Jabberwocky: I believe in love

[Guest guest]

Jabberwocky: I believe in love

Samantak Das

`I HAVE always dreamt of having a Bengali lover, and in our golden

years we would listen to Tagore songs together. Hope springs

eternal. "

These are unexceptionable lines, echoing the sentiments of many a

homesick Bengali in foreign climes. What lends them a peculiar

poignancy is that they have been penned by a 45-year-old Indian gay

man who has AIDS and who has taken the enormously courageous step of

letting the world know of his sexual orientation and condition.

Priyadarshi Datta was born into a well-known Bengali family with

strong connections to Santiniketan; his mother's maternal

grandfather, Kshitimohan Sen, being one of the brightest lights of

Rabindranath Tagore's Visva-Bharati. His father, Deependra Nath

Datta, was in the Indian Army and Priyadarshi and his sister had, as

is usual in such cases, itinerant educations, moving from city to

city and cantonment to cantonment with their parents. After

acquiring a degree in statistics from Presidency College, Kolkata,

Priyadarshi, like many of his generation, moved to the USA, getting

Masters and doctoral degrees and settling down into the life of a

scholar.

It was while working at Columbia University that Priyadarshi learnt

that he had AIDS. The World According to Priyadarshi is a collection

of Priyadarshi's musings that deal honestly and engagingly with

issues that will strike a chord among young (and not-so-young),

cosmopolitan Indians, the environment, politics, racism, feminism,

secularism, same-sex love, AIDS, the NRI experience, and so on.

Written with wit and verve, what comes through the pages of this

slim volume are Priyadarshi's unflinching faith in human beings and

his refusal to let his condition cow him down. Like his hero,

Rabindranath, he too subscribes to the view that to lose faith in

humanity is a sin.

Many of the pieces in this volume have no direct connection with

HIV/AIDS. In India and the World, Priyadarshi is scathing about NRIs

and their general lack of unfitness to decide on issues to do with

India and Indians, a refreshing corrective to the NRI-worship that

seems to permeate so much of India's middle-class consciousness. " To

hand over the running of the government to them [NRIs], would be

similar to giving the Kennedys, or worse yet Reagan, power to rule

Ireland, " is how Priyadarshi puts it. In another piece, Five

Generations of Indian Women, Priyadarshi pays tribute to his

foremothers, a welcome change from the usual patriarchal pap that is

dished out in the name of honouring one's ancestors.

I have never met Priyadarshi but I've known his mother, Supurna

Datta, the publisher of this volume, for many years now. In her

acknowledgements, she writes, " That [Priyadarshi] has given his

consent to my publishing his writing has given me a sense of

freedom. " It could not have been particularly easy for a middle-

class Bengali mother to publicly admit not only that her son is gay

but also that he has AIDS. That Supurna has done so is no less an

act of courage and honesty than Priyadarshi's.

If the evidence of the many hoardings featuring the homely sari-

clad " Bula-di " and her sensible advice is to be believed, perhaps,

at long last, we are beginning to look at HIV/AIDS with something

other than the peculiar mixture of fascination and terror that it

typically invokes, especially among us, the educated hypocritical

middle-class.

But a great deal needs to be done before, in Priyadarshi's

words, " the battle with society for acceptance as normal humans, who

can be caressed and touched " can be won. By laying his heart bare

for all of us to see, Priyadarshi, and his family, deserve our

salutations and gratitude.

[samantak Das would like everyone to fight the stigma still attached

to HIV/AIDS.]

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