Abstract
Amrita Aggarwal, an aspiring model from a middle-class Punjabi family in Delhi in Shobha De’s novel Strange Obsession, is exemplary of the millennium woman of a liberalized India. She is beautiful and thus pleasing to the eye. On the first day of her modeling assignment, in Mumbai Amrita nearly gets run over by oncoming traffic. While she lies flat on her face at the busy intersection she sees a woman offer her a helping hand. Meenakshi Iyengar, or Minx as she preferred, introduced herself as the Bombay Police Inspector General’s daughter. Minx, who is ethnically Tamilian, is also the queen of the Mumbai underground with several dadas (“hooligans” and leaders of gangs) and police buddies.
Perhaps it was the golden glints dancing in her tawny eyes or the radiance and freshness, she exuded each time she turned her head to face someone. Or, perhaps, it was the litheness of her magnificently structured body, with its long, toast brown legs, narrow waist, and breasts that stood out- proud, high and firm … However, it was when Amrita laughed, throwing back her head and allowing her rich mane of hair to flow around her face like the sea, that she was irresistible … Amrita knew the effect it had on people … and that always made her laugh some more. (De, 1992:3)
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Notes
Penguin Books published Shobha De’s novel, Strange Obsession, in 1992. Shobha De was born in India, educated in psychology at St. Xavier’s College in Bombay. Since 1988, she has written the following novels: Socialite Evenings, Starry Nights and Sisters. She also is the founder, editor and contributor to several women’s magazines in India, including Femina. De is a winner of one of the Miss Femina contests and often serves as a judge to Femina Miss India contests.
Giti Thadani in Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India, Cassell, 1996, has pointed out passages from texts such as The Laws of Manu (a document translated into English in 1794 from various 5th century B.C. Brahmanical sources) concerning explicit punishments directed at female same-sex erotic/sexual encounters. They have included fines as well as the cutting off of fingers. She has also referred to early Ayurvedic texts (Charak Samhita and Sushrat Samhita) that have references to the female homosexual figure as a product of inversion. The female homosexual (nari shandi) was born this way due to inverted intercourse where the woman was active and embryonic damage, and desires like a man (the invert).
Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality, 107, Crossing Press, 1983.
Robin Jeffrey, Politics, Women and Well Being: How Kerala Became ‘a Model,’ The Macmillan Press, 1992.
Organizations such as the Campaign for Lesbian Rights (a collective working for lesbian and bisexual women’s rights in Delhi), Sangini (a support group for lesbian and bisexual women and part of Naz Foundation-India, Delhi), Aanchal (a help line for lesbian and bisexual women, Mumbai); Stree Sangam (a lesbian and bisexual collective, Mumbai), Sappho (a support group for lesbians and bisexual women, Calcutta), Prerana (a support group for lesbian and bisexual women, Bangalore), Organized Lesbian Alliance for Visibility and Acceptance—OLAVA (a “space for women who love women” in Pune) and finally the most recent NGO—the Sahayatrika Project in Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala (2002). The reactions in relation to Fire and CALERI have been discussed by Geeta Patel and Mona Bachman in Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, edited by Ruth Vanita, New York: Routledge, 2001; Mary E. John and Tejaswini Niranjana, “Mirror Politics: ‘Fire,’ Hinduvta, and Indian Culture,” Economic and Political Weekly, March 6–13, 1999; and Ratna Kapur, “Cultural Politics of Fire,” Economic and Political Weekly, May 22, 1999.
Both quoted in, Hillary Charlesworth, “What are ‘Women’s International Human Rights?’”, Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, edited by Rebecca J. Cook, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
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© 2004 Suparna Bhaskaran
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Bhaskaran, S. (2004). Inverting Economic Man: Pleasure, Violence, and “Lesbian Pacts” in Postcolonial India. In: Made in India. Comparative Feminist Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979254_5
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