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“In my own work I don’t use [the word ‘queer’] because I think it’s too broad a term. It could encompass everything from pedophilia to heterosexual sadomasochism to you know, any kind of fetish. It is not at all specific. And secondly, I don’t like its negative connotation because it still very much has that, especially in India. And even here [in America], I think it still hasn’t lost its connotation of being really strange and weird. Like my mother for instance, for her to say ‘queer’ and think of anything ‘queer’ as positive it would be extremely difficult whereas gay at least sounds positive in terms of what it means in the language. And I like what it means in the language and I like the history of lesbian, to connect it to Lesbos and so on. Whereas ‘queer’ has nothing positive about it that I can see and except what you put into it but it has nothing in terms of the history or the cultural connotation which you can’t entirely shed.”