Ruth Vanita - Over the rainbow

She has been writing for nearly three decades - poetry, prose and academic works, on identity, loss, same-sex love. A new book encapsulates her verse; a reissued work traces the battle for marriage equality in rural India, from the 1980s on. So much has changed, she says

- Chintan Girish Modi

Ruth Vanita, 67, is a scholar, novelist, teacher, poet and translator.

"I find it reinvigorating. These forms of writing activate different parts of the imagination and enable one to live in different worlds. Only scholarly writing might have turned me into someone who knew more and more about less and less," she says.

The author is best known for Same-Sex Love in India (2000; co-edited with the late Saleem Kidwai), a collection of excerpts from biographies, histories, letters, poems and stories covering more than 2,000 years. The editors' introductions to each period trace changing depictions of and debates around same-sex love.

Vanita's latest book, The Broken Rainbow (June 2023), is a collection of 49 poems written over 35 years, on themes of memory and displacement, love and grief. It also includes translations of three poems by other poets, that she often rereads and revisits. It comes nearly three decades after her first book of poems, A Play of Light (1994).

"So much has changed!" she says. "There is a lot more visibility of same-sex love in media, popular cinema, and the curriculum. I am invited to speak at colleges in small towns as well, not just big cities. There is curiosity, interest, and openness. The internet has revolutionised everything."

Dating apps amaze her, particularly for how easy they have made it for gay people to find each other. "Earlier, we used to think, 'Is she lesbian? Is she not?' Now you can just find out online. I know many people who have met their partners online." 

Some of the terms being used are so different, she adds. "I almost never use the word 'queer'. I do not object to it. But, to me, 'queer' means 'strange', and I do not think that there is anything strange about a woman being in love with another woman. I have also been called an LGBTQ person, which sounds funny. How can one person be all those things at the same time?"