Mahmud and Ayaz

Using the legendary love story of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni and his Turkish slave-cum-lover Ayaz as the backdrop | Mahmud and Ayaz | set in contemporary Mumbai | tells the story of a young | casually radicalized Muslim man | Mahmud Fakhar | who has failed to qualify for the IAS—where he had hoped to make a lot of money | but also to weaken the system from within—and has barely managed a temporary teaching job in a second-rate college. At a loose end after his entire family dies in the 2015 Hajj stampede | he runs into a homeless Hindu lad | the illegitimate son of a tamasha dancer | hires him as his domestic servant | converts him to Islam | re-names him Ayaz | and begins an affair with him. It is the start of an unusual life together | and a series of journeys. Their travels take them to Somnath in the great Sultan’s footsteps | and then to Kashmir | as they are drawn into a life of petty and not-so-petty crime and | almost | of militancy. After some odd adventures | the wheel comes full circle when their wayward life ends again in Mumbai | in the neighbourhood of Mahmud’s birth | even as AIDS afflicts one of them. Narrated with irreverent | deadpan humour | R. Raj Rao’s new novel is funny | subversive | provocative and wonderfully rude. It is unlike any love story—gay or straight—that Indian readers would expect.