Azaadi!

Should I wear the black tee or not. Five hours before the parade that was the question on top of my mind as Joe held up one of his tee shirts for me to wear - after two of my choices were rejected by him, T and Cedric. My argument that I was planning to wear a similar ensemble for the post-Pride party - blue denim and another of his black tees - cut little ice with him. Cedric's comment that it fit me well finally clinched the debate as I headed to work.

Having sent out the press releases the day before - the Queer Media Collective was in charge of media strategy for the march, I walked into the office relaxed. Jisha had told me Malayala Manorama print and TV crew were keen to cover the event. Finding a ``Mallu homo'' to give a sound byte was my task. Half an hour to the parade, my boss told me I would have to write about the march too - which in a way solved my problem of how to walk the parade during work hours.

Jisha, I and the MM crew approached August Kranti Maidan, and all we could see was a sea of rainbow flags and TV OB vans occupying a portion of the historic ground where the call to the British to Quit India was made in 1942.

As the oh so Mumbai- band started drumming up signalling the start of the parade, the city's very own hijra celeb Laxmi gave a call to ban section 377. One after the other gay activists took the megaphone, and then suddenly the media went into a frenzy. Even before the queens could shout ``377'' the reason for the media hysteria entered the grounds dressed in a teeny weeny printed frock and wings. Actor Celina Jaitley had arrived to collective sighs from the queens - no doubt for those killer legs they could never have, and the dykes - am sure for much more...

The drums reached a crescendo as she flagged off the march. No dykes on bikes here - but dykes doing the bhangra and jive under a huge rainbow flag that had been flown in all the way from Delhi. Rainbow flags - big and tiny - fluttered, guys and gals, str8 and gay and everything in between, Page 3 socialites with their gay-best friends, parents, brothers sisters, took to the streets as media cameras flashed.

Jisha and me, arm in arm, clutching a rainbow flag in one hand and my note pad in another, we walked the streets of Mumbai as all around us people danced, sang and shouted slogans, blew air kisses to the onlookers peering out from BEST buses and chawl balconies at the queer sight.

Mumbai's notoriously unpredictable weather gods held their peace - may be struck by the sight of the drag queen in a shimmering gold dress and boa strutting on her nine-inch stilettos, navigating the city's potholed roads with such grace as to put many ramp queens to shame.

A dash of the Goa carnival, a very Indian festive-mela atmosphere, a Marxist protest march with the singing of Hum Hoge Kamyaab at the end, a Ganpati festival inspired band-baaja - the first Queer Azaadi March was all this and more. Sure there were no floats or go go boys - but as Krsna Mehta said ``We are getting there.''

Pics by Pratap and from Geeta Kumana

For more pics pls chk: http://picasaweb.google.com/geeta.kumana

Media Coverage:
Times of India - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mumbai_Gays_march_against_Sec_377/rssarticleshow/3372438.cms

Mumbai Mirror - http://www.mumbaimirror.com/net/mmpaper.aspx?page=article&sectid=2&contentid=2008081720080817024703512d81ee63e

The Independent - http://blogs.independent.co.uk/independent/2008/08/gay-indians-dem.html

For more check here - http://queerazaadi.wordpress.com/media-coverage/

Jungle mein Mangal

Dressed in shorts and a tee shirt, with a haversack on his back, he stood out among the evening peak time horde at Dadar railway station. Standing on a corner of the platform, his wry child-like smile and soft eyes, made him seem a part of the crowd, as well as apart.
My then boyfriend walked up to him. Introductions and some small talk followed, before we were on our way. My first meeting with Chetan Datar around six years ago, was also the first time I had heard about him.
Over the next few years, I spoke to him once for a story, met him at a film screening another time, then at at play. News of his passing away on Saturday came as a shock of the kind that gets to you about someone's untimely death - especially some one as brilliant and promising as Datar.
Datar, 41, rose like a titan among the young playwrights that shook the theatre scene after the trail blazed by the likes of Vijay Tendulkar. Directing over 25 plays and writing and adapting around 15, he was declared a ``young giant in Marathi theatre'' by one news paper.
His works included Savlya, Gandhi Ani Ambedkar, Radha Vaja Ranade. He was also part of the Awishkar group - that encouraged experimental works by young playwrights, with screenings some times held at a dilapidated municipal school building in Mahim. One such play was Chhotyasa Sutit by gay playwright and author Sachin Kundalkar that I saw in the auditorium of the same building.
Datar, stepped out of the closet in his own quiet way, and dealt with the theme of homosexuality in many of his plays like Ek Madhav Baug, Holi, Ek Mitrachee Ghost among others.
A tight deadline at work meant that I missed the staging of Ek... at the World Social Forum in the city some years ago. The Hindi version of Ek Mitrachee Ghost, which I caught at NCPA, seemed (to me) to deal with the subject in its own coy way.
My last Datar play was the gender-bending Jungle Mein Mangal. His take on Shakespeare's A MidSummer Night's Dream was a literal romp through the jungle with cross dressing actors, with the very Maharashtrian tamasha at its centre. Watching the play on the lawns of the Horniman Circle Garden, as Oberon and Titania, schemed and duelled in verse and song, was an experience the audience was unlikely to forget in a long time.

More on Datar:

Interview with Datar in Hindu: http://www.hindu.com/fr/2007/12/07/stories/2007120751570400.htm

Playwright Ramu Ramanathan on Datar: http://passionforcinema.com/goodbye-chetan-datar/#more-5301