Key Points
A new book encapsulates poetry themed on identity, loss, same-sex love; another traces battles for marriage equality in rural India..
. The author is best known for Same-Sex Love in India (2000; co-edited with the late Saleem Kidwai), a collection of excerpts from biographies, histories, letters, poems and stories covering more than 2,000 years, beginning with ancient epics and concluding with stories from the late 20th century..
Vanitas latest book, The Broken Rainbow (June 2023), is a collection of 49 poems that she has written over 35 years, on themes of memory and displacement, love and grief..
The book is a documentation of same-sex marriages in India, solemnised through rituals and ceremonies that were meaningful to couples in love even if they were not recognised by the law, with some of these dating to 1980..
When I started working on that book, I was keen to understand the lives of women who pioneered the marriage equality movement in India, long before the recent petitions, Vanita says..
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