OF LOVE, LONGING AND EXILE

BORN Parsi, Sufi of heart and Christian in suffering, Buddhist in his detachment, and Hindu in his sensuality, Hoshang Merchant's life and poetry weave together faith, exile, and longing into a rich mosaic of devotion and defiance.

- SUDHA G TILAK

Merchant's poetry is at once intimate and expansive, capturing the contradictions of a life lived across geographies, histories, and desires. My Sunset Marriage (Navayana), a collection of 101 poems, is quintessential Merchant—modernist yet steeped in Indian voices, global in its gaze yet intensely personal.

A poetry of exile and embrace

Merchant, born in 1947 in Bombay, has often called himself an exile, not just geographically but within his own culture. A Parsi by birth, an openly gay man in a society that long denied queer existence, and an academic who has spent years between India, Iran, Palestine, and the United States, and now Hyderabad, his poetry carries childhood to the political tumult of the Iranian Revolution, from Hindu mythology to the devastations of Gaza. His poetry refuses containment.

I ask him if he considers himself a poet of exile, or if poetry itself is his true home. His response was characteristically layered: "My exile was for 14 years, as predicted in my horoscope, like Lord Rama's. When I became a taxpaying citizen of India in 1995, my exile should have ended. But queers weren't legally recognised until 2016." Only one aspect be singled out if a gay man writes poetry?

This refusal to be pigeonholed defines My Sunset Marriage. Consider the lines: "Krishna and Sudama embraced on the beach, But only one returned to a palace, The other walked back into rain."