Another nice ‘gift’ from colonialization!’ ‘All the guys I shot in Mumbai kept reminding me that homosexuality is actually a criminal offence in India, and also that the law was imposed during British rule. But people I talked to outside India thought it sounded too colonial… In the end I flipped a coin and ended up with “Elska Mumbai.” They say it’s because it sounds more emotional and cultural to them. Almost all of the guys we shot said they preferred to call it “Bombay”.
‘It was really hard to choose whether to title the issue “Elska Mumbai” or “Elska Bombay”. But also seductive and totally worth every inconvenience. But also totally exhausting, uncomfortably hot, manically crowded and just plain difficult. One of my favorite cities visited so far for Elska. ‘In the beginning, we didn’t know which city in India to focus on… but loads of guys said that people in Delhi are rude, that people in Calcutta are too conservative (in an already quite conservative country), and in Bangalore too boring… so in the end we chose India’s biggest city and entertainment capital, Mumbai. We wanted to shine the spotlight on a huge group of people who are so often invisible. ‘We chose to feature India in large part because we see so few South Asian men in LGBT media. Here, Liam Campbell editor of gay bookazine Elska discusses the journey of putting together his latest issue…
