Crocodile Tears: New & Selected Stories

by R. Raj Rao

A book that will force you to rethink the idea of Love in India and the politics around it, the book contains Sixteen startling stories, many of which deal with the taboo subject of homosexual love in a country that criminalizes it, reiterating the author's faith in free speech. These stories are at once political and artistic. They are experimental in style and use a variety of literary forms, such as first-person narration, flash fiction, stories without full-stops, as well as stories in the form of newspaper interviews and screenplays. The men who people these stories are such as we see on the streets of Indian cities.

214 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 28, 2018

About the author

R. Raj Rao (born 1955) is a writer and teacher of literature and one of India’s leading gay-rights activists. His 2003 novel The Boyfriend is one of the first gay novels to come from India.

He received his PhD in English iterature from the University of Bombay, and did post-doctoral studies from the University of Warwick. He is the author of Slide Show (poems), One Day I Locked My Flat in Soul City (short stories) and Nissim Ezekiel: The Authorized Biography. Poems from his ‘BomGay’ collection also served as the basis for Riyad Wadia's 1996 film Bomgay, said to be India's first gay film.

Rao is a professor in the department of English, University of Pune, founder of Queer Studies Circle, a gay-lesbian student group, and in his own words, a radical utopian.

Reviews

[Manoj Varma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very realistic representation

It is the best book depicting life f gay people In India . They are forced into a life of anonymity and live in a prison built by society, who decides how one should live. Hope the gay community of india gets the courage to break its chains.

[Parth · Rating 3 out of 5]

While R Raj Rao’s mark of distinction within Indian writing in English is that of a queer maverick, reading his latest collection of short stories, Crocodile Tears, I would argue that his fictional world is more existential and noirish than straightforward queer realism as one might expect from a writer who has been hailed as “India’s leading gay rights activist.” This is not to say that Rao’s fiction is not concerned with the lived realities of queer folks in urban cities (especially Mumbai, where Rao situates most of his stories), but Rao’s wry black humor is less interested in pitying his lonely queer protagonists. Rather, Rao places them in a somewhat hostile urban atmosphere where they navigate their desires and sexualities—the stories often culminate with a dark yet somehow humorous resolution.

Crocodile Tears consists of 16 short stories, eight of which are taken from Rao’s previous collection, One Day I Locked My Flat In Soul-City (this is a great treat considering that ODILMFISC is extremely hard to find these days). And let me begin the review by saying this: as much as I admired Rao’s iconoclasm in writing unapologetic queer fiction, I found this collection to be a mixed bag. While there are major highlights like the titular story, “Tigers, Trains, and Terrorists,” “Moonlight Tandoori,” “Obsessed, Obsessing,” and the very meta “The Assassination of Salman Rushdie,”—there are also extremely infuriating fillers like “The Gun,” “The Maid,” and the almost soap-opera-ish “Gang Rape” (which read to me like an episode of Crime Petrol).

The book opens with the titular story—whose very first paragraph, littered with mentions of lube, sex, and semen, would have likely raised extreme controversy had it been written in a regional language. But what begins as this queer love story soon reluctantly turns into a tale of homonormativity as our protagonist finds himself caring for his lover’s son. It is an extremely interesting take on the queer meaning of family, and props to Rao for not employing the cliché of killing an HIV-positive character. “The Gun” continues Rao’s fascination with adrift yet daring loners, but the short scope of the story and its abrupt ending does not allow much room for contemplation. And if you didn’t know that Rao was fascinated by trains, you get two reminders in the form of “Trains, Tigers and Terrorists” (this one will surely ring well with Corbett lovers!) and “A Passion For Trains”—both being one of the better accounts of contemplative loners with whom Rao is so fascinated with. “Manikarnika Ghat” is a noirish murder mystery whose gruesome revelation about the murderer and the victim reveals significant insights into the sexual politics of submission and dominance and the way they mingle with toxic masculinity to wreak havoc. Along with “Wish it Were a Nightmare” and “Six Inches,” the story also exposes the way police brutality remains an incessant presence in queer lives.

“Moonlight Tandoori” reads like the most personal of all the stories (the details of the story also corroborate some of the events in Rao’s life) and is about our protagonist’s infatuation with a seventeen-year-old boy who works at a tandoori restaurant. Coupled with the wintery English atmosphere of the story and the nostalgic flair, this is one of the most heartfelt pieces in the collection. Another noteworthy tale is the fantastical “Obsessed, Obsessing,” about a gay man who takes a set of prescription pills to change his sexual orientation only to have it spelled catastrophic implications on his personal life when he ends up falling in love with a man. The collection ties up things nicely with “The Assassination of Salman Rushdie,” a kind of historiographic metafiction story about a Rushdie-look alike.

Rao’s wide array of formats throughout his stories attests to his literary prowess. While his formal appeal is certainly engaging, my main issue was with Rao’s storytelling and the abrupt ways some of his narrative ends. But maybe this is the point of Rao’s fiction. As activist Nishit Saran wrote of Rao’s fiction years ago, “…so intimate is his writing with that gap which can exist between desire and its gratification. Every protagonist in his stories not only lives in this gap but seems eternally doomed to it.” Maybe it is in the thwarting of this desire and closure that Rao has carved his own unique niche in Indian literature.

Rating- 3.3/5