Deviants tells the stories of three gay men over three generations in India; the present day told in realistically infuriating youth style in the form of a recorded monologue, his uncle, pitched as a manuscript of a memoir, and his uncle, effectively as a story extrapolated and told after the fact.
Telling parallel stories of the gay experience at different times in India; predominantly when illegal, the contrasting social mores are laid bare through wild sexual exploits or restrained fumbles, and through first hidden or open love.

I was initially unsure by the tone of the narration, but was first won over by the other perspectives, and then swiftly became fully engaged in the developing narrative. Rich in social politics, in desire, in sheer physical joy, but also drawing freely on the lonelier aspects of finding one’s way through life. Deviants is a marvellous and moving work.

Deviants is a novel about three generations of gay men in India and the ways in which people are shaped by the time they live. Vivaan is a gay teenager in India's Silicon Plateau, and whilst his parents are supportive, they don't know about the online life he leads, in which sex and love aren't simple. His uncle Mambro's experience of being gay is very different, having grown up during a period when a colonial-era law prosecuting homosexuality was constantly being wielded, even as people in India fought to repeal it. And Mambro's uncle, Sukumar, was born in a time when he had no option, and his love for another man must be hidden, as he struggled to find a place for himself without hurting others.

This is a cleverly structured novel that is very powerful, with each chapter moving between the three stories and each narrative told with a different voice. Through this structure, it is easy to become immersed in all three stories and their connections and differences, which isn't always possible with a novel telling three parallel stories. Vivaan's voice notes are confessional, whereas Mambro's story is at a second-person remove, and Sukumar's is told in third person narration, and al of these suit the characters and their stories as well as serving to make them distinctive from each other. The three characters struggle with many of the same things, but also specific issues to their time, and particularly Vivaan's story takes a more futuristic approach to what intimacy might mean in new ways, that offer opportunity and peril.

Deviants is sad and humorous at once, balancing the three characters well to create a powerful exploration of being gay in India over the past decades.