ABSTRACT
Pandey Bechan Sharma’s short story entitled ‘Chocolate’ is considered to be the first written on the subject of homosexuality. The story begins with the protagonist Babu Dinkar reciting verses of love in Urdu. His selection of Urdu as the language to express his love for a boy is interesting, for although he is a Hindu, he has chosen to express himself in a language mainly associated with and spoken by the Moslems of India. Urdu is a rich language containing both subtlety and playful and ambiguous expressions that suggests more than what can be read on the surface. Urdu poets recorded homosexual love in their poetry much before it was actually done in other Indian languages. Mir Taqi Mir, the greatest of all Urdu poets, surely dabbled on the subject of homosexuality. The hungama that ensued on the publication of this story nearly eight decades ago is still heard whenever such incidents are reported both in life and in literature.
