In retrospect, it’s amazing that, until 1993, homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Ireland. In theory, one could end up in Mountjoy for committing acts a former chief justice declared to be “detrimental to public health”. Thankfully David Norris took a case to Europe, where it was determined that Irish law was incompatible with the Convention on Human Rights and the 27th Dáil accepted that judgment.
It took another quarter century, however, until India followed suit, the country’s supreme court ruling that discrimination based on one’s sexuality violated a person’s basic dignity.
Mahesh Rao’s third novel takes place between Darjeeling and Mumbai, the first half set four years before that decision, the second in the days leading up to it, and follows two young men trying to negotiate their sexuality in a country hostile to any deviation from the norm.
The story opens in 2014, as the reader is introduced to Pavan, a 24-year-old worker at a small hotel in West Bengal. A landslide has just taken place, leaving the building isolated as the guests wait for the roads to be cleared. A nice idea for a murder mystery, perhaps, but Rao has something more thoughtful in mind. This isn’t the White Lotus, after all; it’s the three-star neighbour 50 miles down the road.
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While the older people find every excuse to complain about what has effectively been an act of God, 18-year-old Neville is happy to stay longer, as he has his eye on Pavan and is keen to form a more intimate connection than can be made over the breakfast buffet.
Throughout Half Light, Rao returns frequently to the ease with which gay people recognise each other without quite understanding why. While this skill is helpful to the sexually voracious Neville, it’s of more concern to Pavan, who’s spent most of his short life worried that his true nature will be discovered. Early on he’s traumatised by someone having scrawled the word “homo” on the wall of a shed he uses, and when he eventually plucks up the courage to enter a forest with Neville, intimacy in mind, he starts to panic, for “as he had always known, nowhere was safe”.
Although the pair steal moments together, their growing affection is spoiled twice. First, by a potential act of violence that deepens Pavan’s fears, and then by a clumsy goodbye on Neville’s part when the road is finally cleared. His actions, while rooted in kindness, make the reader wince. He may have more experience, but he’s still young and hasn’t learned how to behave when leaving a hook-up.
Moving forward four years, Pavan has relocated to Mumbai, but his mind is still on Neville, an ache that’s reciprocated. If there’s a flaw in this excellent novel, it’s probably here. It’s understandable that Pavan has never forgotten the few days they spent together, but I felt that Neville would have moved on before he’d even unpacked his suitcase upon returning home. After all, this is a man who thinks nothing of getting on a crowded bus, sidling up to a complete stranger, and committing an act that would be highly inadvisable on the 16 bus to Rathfarnham during rush-hour.
Inevitably, the pair meet again, and what happened on the night they were saved from assault returns to their minds, as does how each will conduct himself in what they hope will be a changed India.
Throughout, Rao writes with great sensitivity. It’s fascinating to recognise how much easier it is to be gay and white in India, rather than a native, the yoke of colonialism still weighing heavily almost 70 years after independence. Neville isn’t concerned about his homosexuality, which contrasts with Pavan’s dread not just of discovery, but of the consequences of discovery. “I’ll lose my job,” he explains before delivering the killer postscript: “then I’ll also lose my place to stay.”
The language is beautiful too as Rao is adept at producing striking lines. At one point, he describes rain falling, “as though the skies were shredding shrapnel”, and there’s a hint of literary heritage in the way Neville’s mother and her female companion treat the Indians that’s reminiscent of EM Forster.
Half Light is a thoughtful, moving novel that takes its time to explore its characters’ inner lives and invites the reader into the dual heritage of a country in an unusual and rewarding way.
