BEHIND A PLATFORM ON the Beach-Tambaram line of the Chennai Suburban Railway, a long dark corridor bears witness to private longings. It reeks of urine and self-recrimination and ends abruptly at the wall of a flyover. "The flyover is like a fortress, or a guardian deity," says Rakshita, 30. "It hides us from the world so that we don't have to hide our true selves—even from ourselves." Occasionally, an office-goer or two will take this shortcut out of the station, but as soon as the glow of a torch dies out, silhouettes immediately relax, the conversation resumes, and giggles pierce the darkness. This liminal space is one of many 'hotspots' in Chennai where queer men seek each other out in the evenings, casting off their masks. Hang around and you will hear snatches of a strange language, like a song set in an unfamiliar key—a godi or a thadi is a policeman, a cowdy is a rowdy who wouldn't hesitate to use you and then steal your valuables, 'gatekeepers' are the local gang of high school boys who come to mooch a fag and in return, help kothis by raising alarm in case of trouble. "We do not come here seeking sex alone. We forge and value meaningful connections with people who understand us. This is the only place where we can nurture our preferred gender roles. I am a kothi, a man who likes to be with a dominant male partner and I do not have to hide my feminine streak here," says Rakshita, a housekeeping staffer at an office in Guindy who lives in Shenoy Nagar and frequents this hotspot several times a week. A balding stranger—a panthi, as the penetrator in a male-male sexual encounter is called—walks past, propositioning to Rakshita, who, in dark trousers and a moustache, turns him down, saying, "There will be others, but let me first get this right. Anal sex is legal now? Does that mean the godi who just came charging at us, dispersing us like a flock of cattle, won't bother us anymore?"

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