when he is made to expand his boundaries but it soon changes his relationship with Zee in ways he doesn’t want. Sex takes precedence over movie dates and emotional intimacy and Vivaan finds himself longing for his partner. The young men have no frame of reference for their relationship which liberates their desires but at the same time, Vivaan finds himself confused about his emotional needs.
Vivaan distracts himself from the emotional turmoil of his relationship by watching porn. Zee is in love with two men and wants Vivaan to practise ethical non-monogamy while Vivaan finds himself longing for something less adventurous and complicated. He is not willing to share Zee. They have arguments about their desires as a gay couple and how that ought to be different from cis-het normative desires. This is happening at a time when there is growing acceptance for homosexuality in the country as lawyers fight to legalise gay marriage. Homosexuality has been already decriminalised and section 377, repealed. However, Zee wants to reject the idea of monogamy and marriage altogether and Vivaan is told that desires are regressive. He thinks, “I was in a situationship with the person I thought loved me, I was a traitor to the parents who’d trusted me. I was a disappointment to an uncle who’d gifted me the privilege of being open by coming out himself. I was a black sheep of the school for not wanting the things everyone else wanted. I was too vanilla for my futurist partner, too blasphemous for my conscientious teachers, too adult for my juvenile friends. I was neither this nor that, neither here, nor there, never enough, yet never me.”
Mambro: Living in the shadows
Mambro’s story brings out the cruelty of heterosexual men on college campuses where they bully their peers in the name of ragging. Mambro initially becomes popular with his peers for his confidence but is later outed through the discovery of his private journals. From then on, he becomes a target for attacks and ruthless “pranks”. He is lonely and scared but he cannot share this with his parents or sister. He wants to maintain a sense of peace in his safe space which is his home.
There might have been solace in having an uncle who is also gay but Mambro finds himself hiding in the shadows. “And there is Mamu, your mother’s brother; he is gay, no one has told you that but you know about him like you know about yourself. There is something about your uncle not because he’s excellent at art, or because his mannerisms are mild; it is his inability to fit into the world, he always seems just outside the framework within which everyone lives, stands out in a peculiar way, they way you do too…. One day you will tell your uncle’s story to your nephew, tracing a delicate bloodline of forbidden love across three generations, three renegade young men fifty years apart, you at the centre of it.”
Mambro is living in a time where there is a crackdown on homosexual men, and money and oral sex are being extorted from them. He wonders if this is the storm before the calm when section 377 will be repealed. As he lives double lives, keeping his sexuality a shameful secret, he wonders if his generation of gay men is paying the price so future generations can openly live a life of dignity.
Sukumar: The longing for domestic intimacy
There is a moment in the book when Sukumar places a hand on his lover, X’s, back in public. Bhattacharya writes, “But there was something so disproportionate about the move, the touch, the intensity, that a few heads turned, trained as the world is to notice the slightest of deviances.” It is about moments like this, big and small, in which Bhattacharya’s leading men find themselves on the margins of society, isolated because of their desires, longing to belong. For Sukumar, coming of age in the late 70s, falling in love with X was dangerous. What did the future hold for someone like him? “A long legacy littered with broken hearts, quashed dreams, duplicitous lives”, Bhattacharya writes.
Sukumar desired to be X’s wife. Later when X gets married and has a son, he decides to share his son with Sukumar who longed for a child. Because of X, Sukumar feels blessed to be a lover and a parent. Bhattacharya writes about how Sukumar’s desires were different from that of Mambro and Vivaan. He goes against his mother’s wishes to raise X’s son instead of marrying a woman and having a child of his own. “Did the child fill a vacuum that had started to form, as many middle-aged adults may feel, a primaeval urge to pass on their talents and teachings, to find a way to keep themselves alive after they’ve gone? Or did his devotion to the boy (X’s son) ensure that X stayed close, the promise of love melded with the reality of duties? Or was it not that visceral and strategic at all, was it far simpler, that Sukumar just wanted to be like everyone else, to be part of this game of playing house that the whole world seemed to be so immersed in; perhaps X’s son finally gave Sukumar the license to feel normal?” writes Bhattacharya.
As Sukumar embraces his queerness, his relationship with religion takes on a new intensity. He feels it must be God that brought him closer to the Docklands which functions as an underground meet and greet for gay men where they are finally free to embrace their sexuality.
Shantanu Bhattacharya’s Deviants is a wonderful addition to the fiction written by queer people around the world. It is both life-affirming and gut-wrenching. The reader is delighted to intimately know Bhattacharya’s bold and beautiful characters – Vivaan, Sukumar, and Mambro.
Also read
‘In the consumption of art, labels need to be thrown out’: Santanu Bhattacharya on his ‘queer’ novel
Deviants, Santanu Bhattacharya, Tranquebar/Westland.
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