National Anthem and Other Poems

By R Raj Rao

'A poetry of open sensuality with no holds barred is what characterizes the work of R Raj Rao. As in his previous volumes, Rao explores the homosexual world with a sense of droll humour, biting irony and startling frankness, a scatology tempered by form and structure. From 'Gay Hind' to 'gay abandon', from encounters in local trains to a visit to a ribald Rio de Janeiro, the poet extends the frontiers of gay literature in India. An extra bonus is a series of deftly written poems set off by his admiration for and his eventual meeting with his namesake, the novelist Raja Rao in Austin in the US.'
-Manohar Shetty

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Dec 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9789389449013

R Raj Rao

R. Raj Rao is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Slide Show (Peepal Tree Press, UK) and For Hire (Poetrywala), and of two chapbooks, BomGay and The Canada Album (Ark Arts). National Anthem and Other Poems is his fifth collection of verse. BomGay was made into a critically acclaimed short uncensored film, directed by Riyad Wadia. Bruce King includes a discussion on Rao's work in his seminal Modern Indian Poetry in English (OUP), while there is a chapter on Rao and Adil Jussawalla in Hoshang Merchant's Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Text (Routledge). Rao's poems have appeared in prestigious foreign journals such as Poetry Wales, as well as in anthologies published by Rupa & Co., Harper Collins, the Sahitya Akademi (forthcoming) and Red Hen Press, USA (forthcoming). Rao is also the author of Nissim Ezekiel: The Authorized Biography (Viking Penguin) and of a special number of The Literary Endeavour on Bombay Poetry, the introduction to which appeared as an independent article in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature,UK. Rao's other work includes novels, short stories, plays and critical nonfiction.

Book preview

Author

Prologue

I’m a terrorist of the spirit.

I know not how to hold a gun

But know how to wield the pen.

My colour isn’t red,

The colour of blood.

It’s blue,

The colour of ink.

National Anthem

ONE

National Anthem

We went to see a Bollywood film,

my roadside boyfriend and I,

picked up at a country liquor bar.

The one that made millions

which the hero shared with lawyers and judges

to prove that he did not run his Land Rover

over pavement dwellers.

The national anthem came on.

Everyone stood.

We did not stand up, my boyfriend and I

because my hand was in his underpants

and his ripped jeans were so tight,

I could not pull my hand out.

To stand up at such a time

would be to make public the dirty games we were up to

in the dark of the cinema hall.

We did not wish to be Mr. Bean

who, as a consequence of slipping his hand

into a stranger’s back pocket at a department store

to return his ATM card,

was obliged to follow him to the store’s washroom

where the man went for a crap.

When the man was offered toilet paper by Mr. Bean,

seated behind him as he crapped,

he almost died of shock.

Who expects to see someone as he cleans his arse,

except Bombay’s slum dwellers?

My boyfriend and I did not want the ushers of the cinema hall

to die of shock.

So we sat

even as the Jana Gana Mana played on,

my hand trapped in my boyfriend’s underpants.

In time we were arrested.

The traffic lights turned amber.

The cops said we were homosexual and anti-national

and deserved to be sent

to the land of the pure.

I merely sniffed my long finger

that had the heady smell of my lover’s backside

and agreed to whatever they said.

TWO

You Are Terrorists

You are terrorists with masked faces.

Your pens are guns.

Your words are ammunition with which you kill.

You want to secede from the union

and have an independent homoland

where men fuck men,

where you will say Gay Hind (haind) instead of Jai Hind.

This is sex jihad.

You are pederasts.

You insert your tools into our kids’ backsides

Just as you ran your planes into the windows of the WTC towers.

You ambush young men in public urinals

and make funnels of their assholes.

You are suicide bombers,

good