Do you feel the city is inclusive of the queer community? How has the city’s attitude influenced your book’s narrative?

There are circles in Kolkata society that are very progressive and can be very inclusive. But large parts of it are also very traditional, and I know of many people who are struggling to come out or haven’t been accepted by their families. No city will have a single queer experience; it is always contextual – what kind of family you have, how much freedom do you want to push for, how open are you comfortable being... These are universal questions any queer person in any city faces. In the book, I was focused on these three characters and their lives and journeys. I didn’t want them to carry the burden of representing any time or place.

There are three generations of gay men in the book. How did you develop their individual voices, with different identities, distinct from your own, and yet united via a common queer lens?

I was very clear from the start about telling these three stories in distinct voices, each voice reflective of that generation’s relationship with queerness, technology and the self. Vivaan, who is a teenager in the present day, has the tools, the confidence, the language and the media, so he’s telling us his story in real-time, and in first person. Mambro is a millennial; he is only just processing his past and finding the courage to tell his story, so his parts are written as letters to his younger self. And Sukumar’s story is told in a conventional third-person narration because someone of his generation wouldn’t have the words or the medium to tell his story.

What generational differences or similarities did you want to explore through these characters?

I wanted to see how the queer existence has changed over time – from silence to persecution to openness. But all three characters exist on the fringes of mainstream society, and that life has its challenges and will take its toll. In fact, in my book, Vivaan is very privileged because he can be out to his family. A lot of queer people even today still have the same level of erasure as 50 years ago. That is the point of telling this inter-generational story, to depict how much has changed and yet how little has.

What do you have to say about LGBTQiA+ literature in India -- has the genre been able to make a dent in mainstream reading communities or is there still a long way to go?

The community itself has found a voice, and now that homosexuality is decriminalised, at least there is no threat of being put in jail. Social media has also given a space to queer people to express themselves. It’s beautiful to see. That has happened in the case of books and film too. There’s a lot of content out there now, and I think there will be a lot more in years to come. But in general, anything LGBTQIA+ has a long way to go. It is very much possible for a straight person in India to choose not to engage with anything queer at all, and when are confronted, to turn a blind eye. I once did an empirical survey among all my straight friends as to how many queer people they knew closely, how many were friends, how many queer couples they hung out with, how much about queer rights did they know. I was appalled by how meagre the numbers were.

How would you like to see queer literature evolve in the coming years?

More queer people should write, and should be published. I’d love to see more multifaceted and layered stories from queer authors. Right now, most popular queer content centres around love stories and sex and youth. I’d love to see stories that unpack more aspects of the queer existence.

When I write, I don’t think of outcomes. The hope is that people will read, and some will like it. If the book sparks any thinking or conversation even among a few people, that’s an added bonus!

Arunima Mazumdar is an independent writer. She is @sermoninstone on Twitter and @sermonsinstone on Instagram.