SUNIL GUPTA
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    • Helmut Lang Christopher Street
    • Dissent and Desire
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    • Songs of Deliverance — Part II
    • Walworth Road
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    • An Economy of Signs
    • Disrupted Borders
    • Ecstatic Antibodies
    • Trespass 1
    • Sunil Gupta Monograph
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    • Queer
    • Delhi: Communities of Belonging
    • Christopher Street
    • Lovers: Ten Years On
    • London 1982
    • From Here To Eternity
    • We Were Here : Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference
    • Come Out
    • Tessa Boffin Ed. Sunil Gupta
    • Tate Photography: Sunil Gupta
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    • A Laying on of Hands
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​Oral History

Sex. How we all obsess about it. No one seems to be getting enough. At least, not of the right kind. We’ve dressed it up in so many flavours. Given it national characteristics like culinary curiosities. In India, it’s not done, we’re told. 
At puberty,  I developed a problem of nocturnal emissions which led to a trip to the doctor in CP. Following an acutely embarrassing examination of my penis, all was declared normal and I was packed off with a set of relieved parents. Little did we suspect what lay ahead.
The subject of my sexuality was officially closed in the family. I experimented by storing the results of my consciously induced daytime emissions in a Pond’s cold cream jar. An appeasement to the Gods. However, not a good idea at the height of a Delhi summer.
Moving on to the oral stage, still uninformed about consequences, it came as a huge surprise that someone would use me as a cold cream jar..
Two years ago, I fell in love with the most beautiful Delhi man I had ever met. Within a year it was over, unconsummated. He had found his Meera, he didn’t need sex, meaning me any more. 
Last Saturday night I decided, enough was enough, I head out on the town. No luck, club shuts and we’re back out on the road. I see a man on a motorbike. He’ll do. I never chose celibacy. My friends hang out encouragingly. Back home, he just lays there. No one’s taught him anything. I minister my oral skills. He blows in minutes. Doesn’t make a move towards me. The night is over.
Will someone decriminalise the act? Spread basic information and bring spontaneity and fun back into our Indian sex lives.
  • Home
  • Photography
    • Friends & Lovers: Coming Out in Montréal in the 1970s
    • Christopher Street, New York 1976
    • London 1977
    • Cruising 1960s Delhi
    • Towards an Indian Gay Image
    • London 1982
    • Lovers: Ten Years On
    • Reflections of the Black Experience
    • Asians in Bradford
    • Exiles
    • Social Security
    • "Pretended" Family Relationships
    • Trespass 1
    • Trespass 2
    • Trespass 3
    • From Here to Eternity
    • The Body Positive
    • Love and Light
    • Imagining Childhood
    • Homelands
    • Tales of a City: Delhi
    • Country: Portrait of an Indian Village
    • Mr Malhotra's Party
    • Anonymous Self Portraits
    • Love, Undetectable
    • Women in Love
    • The New Pre-Raphaelites
    • Sun City
    • Stockwell
    • Helmut Lang Christopher Street
    • Dissent and Desire
    • Songs of Deliverance — Part I
    • Songs of Deliverance — Part II
    • Walworth Road
    • Arrival
  • Books
    • An Economy of Signs
    • Disrupted Borders
    • Ecstatic Antibodies
    • Trespass 1
    • Sunil Gupta Monograph
    • Pictures From Here
    • Wish You Were Here
    • Queer
    • Delhi: Communities of Belonging
    • Christopher Street
    • Lovers: Ten Years On
    • London 1982
    • From Here To Eternity
    • We Were Here : Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference
    • Come Out
    • Tessa Boffin Ed. Sunil Gupta
    • Tate Photography: Sunil Gupta
  • Shop
    • Limited Edition Prints
    • Books For Sale
  • Video
  • Curating
    • Stevie Bezencenet
    • Joy Gregory
    • Same Difference
    • The New Republics
    • Simryn Gill
    • Divine Facades
    • Fernando Arias
  • Newsletters
    • 2025
    • 2024 Archive
    • 2023 Archive
  • Columns
    • A Return from Exile
    • Relative Values
    • The End of Marriage
    • A Laying on of Hands
    • City of Dreams
    • Oral History
    • Pride and Prejudice
  • Press
  • About
  • Contact