Book Review - Half Light
It’s astonishing that homosexuality remained criminalised in India – punishable by up to seven years in prison – until very recently. In 2009, the Delhi High Court ruled that the Victorian-era statute, Section 377, was unconstitutional. Four years later, India’s Supreme Court effectively reinstated the law, and it wasn’t until 2018 that this decision was overturned, finally legalising same-sex relationships.
This fraught period forms the backdrop to Nairobi-born Mahesh Rao’s third novel, Half Light. It adds to a growing crop of fiction highlighting the harsh reality for gay men in India’s recent past: earlier this year, Santanu Bhattacharya’s sophomore novel, Deviants, explored the struggles of three generations of the same family seeking acceptance in an unforgiving society. R Raj Rao’s Madam, Give Me My Sex, which explored identity politics and queer life within a university setting, found a warm critical reception in 2019.
Set across two timelines, 2014 and 2018, Half Light is a deceptively simple yet touching tale of two people from contrasting backgrounds coming to terms with their sexuality. Pavan, 24 and from “a hard baked village” in Kerala, knows that “even bodies gave the game away so he had policed his limbs and his expressions ever since he could remember”.
Meanwhile, Neville, who lives in Mumbai and is descended from a once-wealthy Catholic family, is active on dating apps, with “a strong sense of his own abilities in attracting men. There were plenty of successes but so many failures: hours spent waiting for men to respond… men who did not show up.”
They first meet in 2014, in Darjeeling, at a rundown hotel
where Pavan works. Neville, an assertive 18-year-old, is holidaying with his
mother, Audrey. A landslide has temporarily stranded them there, in the
mountains. Neville takes an instant liking to Pavan and pursues him
relentlessly; Pavan is guarded and secretive, terrified of being outed and
fearful for his job. Nevertheless, the two share a night of forbidden love,
tenderly recounted by Rao.
The novel is narrated from their alternating perspectives – a difficult structure to get right, but one that is done with skill. For Pavan, their brief tryst is liberating, and he begins to view his own “chaste passivity” as “time wasted and opportunities squandered”. That’s until they are threatened with a brutal homophobic attack, shattering their final night together and leaving both emotionally scarred. The incident confirms to Pavan that his caution had been right all along.
The novel’s second half is set in Mumbai in 2018, where
Pavan is even more closeted than before, terrified of others truly knowing him.
Employed by a luxury hotel, he lives for his work: “Pavan loved the strictures
that regulated the routine of his days. If he had to dissimulate in life, it
was just as well that there existed an exhaustive script for his performance.”
In one excruciating, well-drawn scene, his former boss invites him to a party and Pavan realises he is being set up as a potential match for a woman considered “past her prime” at 34. His dawning realisation, and urgent need to escape without appearing rude, are beautifully rendered.
Meanwhile, Neville idles at home, unable to hold down a job, and continues to seek casual liaisons online, concealing this side of himself from his mother. One hook-up even leads him to a married man in a hotel room, desperate to discuss his own predicament. When he and Pavan cross paths again by chance, before the Supreme court’s landmark ruling, a series of emotional encounters unfolds, vividly conveying the realities of what it’s like to live amid intolerance. Their very different responses to the illicitness of their desire once more propels them to an irreparable clash.
Rao’s short fiction has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and his debut novel, The Smoke Is Rising, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction. Such recognition is deserved: Half Light is a poignant study of loneliness, and a perceptive examination of the struggle for acceptance and understanding, as well as the emotional disconnect wrought by the denial of one’s identity. And though homophobia remains rife in India, the novel ends on a satisfyingly upbeat note – hinting that men like Pavan and Neville may have a freer, more accepting, future to come.
Originally published by the Daily Telegraph