Have you given a thought to the role that words play in forming a community?
The role of literature in forming a community – defining it, giving it shape, outlining its contours – is evident. And by literature, I mean the whole spectrum- from the pamphlets you toted in college for the next play your ‘dram soc’ was organising, to Gaysi, and everything in between. By this measure, the lack of a thriving modern literary culture of the LGBTQ community in India is telling. When was the last time you heard of a Marathi Queer novel, or an Assamese Gay poem? A Punjabi lesbian short story, then?
If you are reading this post, you’re probably someone who spends a good amount of time on the Internet. Surfing through waves of bytes and processing information to share with your online community – being the true netizen of the digital age.
But the Internet, the sprawling megalopolis of Information big and small, throws very little your way when you search for Indian Queer literature, whether in English, or in regional languages. Most of what is, right now, available spirals speedily into a pornfest of images and passages of intercourse, some rather delectable ones, as we’re also aware.
But here’s the question: Where is the community I’m seeking – the community I need – to find myself? Where was the community you needed when you sought yourself, in the space you inhabit (virtually) all the time?
And yet, I’m certain, there are voices all over the country. There have to be! Voices speaking in low tones, telling their stories to people who can hear them. Telling their stories in a language I don’t know. Waiting, just waiting to be discovered and heard by those of us who can’t speak their tongue. There have to be texts – poems, stories, paragraphs, novels, pamphlets, articles, stuff as yet unwritten but thought of – that describe Queer experiences.
What is missing is a space for them to be heard.
Know of an author, a work of fiction, a story and always wanted others to read it but it wasn’t available in English? Know regional languages besides English?
Come, help us in the space we are committed to creating – it’s called Writers’ Bloc and it’s all about discovering works of regional Queer fiction and translating them into English and other Indian languages on Gaysi. You can translate those works – poems, articles, short stories, novels, and yes, even the political pamphlet – and send them in. We’ll put it up.
We at Gaysi can use your knowledge and skills to find those texts, translate them and create something really big – your Queer community.
Here’s what we can achieve by creating this space. A coming out experience that could be a whole lot less painful to someone than what many of us faced. A knowledge that you are, in fact, not alone. A story of hope. Stories of great literary merit that you’re proud to read, and more importantly, contribute to. A voice of a community.
Editors note: I’ve known Ruswa and loved her writing for over two years now. When she proposed this new venture MJ & I were excited not just by the idea, but also about having her become part of the Gaysi team. Welcome, Ruswa! Once you read the post I hope that every one of you – lurkers and regulars will try to be part of this venture. Gaysi is a wonderful space (even if I say so myself) but I think it’s limited to mostly English speaking gaysis and this new venture will hopefully help to bridge the gap and provide a space for those who speak other languages. Also, it’s a wonderful way to get the English speaking gaysis to access literature from languages that they normally wouldn’t have access to. Let us know if you have any ideas that would help take this forward.
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What a great idea! Sadly I’m unilingual so can’t help but I have a question – is this about translating stuff from other languages into English? How about translating what’s written here into other languages so people who don’t speak English can be part of this site too? Though the first challenge would be which language, I guess.
Hi Bride
That’s the eventual plan, just as we’re also keen to encourage new writers in regional languages with this platform.
Cheers
ruswa
hey you!
big big congratulations for taking this up !!
To lift regional literature up and give it a platform from which to project its unique voice, its contribution to the literary landscape and adding to our understanding of concepts such as space, place and belonging is an absolutely amazing idea.
thank you for doing this. for us. for the community. and for world of literature.
Hey Priya
think big.
First off, thank you. Support and encouragement is the first step for any initiative. But the more important thing, I’ve increasingly begun to realise, is spreading the commitment. This is Gaysi’s only so far as we’re initiating it – what comes of it really depends on your’s, and every reader’s, inputs, suggestions, translations.
so to answer your question @Jane: yes, do keep an eye out for vernacular literatures and inform us – that’ll be a great help. don’t worry about being unilingual, you can contribute to this through suggesting literatures you hear of, or writers you’ve heard of, and we’ll approach them to get them on board. You too can approach them to get them onboard! No, it’s not about translating Gaysi – yet, at least, right editors?
@Desi girl, neha: thank you – and we’d love for you to chip in. We want you to chip in!
Think of this as one giant crowdsourcing experiment that can change the way we relate to the internet forever.
keeping the faith,
ruswa
Hey great concept. And I am glad you guys have included other forms of literature as well and not just confined your idea to published books.
This is the need of the hour and glad to see you folks taking the initiative.
God bless!
Great stuff guys!
Hopefully many would come forward keeping the annoyminity worry far behind.
Thanks Neha,
Thanks for your comment. We hope people come too, but anonymity isn’t really an issue with us.
it’s about creating a voice of this community through all the literatures available.
Sooper idea! Sadly, I’m woefully unilingual when it comes to reading and writing.
I have a question though- how exactly is this going to work? Do we keep an eye out for gay writing in vernacular or get gaysi translated?
For starters, you can enable, posters to type in roman english and have it converted to their native language..like ‘enna’ etc…..Google transliterate provides an api service to do this.http://www.google.com/transliterate/ and http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Transliteration
Great idea. Some of us live outside India and access to regional language articles is limited. In addition, going by the comments here (and me included), some of us are mostly unilingual when it comes to reading, writing and speaking skills. My bet would be on having a Gaysi-Non English stream going where we can translate articles into regional languages and publish them. We can choose 1 or 2 languages to start with and then decide based on that.
Well, i was going through carl zimmer’s lecture and came across conservapedia.. it is a wikipedia clone with a very conservative slant…Here’s what they have to say about homosexuality(http://conservapedia.com/Homosexuality). Warning: Most of the content there is likely to get your blood boiling.
Anyway, my reason for this comment is to suggest we start a wiki/wikipedia style site/portal. I know gaysi and other blogs are doing a great job of a community, but i haven’t come across a wikipedia style portal.
Hey Anand – Great idea about transliteration using Google.
@Rashmi – that is in the pipeline – we do want to translate English to regional – but at the moment, we can exercise editorial control in English. Hence the start from regional to English.
Hello, i am new to your forum, was just checkin out stuff you’ll have put up. It’s pretty cool.
I am what you call a desi gay girl and I am fluent in Marathi(which happens to be my mother tongue), Hindi and as you may notice that this text is in English, so yes in English too.
A little bonus maybe that I am professionally a copy editor/journalist/social media analyst.
Maybe I could be of some help.
Yes, I agree that, there is need for regional text related to LGBTQ to be out on Cyberspace, as when I was growing up in a culture that could not inform me about my differential thinking, i moved onto the internet and all I could find was pornography!