Manil Suri - Blog

Transcript of Manil Suri

Manil Suri: So Jaz is probably, I would have to say, my most favorite character that I’ve ever written. He is gay. He is Muslim. He’s lived around the world. His parents have been Islamic scholars and have taken him from one country to another. And this has really caused him to have sort of a breakdown in some sense. And that’s when he discovers that the real problem is that he’s just been homosexual. And once he discovers this, he just bursts into full bloom in some sense. He discovers men, he discovers sex, and he has a lot of it, and he’s completely honest about it. He’s very irreverent towards everything. He’s really wise-cracking all the time. And he looks at the city more as a playground to find action. I figured with this character Jaz, the question was “How far to go with him?” Should I kind of keep him a little under wraps just as homosexuality has always been sort of not really talked about in India? Certainly when I was growing up, I did not hear about it the whole time I was in India. I left when I was 20, and that was in 1979. So as a gay person, I just did not know anyone else who was gay while I was in India. And so when I started writing about Jaz, I said, “Okay. I’m going to make him as out there as possible, because it’s important to have these things out in the open, out in terms of discussion.” And the reaction to it has been quite heartening. I first released the book in India and while I was there, I made it a point at every reading to talk about Jaz. Not only that, but to read out one of the funnier and I would say raunchier sex scenes to these unsuspecting audiences. And you know what? No one fainted. No one ran out of the room. And Calcutta, which is supposed to be a big conservative city, and that seems to have survived. So I think things are changing. I think Indian culture is such that it’s quite possible that the country will say, “Okay. That’s fine,” give a kind of collective shrug, and then move on and just accommodate gay people like they’ve accommodated so many differences.

Jo Reed: Well, aside from writing wonderful novels and teaching math, I’ve seen it on the Internet -- a video of you at the Brooklyn Book Festival.

Manil Suri: Oh. You’re going to bring that up. Okay.

Jo Reed: I have to bring it up. It’s fantastic, are you kidding?

Manil Suri: Okay. Well, what this is a Bollywood dance that I’ve done and the Brooklyn Book Festival actually had an event where you would only be allowed to read if you did something new and untried and hopefully embarrassing in public. And so I actually went back to one of my favorite films as a kid, something that I saw in previews because my father was involved in the production, a film called Caravan, which had a dance by this danseuse Helen, who used to come in a whole bunch of Bollywood films, come, give her dance and go away. And I decided I’m going to repeat this. So I actually went to India, got a whole dress and everything, shopped for a bra and everything in Colaba, and then came back and actually took a couple of lessons even from a dance professor at my university and then went up and did it onstage. And I was of course terrified. I was hoping it would rain so I wouldn’t have to go through with this. My partner was scandalized as well. But once I started, it was amazing. It was just completely liberating, and I think in some ways it gave me the courage to then go ahead and write the character of Jaz.

In this excerpt from the podcast, Suri discusses the reaction in India to the portrayal of Jaz's sexuality. [3:34]