Where is Youth for Equality?
Published by Shivam Vij September 23rd, 2006 in middle class hypocrisy
http://www.shivamvij.com/2006/09/where-is-youth-for-equality.html
After his open letter ( http://openletter377.com/ ) against Section
377 (http://www.indialawinfo.com/bareacts/ipc.html#_Toc496765260 ),
Vikram Seth opens up in a rare interview with Sheela Reddy, saying how
he hates being considered a criminal in his country.
"One of the great problems for homosexuals here is the hunt for a
monogamous partner. What has been your own experience?
In a funny way, if this law was done away with, it would be much
easier to find a monogamous partner because you could be open about
things. Even in tolerant echelons of society there is quite a lot of
nudging and sniggering behind people's backs. I myself was for a long
time in a monogamous relationship which is sadly over now but anyway
it only happened abroad.
How long did it last?
Well, basically, for ten years.
Your mother mentioned your partner in her book…
I don't particularly want to get too personal about it. But my mother
met my partner, Philippe, and both families also got along very well.
[A shorter version appears in the print edition
(http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061002&fname=Anterview+Vikram&sid=1&pn=1)]
As the Wikipedia entry will tell you, Seth's relationship has been
known since 1999, when An Equal Music came out:
Paolo Isotta, one of Italy's most significant music critics, wrote in
the influential newspaper Il Corriere della Sera of the Italian
translation that no European writer had ever shown such a knowledge of
European classical music, nor had any European novel before managed to
convey the psychology, the technical abilities, even the human
potentialities of those who practise music for a living (Silvia
Albertazzi, 2005). Seth credits his partner, the French violinist
Philippe Honoré, as inspiring him with the idea for An Equal Music in
an acrostic sonnet on Honoré's name which is the epigraph to An Equal
Music:
Perhaps this could have stayed unstated.
Had our words turned to other things
In the grey park, the rain abated,
Life would have quickened other strings.
I list your gifts in this creation:
Pen, paper, ink and inspiration,
Peace to the heart with touch or word,
Ease to the soul with note and chord.
How did that walk, those winter hours,
Occasion this? No lightning came;
Nor did I sense, when touched by flame,
Our story lit with borrowed powers -
Rather, by what our spirits burned,
Embered in words, to us returned
[Link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Seth]
The book was accompanied by a music CD performed by Honoré.
In the same issue of Outlook, Shefalee Vasudev writes, "Indians only
stand up for a cause if it suits their current state of conscience.
It's a 'conditional open-mindedness'."
( http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061002&fname=Shefalee&sid=1 )
Oh yes, where are the Youth for Equality guys
(http://www.youth4equality.org/ ) on the issue of Section 377?
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