While being a romcom, there were two important themes that I wanted to touch upon in this book. Ved’s conversations with Carlos initially while he is seeing Disha and is confused about whether to ‘come out’ seem like a sort of literary device that you employed to showcase that Ved is in two minds. And I wanted to bring about this dichotomy of the shiny surface appeal and how riven the person might be internally. It’s something that so many similar men in India face.
Ved, for all his stature and money, is miserable deep down inside from being a closeted gay man. And we often look at people like this on magazine covers and think they lead such a great life, not realising what’s really going on internally for them. Ved, as a character, seems to have it all on the outside – rich, successful, good-looking…like the perfect GQ man. In fact, as it turned out, it was the first gay romcom set in Mumbai to be published internationally. Many of them would not know that same-sex relationships were criminalized in India until only four years ago, when the archaic Section 377 law was repealed on September 6, 2018, and this book holds as a celebration of the freedom to love who you choose. I felt it was important to give an international audience a ringside view of what it was like to be gay in India. And how each helps the other to understand themselves better and live their truest life. The genesis of The Other Man was really this wonderful heartwarming story between two men of completely different ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds united by one thing: love. But that’s what happens once you finish writing a book – it becomes that of the readers, how they see it and how they view it, and you really don’t want to disturb that. And I’ve heard a lot of people draw comparisons with Bollywood, which is heartening and amusing since I don’t watch a lot of Bollywood movies. One of the fun titles for the book was ‘Crazy Rich Gay Asians’ (riffing on a runaway success ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ by Kevin Kwan).
Funny gay meme quotes series#