Entering the Maze: A book that digs deep into the lives of queer of Kolkata

College Square. Pic courtesy/Wikimedia Commons

This writer admits that they had not read Krishnagopal Mallick until they happened to chance upon professor Niladri R Chatterjee's translation of his writings. The introduction that narrates facts about his life and his sexuality - homosexuality and not bisexuality, as Chatterjee points out - lets us in on the lives of many men who were comfortable being married while nurturing their other personal calling.

Mallick identified as a confirmed homosexual, not as gay - a term rooted in the political mobilisation of the 1960s and thus, beyond his personal experience. The translation reads like the addas you catch in fragments while traversing College Square and Boi Para in North Kolkata. Although we are yet to read the original short stories in Bangla, the translator ensures that readers can taste Mallick's boldness and sensory candour in English, too.

Entering the Maze is a collection of two short stories and a novella. What would you miss if you don't read it? Context. And perspective - factors you can't ponder overmuch in evolving cultures. The book not only features fiction about lives that survived criminalisation of homosexuality, but also takes us through another Kolkata and its characters.

Niladri Chatterjee. Pic Courtesy/Instagram

The Difficult Path, the first short story introduces us to a brief acquaintance. One that you don't expect on an otherwise ordinary day. It takes you to College Square at different points in time; the narrator says it's a precinct he has known all his life, across seasons and eras. His sexual identity doesn't seem to stand in contrast with the mention of his son who is appearing for his examinations. He does not come across as someone who is forever suffering. But the pressures of the times are highlighted when he accompanies 15-year-old Nilam to find his way back home. They meet a deafening white noise when Nilam dashes ahead of the narrator in his search for home alone, and the latter wonders of the fate he might have met that night.

The second and shorter story, Senior Citizen, recounts an older homosexual man's groping adventures in a packed bus and the shaming he encounters later on. Titled Entering the Maze, the last leg of the collection, follows a teenager's year-long journey into discovering their sexuality. A metafiction of sorts, it traces the narrator's sexual awakening through the world of creative writing. In its diversity of capturing real-life frames, the book returns to us a forgotten period and more importantly, a slice of social interactions accessible to then homosexuals.

Title Entering the Maze
Author Krishnagopal Mallick, Translated by Niladri R Chatterjee,
Log on to: niyogibooksinida.com
Cost: Rs 350