Author Spotlight: Talia Bhatt

We're excited to highlight Talia Bhatt, author of the current club read Dulhaniyaa. Read on to hear how her identity and experiences informed her writing, and how queer love is a jailbreak.

“Desi trans lesbian” feels, sometimes, like an ephemeral identity.

I am situated nowhere transhistorically and barely transculturally, having to borrow the language, social trappings, and forms of identification of the nation(s) that colonized and impoverished mine to even express my embodiment and positionality coherently. In a world where Afsaneh Najmabadi can pose the question “Is any one of you a lesbian?” to a room full of Iranian transsexual women and get blank stares, as she relates in Professing Selves, or where Deepa Mehta notes in her groundbreaking lesbian romance Fire that Hindi lacks even a word to express the concept of a woman loving another intimately, romantically, carnally, I am unmoored and unfixed, an anomaly because I dare to imagine my transsexuality independent from men.

“Woman are for men”, assumes every culture with harsh patriarchal contradictions—which does not entirely exclude the West—and trans women doubly so, since the abhorrence of non-heterosexual modes of living and social organization leads many from cultures like mine to presume that a woman would only transition to be with a man. A profound loneliness dogs my very existence, alerting me to the wispy shadows of a shrouded past that barely had a record of women like me prior to the midpoint of the 20th Century, only whispers and rumors and sensationalist gossip scrawled in academic journal by Esther Newton, alluding to the idea of a “man” that, having availed of hormones and surgical interventions, now sleeps with lesbians—the scandal. 

No ancestors that are mine to claim.

Dulhaniyaa is not a particularly melancholy book, though a certain pensiveness pervades the opening chapters. There a story within the story written in subtext, in allusions and word choices and snippets of dialogue, that Esha and Billu and Dolly and others are aware of: my homeland, my motherland, my culture and my nation and my state—it is not a place for queer women. It is certainly, emphatically, not a place for a trans woman who fancies herself still attracted to other women, or even indelibly non-binary in a way. Women like us have no names, no pasts, and almost certainly no futures within the narrow confines of the constructed and stifling heterosexual hegemony.

A reviewer was kind enough to sum up Dulhaniyaa for me better than I ever could, stating triumphantly that “Queer love is a jailbreak.” It’s a quote that has stuck with me both for how simply it states a core theme that I certainly labored to convey without necessarily consciously meaning to, as well as for how profoundly vast and unencompassable the prison I find myself in is. My shackles are Time and Language itself, my cell the land I was born in, my wardens its people. I am a refugee in a sense that many, many queer and especially trans people tend to be, evicted and disowned and erased from hearth and homeland.

I wrote Dulhaniyaa because someone broke me out of that cell. She saw the woman I was as well as the woman I could be, and helped me bridge the gap between the two. She is now my wife.

Queer love is a jailbreak. Get your pickaxes ready.

I'm so glad that y'all are so into Monkey Man and the badass hijra priestess army, but friendly reminder that hijra are NOT trans women. Hijra are their own distinct gender; trans women are women. India has both :)

I'm so glad that y'all are so into Monkey Man and the badass hijra priestess army, but friendly reminder that hijra are NOT trans women. Hijra are their own distinct gender; trans women are women. India has both :)

Serena Nanda is an Orientalist lunatic who hates trans women.

The intro to the first edition of her book was written by John Money.

She repeatedly talks about hijras describing themselves as women, and ignoring them to call them castrated males and crossdressers.

Third-Sexing is anthropological transmisogynistic violence on a discipline level.

'Dulhaniyaa', my desi lesbian romance, is out now!

You can order it now on Amazon!

Desi lesbians

Bollywood inspiration

Like "CRA" if it was queer

Arranged Marriage, Forbidden Romance and Runaway Bride

Cis protagonist with a trans love interest

Fanfiction author writing about a guy having his first gay experience

This was nothing like his affairs with women. Women, with their soft curves, their wet heat, their velvet skin. Joe was all harsh angles in comparison. his XY chromosomes turned his skin to steel. every part of his body was made out of geometric shapes. gripping his hips was nothing like gripping the soft, petite, feminine, plush hips of a woman. joe’s lips were rough and chapped, unlike his ex-girlfriends lips, which were made out of chapstick. his cock was an actual tree trunk with bark and lichen and all

Rewatched this movie with a bunch of friends, one of whom informed me this musical exists and now my soul will not rest until I've seen this, if I die I will come back SPECIFICALLY TO SEE THIS I NEED TO WATCH AN ALL-WOMEN BOLLY STAGE MUSICAL OF MY FAVE MOVIE I AM SO NORMAL RIGHT NOW

Om Shanti Om

Pre-Order Incentive for 'Dulhaniyaa'!

Many of you have been very kind to me and I've sailed past 100 preorders on my debut romance novel, which I'm overjoyed and grateful for.

I don't believe I'm actually going to hit this benchmark, but just for fun, here's something that I think people might enjoy as well: my next project, titled Jeevansaathi, a crime thriller story of romance, reincarnation and revenge!

If I somehow manage to hit 150 preorders on Dulhaniyaa, I'll upload the prologue of Jeevansaathi for download (:

My stupid court eunuchs won't even scheme with me. All they do is smoke and make shitty EDM in their tower.

For Trans Rights Readathon, consider 'Dulhaniyaa', a desi F/F tale of forbidden love. A woman, promised to a man, can't help but fall for her transfem dance instructor. Written by a desi transbian, at a modest 39k words. Preorder linked here, ARCs available on request.

Hey folks, I'm currently looking for anyone who reviews sapphic books on Goodreads, Insta, or elsewhere, who would like to receive an ARC of my novel! Please let me know via DM, or you can reach out to me on my Twitter if that's more convenient.

'Dulhaniyaa', my F/F contemporary romance, is out for pre-order now!

In this Bollywood-inspired story, a woman consigns herself to the arranged marriage her family has set up, only to realize that she's falling for her dance instructor.

It has:

Desi Lesbians!

Bollywood-inspired camp and surreality

Meditations on queerness and Indian culture

Arranged marriage and forbidden romance

Cis/Trans and ButchFemme main couple

Lighthearted tone with HEA, but with serious moments

Preorder Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CH8ZP3TY/

ive tried to verbalize this time and time again and i never rlly get there but as a femme lesbian i have a rlly hard time connecting with femenine straight women i dont know what the fuck they r talking about ever and they have always known (since i was a small child) that i was weird and other. INSTEAD i feel as if i can read the mind of fem gay men literally dyke2fag mental communication it is real and exist and im Tuned In i want to be an old queen when i grow up bc they r the only ones that get it

Hey, I have some signs to tap for this!

I think this is a common blunder that people love making because they want a putatively trans-inclusive and gender-expansive feminist politics, but they haven't figured out that society's cissexism is pretty core to how its misogynistic imperatives operate. Butches can't 'benefit' from their masculinity when they're violating cissexist norms of gendered fixity and heterosexual difference to even be masculine in the first place.

its so weird to me when people talk as if butch lesbians "benefit" from masculinity in some way. i kinda feel like nothing in real life indicates this ever but ok .

yeah actually if you don't complete your court mandated hours of yuri duty you are a misogynist. sorry. on the record and everything. i don't make the rules

I finished a book. Wow.

'Dulhaniyaa', my F/F contemporary romance, is out for pre-order now!

In this Bollywood-inspired story, a woman consigns herself to the arranged marriage her family has set up, only to realize that she's falling for her dance instructor.

It has:

Desi Lesbians!

Bollywood-inspired camp and surreality

Meditations on queerness and Indian culture

Arranged marriage and forbidden romance

Cis/Trans and ButchFemme main couple

Lighthearted tone with HEA, but with serious moments

Preorder Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CH8ZP3TY/

Gonna tap this sign right here ...

Something that rlly irritates me abt like a handful of the more popular transandrobros is how often they conflate butchness with being afab nonbinary and then declare that anti-butch oppression stems from anti-male discrimination.