“Public Obscenities” Triumphs Off Broadway

Choton (Abrar Haque), a Bengali American Ph.D. student interested in culture and gender studies, is visiting Kolkata on an academic grant with his cinematographer boyfriend, Raheem (Jakeem Dante Powell). They are working on a “queer archiving project,” Choton tells their hosts—his aunt Pishimoni (Gargi Mukherjee) and uncle Pishe (Debashis Roy Chowdhury)—hoping to interview gay and trans Indian subjects, who are invited to the house via Grindr. While Raheem films, Choton talks with the irrepressible Shou (Tashnuva Anan), a glamorous whirlwind who has much to say about where to pick up football players and the secret erotics of police harassment. Choton finds that his own Bangla has limits, particularly around anything having to do with sex. He’s perfectly aware that the word “trans,” for instance, is not a precise equivalent for Shou’s gender-nonconforming kothi identity, but he only slowly realizes that he’s using the same childish vocabulary for his “nunu” that he learned as a kid.