Negotiating the Masculinities: Reading the Marginal Worlds in Nalini Jameela's Romantic Encounters of a Sex Worker

This paper explores the constellation of masculinities portrayed in the memoirs of Nalini Jameela, with a particular focus on her work Ente Aanungal, translated into English as Romantic Encounters of a Sex Worker (2018). Her negotiation with the complex landscape of masculinities is analysed to understand how life writing as a genre has the potential to present a counter–public discourse that enables the subaltern worlds to assert their voices. Her memoirs also disrupt the hegemonic constructions of gender, sexuality and morality, although there are strategic compromises with the established patterns during many instances. By portraying her experiences with a wide range of masculinities, her narrative brings out the fluid and often contradictory masculinities at play, which are often missed from the regular analysis of mainstream Kerala society. Her autobiographical accounts thus present an alternative perspective on masculinity studies in the context of Kerala. The paper tries to understand how different masculinities are performed and how they are negotiated and resisted within the transactional sexual economies. Her ethnographic-like exploration of her relationships helps us to understand the dualities embedded in Kerala society from a fresh perspective, which can present a cogent critique of the social hierarchies and the moral geographies of this region.