Of course I am grateful to each and everyone mentioned in this book for their input including the mental health professionals—specially Anita Ratnam—and the adult and child psychiatrists—specially Dr Shekhar Seshadri—who have unstintingly given of their time and patience. As I am to those who must remain unnamed because some identities and places have been changed for their protection. Except for the founder of the gay movement in India Ashok Row Kavi, I must also protect the identities of the homosexuals and lesbians who forwarded my e-mails to each other, introduced me to their friends through their gay colleagues all over the country and allowed a ‘straight’ like me an insight into their private pain as adults who were once children.

And how do I slot those wonderful people who helped me simply because? Some said it was the subject matter of the book, others helped as random acts of kindness like the editor Gayatri Devi Vasudev and film-maker-playwright Chetan Shah. None of them—far too many to mention—expected anything in return, all of them wished me well. They gave me solid advice along with phone numbers; they ensured that I got invited to relevant seminars; they checked out specialists in their cities and promptly e-mailed, faxed and phoned with the information; they couriered me books and mailed me xeroxes; they fed my mind and sometimes they even wound up feeding me on my investigative travels, beginning with the comfortingly hot ‘chaay, burun pau, maskaa’ at the Majlis office. Bless you for encouraging me so selflessly. I guess you were God’s way of reminding me that even though such enormous evil exists, the world still turns on the axis of its good people.

N.B.: Mumbaii has been spelt with two i’s for a reason in this book. Numerologically—if you believe in these things—a single ‘i’ spells disaster. The two ‘i’s’ work to some advantage; though the most beneficial was the original ‘Bombay’; my earlier book Once Was Bombay has the details. But more to the point: the present spelling leads to a mispronunciation of the city’s name; international television channels refer to the city as ‘Mumbaay’ when it should be pronounced in its authentic Marathi way, Mumbaii. Like Hawaii. Chennai gets pronounced correctly because of its two n’s. I also consider the spelling as Mumbaii to not be incorrect: after the name change it has yet to be decided how my city’s name is to be spelt in English; in Marathi and Hindi it has always been written as Mumbaii, the long ‘e’ or the deerg. Typical, that those who clamoured short-sightedly for this unnecessary name-change should orphan this crucial international element of the issue.

THE BEGINNING

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