A Life Misspent: Kulli Bhaat’s Life, as seen through Nirala’s Heteronormative Gaze
In his 1938 book, author Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’ memorialised the life of his friend Kulli Bhaat. While positioned as a progressive text, Nirala only ends up misrepresenting Bhaat. Saurabh Sharma analyses the text from its recent English translation A Life Misspent.
In the English-medium school where I studied, both English and Hindi poetry were taught in a straightforward, or matter-of-fact manner. The poise and melancholia in the English verse, I thought, were at odds with the poverty-centric and romantic-and-nation-obsessed poems by the Hindi poets.
However, there was one unifying bond bridging the Hindi-English divide: none of the poetry I was being made to sample broke from the celebration of heterosexual romance. Back then, I didn’t quite realise that I was looking for validation for my romantic feelings in the literature I was being taught. But with the benefit of hindsight and reading texts like Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History (edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai), I saw how conveniently my teachers ignored the rich heritage of same-sex poetry, passing everything as if it were written for a female lover, preyasi, by a vagabond and mad-in-love male lover.
I am not claiming that I felt rage rising within me, learning that I, along with so many young readers in the class, had been wronged; instead, I wonder, whether any of my teachers knew that they were heterosexualising the work of gay poets. Were my teachers learned enough to teach us anything about love—leave alone poetry? Growing up I realised that insensitivity and gaslighting are part of a greater inheritance of an Indian upbringing, and literature has had its fair share of influence. Though reading Vanita and Kidwai consoled me, learning that we had visionary writers earlier, too, was comforting, despite the fact they were hardly taken seriously or read by the general populace.
One among that cadre was the great Hindi poet Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’—who used to edit Matvala, a Hindi weekly that first published what is touted as India’s first major same-sex short story “Chocolate” by Pandey Bechan Sharma (“Ugra”) in 1924. A leading poet from the neo-romanticism movement in Hindi writing, Nirala is often considered among the most progressive writers of his time. He addressed homoeroticism in the stories that he edited, and dealt with its complexities in a text that he wrote himself: Kulli Bhaat (1938), a biography/memoir of his friend, Pandit Patvaridin Bhaat.
Recently, I got my hands on A Life Misspent (2016), the English translation of Nirala’s Kulli Bhaat by Satti Khanna. Signs of queerness were peppered throughout the discovery of this text. Dedicated to no one, the writer had deferred the ‘ceremony of citation’, saying that he “could not find a worthy person among the eminences of Hindi letters to whom this book could be dedicated.” Kulli’s character, he said, paled their eminences to insignificance.
The last sentence in this section exposes the labyrinths of Kulli’s desires. In it also lie the contours of our understanding of love and love-making. “I was curious to know what Kulli was after,” Nirala concludes.
It is interesting how Nirala made up his mind to write about his friend: Unlike many of his contemporaries, who were writing biographies of whom he called the ‘leader of men’, the poet was unable to find a suitable person to write about. It’s when he was searching for a “worthy subject, Kulli Bhaat died.”
Nirala writes,
Kulli Bhaat was not a public figure whose image could be managed. Only one person would have understood Kulli Bhaat’s true significance and that person is no longer alive. I am speaking of Gorky. But Gorky too paid more attention to the figure a person cut than the substance of a person’s life. He was an ideologue, a debater.
If at all one is wondering why would Nirala mention Gorky, then may I first clear that Nirala’s writing was satirical. Second: Gorky had shown immense hostility towards homosexuality. But these two facts don’t sit well together, and it’s controversial to mention a homophobe who would “understand” Bhaat. Nirala had also warned readers criticising this work as he mentions it as a ‘satire’, and said that by doing this, his criticisers will exhibit their naivety. I see the irony here, a literary device too close to the great poet. But for a giant literary figure to appear intolerant was somewhat indigestible.
Nirala was a teenager when he was married to Manohara. Kulli was from his wife’s village. He meets him on his way to his sasural. But he was baffled by his in-laws’ apprehension about being seen with Kulli. He writes: “Who is this Kulli? What is the trap? I tried to solve the mystery while my bride stood before me, smiling at my bafflement.” Ignoring the idiosyncratic behaviour of his in-laws’, Nirala went to meet Kulli the next day, but soon before his departure, his mother-in-law thought it fit to inquire about his motives, clearly thinking the ‘impossible’. To which he counterargues nonchalantly: “If you are so confident of your judgement why didn’t you tell him to stay away?” She explained to her son-in-law that as he was now the guest of this whole village, she didn’t want to be discourteous to prevent anyone from seeing him.
Kulli, Nirala, and his servant thus go on an expedition. Kulli entertains the poet reciting the tale of the strong tradition of poetry in their region: Dalmau, a town situated at the banks of the Ganges, in the district of Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh.
But the excitement in their relationship was short-lived. Kulli was beating about the bush when he signaled the poet by saying “let’s do it.” It was a clear case of wooing a straight man, every gay man’s desire, and in some cases, a badge of accomplishment. Kulli must have got the ‘hint’ when Nirala responded to Kulli’s objection in the servant being with them. “Accompanying me is part of his job, but I can always send him away on an errand.” Nirala writes. “Kulli understood this in his own way. He imagined that I knew what he desired and would arrange things accordingly. I was the man he took me for.”
The last sentence in this section exposes the labyrinths of Kulli’s desires. In it also lie the contours of our understanding of love and love-making. “I was curious to know what Kulli was after,” Nirala concludes.
It's not Kulli’s wise words, at the time of Manohara’s death, that impressed the narrator. Instead, it was because Kulli was a “true doer, the one lion among jackals. He was not well educated, but he transmitted sincerely everything he knew.”
Kulli was different, queer, and naturally, an object of inspection for Nirala. That’s what queer desires have been so far, and might I say continue to be: an ‘interesting’ area for a heteronormative interrogation. What’s the difference, in that sense, I wonder, between Nirala and the neighbour’s that Kulli mentions when the former pays a visit where the unpleasant and unfulfilling incident occurred: “‘I live alone in this house,’ Kulli said. ‘I have no wife and no children. I own a little land and two traps. I live to please myself, but this does not please my neighbour’s. If I have a weakness or two what is that to others? It’s my money that I spend.’”
At this juncture, I remember the gay rights activist and documentary filmmaker Nishit Saran, who was lost in a car accident at the age of 26. In 2000, he wrote a column for The Indian Express: “My sexuality is your business” in which addressed the now-scrapped Section 377, which criminalised homosexuality amongst consenting adults. Saran’s principal argument was the fact that if the Indian state had the business to know what he would do in the privacy of his home, then sexuality doesn’t remain a ‘private’ matter.
This fact is also immortalised by Akhil Katyal’s poem, “Girl, when you”:
Blow your boy,
Or boy, when
You go down
On her, or when
Both of you use
A toy, and all the
World’s a blur,
I know it feels
Like heaven, you
Too violate 377
What Kulli desired was a world of his own and his advances towards Nirala were an invitation for the latter to enter his world. Though as a younger person, as Nirala claims, he didn’t understand what Kulli wanted from him, did his understanding remain that of an adolescent even while writing this book?
For example, when recalling their intimate encounter, Nirala writes: “There was a large mirror on the wall hung with small garlands at each corner. He put his arm around my waist, and when we looked in the mirror, we seemed to be garlanded even though we wore no flowers.” He sure is playing with a symbolic marriage between him and the subject, but he writes that he “feared that his illness — for that is what it must be — would bring him harm.”
It’s illness that Kulli Bhaat was reduced to, what he was understood as. No matter how progressive this late 30s text might attempt to be, it turns out to be the opposite.
Though there isn’t much mention of Nirala’s brief marriage in the length in the book (his wife, Manohara, died of contracting plague), Nirala writes how his wife “endured the tumult of her own feelings in silence.” This portrays Nirala as a concerned and ‘feminist’ husband, who understood his partner. She was more than a person with whom he would share the bed at night. Nirala also verbalises his disgust at Indians and their thoughts getting colonised: “Why didn’t these older women adopt Urdu ghazals the way the younger women fresh from college have adopted European ways of courting, of playing the piano and of working for the uplift of ‘backward’ women?” Considering these examples, it’s difficult to gauge whether Nirala was covering up his homophobia—a colonial import that Nirala seemed to have been least aware of—or if he was an outright nincompoop, who tried to cover things up under the garb of satire.
After their meeting at Kulli’s residence, the duo reunited when the plague epidemic was ravaging Uttar Pradesh. Nirala writes: “I travelled to the riverbank in Dalmau and waited. The Ganga was swollen with dead bodies. At my in-laws’ house, I learned that my wife had passed away.” The bodies floating in the Ganges remind us of an eerie resemblance with the contemporary reality owing to the current dispensation’s failure in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Kulli appeared: ‘I am aware that you loved Manohara deeply,’ he said. ‘God brings us to our senses by depriving us of what we desire. You are wiser than me. You know such things already. Enjoyment is fine in itself, but the main thing is to come to a good end,’” Was Kulli making nice? Or was he trying to establish that Nirala could turn up to him in case he was looking for a shoulder to lean on to? Either possibility cold be true—but isn’t it clear who had been the lonely one?
Later, Kulli marries a Muslim woman. The terms of their companionship don’t form the topic of discussion in this book. Nor the reader is informed of what led Kulli to marry her, but given whatever is documented of his wife, it is clear she loved Kulli to no end. As Nirala started achieving fame, and established him far and wide with his newness in prose and poetry, transforming the literary scene of his time, Kulli engaged himself in the reformation on the ground. He worked with untouchables, helped their children gain education, and did all he could do to aid their upliftment. As he was also marginalised and deprived of dignity of life, Kulli thought it fitting to work for others.
It's not Kulli’s wise words, at the time of Manohara’s death, that impressed the narrator. Instead, it was because Kulli was a “true doer, the one lion among jackals. He was not well educated, but he transmitted sincerely everything he knew. The light of his sincerely shone in the faces of his pupils.”
Kulli was pretty clear of his politics and remained unfazed by the popular influence of the Mahatma or Chacha. He continued social work, without being part of an organisation. Organising inevitably leads to corruption because by its nature a handful few exercise their power over many. And in the state of desperation, one heeds to the powerful, often giving them more power by becoming vulnerable themselves. Kulli may have known or experienced this fact, hence, he stayed out of any such structures, but it also meant that he was without support in the event of most need.
At his in-laws’, after Manohara’s and many others’ deaths in Nirala’s family, Nirala learns that Kulli had taken ill. His brother-in-law whispers something unusual in his ear: “The genital organ is missing.” When Nirala probes, the brother-in-law replies: “It wasted away, that’s what people say. Even if he survives, they say, what use will he be to his wife?” The genital was of course a mark of masculinity. It’s crucial to point out here how the genitalia took precedence over love. For simpler people of their time, it was understood that Kulli could no longer ‘man’ his wife, even if he survives.
I wonder what if, as a child, I knew of all those idols that were gay or nonbinary. What if my teachers never covered up (only if they knew) Virginia Woolf’s bisexuality, or if they knew of Vikram Seth having a same-sex partner while we read him? Would they include these authors in our syllabi at all?
When Nirala visits Kulli, he had to “force” himself to stay in the room. It stank. Kulli’s joy knew no bounds seeing his love interest. Observing his visible discomfort, he said: “I have confined the disease to the nether parts. Above my heart, I am well. See for yourself.” Taking the hint, Nirala sits at the head of the bed. “It was true there was no stench there,” Nirala observes. Seeing him in such a dire state, and devoid of funds at home, Nirala considers raising money for his friend’s treatment. As Kulli had gotten married to a Muslim woman, he was ostracised from the immediate society except for untouchables, whom he had helped, but already marginalised with no money and social capital, they had no other option.
Using his cunning speech, Nirala was able to extract seven rupees out of a Congress party worker, who had been planning for Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s visit, by saying that he frequently meets her and that she is a real Goddess Kali. The funds were put to good use; Kulli, however, didn’t last much longer.
Nirala eventually grieves:
How had this ordinary man come to matter so much? I won’t cheapen words by writing down what Kulli thought of me, but I do know which person’s example made the deepest impression on him. In their last days, Premchand and Jaishankar Prasad shared some confidences of their lives with me. I will keep their secrets safe. Making them public would only stir gossip and cause pain to the departed souls. Kulli, too, lived with a secret. Premchand and Jaishankar Prasad parted with their secret late. They were concerned for their reputation. Kulli parted with his secret early.
Though he didn’t want to “cheapen words,” he indirectly does exactly that by writing of Kulli’s “secret”, and spilling beans about Prasad and Premchand. It’s perhaps of this “secret” that, perhaps the book was titled a life “misspent.” What are the metrics to judge the usefulness of a life? Were queer people allowed to have a life, while remaning the subject of interest of heterosexuals like Nirala? Will Premchand become the Premchand that we know, if his “secret” was outed early?
I was soon reminded of a book that I had read about a year ago: Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill by Lee Wind. The teenage protagonist in this book extracts historical accounts and writes a searing story about Abraham Lincoln being gay. He was ridiculed by his teachers. (See “So What If Lincoln Was Gay?,” Louis Bayard, The Paris Review.)
I wonder what if, as a child, I knew of all our literary idols that were gay or nonbinary. Would I still be asked questions like, You must be happy seeing your ‘tribe’ in every miniseries and movies now? What if my teachers never covered up (only if they knew) Virginia Woolf’s bisexuality, or if they knew of Vikram Seth having a same-sex partner while we read him?
Would they include these authors in our syllabi at all? I wonder of an upbringing where the other wasn’t so frequently othered. I wonder what impact it would've had on my sensibilities and understanding of love, had the man-woman relationship not been branded and taught as the only form of love in the world.
***
Saurabh Sharma is a reader and a writer. He works as a writer in an IT research and advisory firm in Gurgaon. He reviews books and pretends to write on weekends. You can find him on Instagram: @writerly_life and Twitter: @writerly_life.
