The Maze Runner

Krishnagopal Mallick's Bengali queer writing finds a new lease of life in translation

- Cyril Ghosh

ENTERING THE MAZE

Queer Fiction of Krishnagopal Mallick Translated from Bengali by Nlladri R. Chatterjee

NIYOGI BOOKS

Until now, the world has known little about Krishnagopal Mallick (1936-2003). But a recent collection of his Bengali queer writing, translated by Niladri R. Chatterjee, Entering the Maze: Queer Fiction of Krishnagopal Mallick, excavates Mallick from what Chatterjee calls the "dust of homophobic neglect".

Mallick's irreverent text shatters prim notions of bourgeois sexual morality. While it is undoubtedly queer, saturated with Mallick's homoerotic gaze, it is also much more: spatial ethnography, critique of public policy, bildungsroman, memoir, and love letter to College Square (in Kolkata).

Chatterjee writes admiringly of Mallick's candour about being a "confirmed homosexual" while leading a traditional family life. Ruth Vanita's blurb refers to the "charming insouciance" of the writing. But a different reading reveals a certain breathlessness woven into the text. The collection consists of two short stories, The Difficult Path and Senior Citizen, as well as the novella Entering the Maze, a memoir of his teenage years, in which we encounter narrative accounts of Kolkata during pivotal historical moments: World War II bombings, the bloodbath of rioting Hindus and Muslims, the changing cartography of the Indian subcontinent through iterative partitions, and so on. We read descriptions of the geography and milieu he spent his boyhood in: house, neighbourhood, public transportation (trams, doubledecker buses, trains).