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4 - Cruising the Ephemeral Archives of Bangalore’s Gay Nightlife

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Rohit K. Dasgupta
Affiliation:
Loughborough University
Debanuj DasGupta
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Summary

Cruzin D FMrl Rkivez of Blr's G Nitelife

On 31 December 2012, two gay party groups, Heatwave and Pink Nation, collaborated to host simultaneous gay parties in Goa and Bangalore. Pink Nation's founder hosted the Goa party, which was a bust because the owners changed the name of the bar without informing anyone and attendees could not find the place. The party in Bangalore was held at Seven Hotel, in Marathahalli on the outskirts of the city. Seven, a boutique hotel owned by a white French gay male couple, was always amenable to parties, and usually hosted them at its rooftop Pink Sky Bar. When the French couple sold Seven to an Indian family business, Heatwave could no longer host parties there. This New Years Eve, the gay party was relegated to the basement bar, The Box, as a straight DJ had booked the regular space for a higher price. Mihir's ad for the Bangalore Heatwave party read as follows:

N.U.D.E. 2012: N-ew year's eve U-nderground D-ance E-xtravaganza | Our party's called NUDE but v wont b rude if u dress in nothin. HAHA! | But wen v call it a NUDE party, do v really take u fr granted? | Here v r stripping it down 2 bare essentials u must hv fr the party mood. | 1) MEN's LINGERIE SHOW: Hunky models in International brand lingerie! | 2) DARK HOUR frm 11PM til stroke of midnight. | […] | Cum the way u were born – not NUDE but UNINHIBITED!

Gay party invitations, and not just NYE events, are often encumbered with detailed explanations of what to expect and what attendees will ‘avail’. ‘Hunky models’, ‘International brand lingerie’ and ‘the way you were born’ signal the preference for masculinity, foreign products and Western pop culture – the last line recalls Lady Gaga's essentialist gay anthem, ‘Born This Way’. The overtly explanatory nature of this advertisement – clarifying that ‘nude’ does not necessarily mean naked – speaks to the intentionality of the organiser to fashion a particularly sexy affect. His text is littered with internet and text-message style abbreviations, writing ‘we’ as ‘v’ to mimic an Indianised pronunciation of the English word, and ‘come’ as ‘cum’ to evoke ejaculate.

Type
Chapter
Information
Queering Digital India
Activisms, Identities, Subjectivities
, pp. 72 - 94
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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