© The Author(s) 2017 T. Kuldova, M.A. Varghese (eds.), Urban Utopias, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47623-0_11 CHAPTER 11 Utopia or Elsewhere: Queer Modernities in Small Town West Bengal Paul Boyce and Rohit K. Dasgupta AU1 AU2 P. Boyce (*) University of Sussex, Brighton, UK e-mail: P.Boyce@sussex.ac.uk R.K. Dasgupta Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK e-mail: r.k.dasgupta@soton.ac.uk INDIAN UTOPIAS: LIMITS AND EXCESS Like all good contemporary scholars, we began our musings for the composition of the present chapter with a Google search—testing the cur- rent media environment for what it might generate in terms of unexpected information or signiiers. Our favored search term ‘India Utopias’ yielded some expected leads—links to information about Auroville, the website of a data-services provider, and so on. Each of these options signiies a spectrum of utopian imaginary concerning contemporary India, the for- mer perhaps located in the ideation of a retreat from modernity, the latter irmly anchored in techno-commerce. Uncannily, in terms of the themes of the chapter, we also found ourselves directed to the website ‘Utopia-Asia. com’, which offers travel advice to ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)’ tourists planning to travel in the Asia region. The advice on offer includes information on places to stay and visit, along with ready reckoners 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18