In Neel Mukherjee’s 2008 novel A Life Apart (originally published as Past Continuous), the abject and the traumatic become interwoven motifs in its depiction of a young gay man’s emigration from India to the UK. Ritwik’s home life in India before his emigration is characterised by a fraught relationship with a domineering matriarch, the protagonist suffering under the weight of familial expectation as well as the frequent physical abuse meted out by his mother. The traumas of this childhood abuse are consolidated by the violence to which Ritwik is subjected after his migration to the UK. This chapter will engage with perspectives from queer theory and trauma theory to examine the ways in which the traumas from Ritwik’s childhood influence his sexuality post-migration, and how the protagonist’s sexual experiences can be seen as ameliorating the traumatic burden he carries from his youth in Calcutta.