What does it mean to be a man when your body refuses to fit the mold, when strength is measured in muscle and stature, and when desire itself is policed by the rigid boundaries of heteronormativity?
Firdaus Kanga’s Trying to Grow (1990), a semi-autobiographical work hailed as one of India’s first openly queer narratives about disability emerged at a time when Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code still criminalised homosexual acts. This legal backdrop makes Brit’s unapologetic existence – as both a disabled and queer protagonist – all the more radical. The novel turns the idea of masculinity on its head through the story of Brit, a boy who is as sharp as he is fragile. Born with osteogenesis imperfecta, Brit’s bones break easily, but his spirit doesn’t. He does not let fragility define him, meeting the world with an audacity that demands to be seen.
Growing up in a middle-class Parsi family in Bombay he isn’t just different because of his disability, he’s also queer. In a heteronormative society that puts masculinity on a pedestal, where physical strength is seen as its defining marker, Brit is an outsider twice over: he is neither heterosexual nor does he fit traditional ideals of manhood.
Masculinity has long been built on a foundation of broad shoulders and firm handshakes, the ability to protect, provide, and, above all, take up space. Brit, with his fragile bones and small frame, is the opposite of this image. But instead of shrinking into the margins, he turns his supposed weaknesses into something powerful. He doesn’t need muscle when he has razor-sharp wit. He doesn’t rely on brute strength when he can command a room with his words. He resists being seen as tragic, pathetic, or even extraordinary. He simply is, and that in itself is a challenge to the rigid expectations of masculinity.
What makes Brit so compelling is that he never tries to overcompensate for what he lacks. He doesn’t attempt to prove his masculinity through aggression or authority. Instead, he carves out his own version of it, bold, flamboyant, and entirely his own. In a society where being a man is supposed to be effortless, Brit makes it an art. His queerness further unsettles traditional manhood, making it clear that masculinity is not just about the body but about the way one occupies it. If anything, Brit is proof that the rules of masculinity are not just arbitrary, they are breakable.
But if society struggles to accept Brit’s defiance of masculine norms, it recoils even more from what comes next: his refusal to be stripped of desire. Masculinity, after all, is not just about how one is seen, but what one is permitted to want. And Brit wants fiercely.
Brit’s queerness unsettles people, but what unsettles them even more is the fact that he wants. Desire, when attached to a body like his, is seen as an impossibility. The world strips disabled people of sexuality, reducing them to beings of quiet endurance, never of longing. Brit rejects this erasure. He is not an object of pity, nor is he content to watch from the sidelines. He craves love, intimacy, the rush of skin against skin. But instead of being seen as someone capable of passion, he is often dismissed as sexless, as if his fragile bones have rendered him incapable of desire.
Yet desire defines him. He flirts, he fantasises, he reaches for what he is told he cannot have. When people struggle to place him, neither fully masculine nor fitting the stereotype of queerness they expect, he forces them to confront the limits of their own understanding. His body does not follow the rules, so why should his masculinity? Why should his sexuality? Brit defies erasure, whether as a man or as a queer person. His existence alone is proof that masculinity and sexuality in the Global South are far more complex than the rigid categories they are often forced into.
Brit’s defiance is not loud in the way traditional rebellion is imagined. He does not throw punches or rage against the world in dramatic outbursts. Instead, his rebellion is woven into the very fabric of his existence. It is in the way he does not allow himself to shrink, in how he moves through life with a confidence that makes others uncomfortable.
Yet, the weight of societal rejection lingers. His queerness and disability make him a spectacle, an anomaly that people don’t know how to place. When he desires, he is met with discomfort; when he loves, he is met with limits. Even in moments of intimacy, there is the unspoken question of – how does a body like his fit into the script of romance?
However, Brit is not written out, he fights against being written out. He does not beg for acceptance; he claims it. His sexuality is not something he softens to make others comfortable, nor is his masculinity something he tailors to fit a mold.
In a world that tries to dictate who gets to be desirable, who gets to be a man, and who gets to exist without question, Brit’s very existence is an act of resistance. His life, full of longing and laughter, rejection and resilience, dismantles the myth that masculinity is singular, that queerness must always explain itself, that disabled bodies must be pitied rather than desired. He is neither broken nor in need of repair. He is, as he has always been, complete.
Cover Image: Book Cover of Trying to Grow by Firdaus Kanga
