Slide Show

by R. Raj Rao

R. Raj Rao brings into play all the senses in focusing on an India which makes no concessions to the travel agent's romance or the aid agencies' image of defeated despair. As Nissim Ezekiel writes, 'Images of India, convincingly realistic, proliferate in these poems. We confront a variety of attitudes and values, which add up to a distinct personality and voice. There is no compromise with romantic urges. The inner search and its poetic expression are appropriately related; rough, sharp, ironic sometimes, and always serious.' R. Raj Rao brings into play all the senses in focusing on an India which makes no concessions to the travel agent's romance or the aid agencies' image of defeated despair. As Nissim Ezekiel writes, 'Images of India, convincingly realistic, proliferate in these poems. We confront a variety of attitudes and values, which add up to a distinct personality and voice. There is no compromise with romantic urges. The inner search and its poetic expression are appropriately related; rough, sharp, ironic sometimes, and always serious.'

55 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1992

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.