FEATURE ON THE NETFLIX SERIES LEILA

Leila and the world of Aryavarta: The future is here and now, and it is scary as hell 

* A man in Jharkhand died after he was thrashed by a mob on suspicions of theft and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram”, “Jai Hanuman” when they discovered he was Muslim. According to India Today, he was held for 18 hours by the gathering.

 

* An activist inTamil Nadu was beaten to death for objecting to a neighbour storing large quantities of water unmindful of the rest of the locality. Elsewhere in the state, a woman was stabbed in a clash over a water sump.

 

*  Right-wing organisations in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, announced a boycott of all Muslim artistes in Hindu religious functions. They pledged to henceforth “promote Hindu artistes”, The Times of India reported.

 

* In Maharashtra, a Dalit boy was beaten up, stripped and made to sit on hot tiles as punishment for entering a temple space. Meanwhile, in a parched Uttar Pradesh district, water tankers are being sent only to upper-caste settlements where lathi-wielding men are preventing Dalits from approaching water pumps.

 

* A Muslim man was killed by the authorities and his Hindu wife tortured as retribution for marrying him. Their only child is rumoured to have been sent to a camp where organs are harvested from the offspring of inter-community marriages.

 

Wait.

 

Hold on.

That final snippet, authentic as it sounds, is a precis of the Netflix series Leila, a fictional work set in a hypothetical land. The rest are all actual incidents reported from across India in the past month.

In a country where today’s hyperbole mirrors tomorrow’s reality though, “dystopian” is an inadequate adjective for the story of that last-mentioned Hindu-Muslim couple who are at the heart of Leila, which is now streaming online.

 

Based on Prayaag Akbar’s 2017 English novel of the same name, Leila has been written for the screen – in a smooth blend of Hindi and English – by Urmi Juvekar with Suhani Kanwar and Patrick Graham. It revolves around Shalini Rizwan Chowdhury nee Pathak, an upper-caste Hindu who married Rizwan, a Muslim, before segregation was rigidly enforced during the reign of the despotic Joshiji.

 

In the show’s opening scene set in the year 2047, Shalini (played by Huma Qureshi) is watching with affectionate indulgence as Riz (Rahul Khanna) and their little girl Leila frolic in their swimming pool. That the couple has a private pool is evidence of their wealth, as is the largeness of their house where the maid Sapna hovers in the background. This seemingly idyllic visual is disrupted by the arrival of violent intruders who rip the family apart, purportedly as reprisal for their misuse of a scarce resource – water – but in truth for another reason. In this place known as Aryavarta where water is indeed a luxury the rich can afford while the poor battle over it, citizens must now live in housing complexes strictly earmarked for specific castes and religious groups, inter-marrying is forbidden and “mischrit bachche” (children of mixed parentage) like Leila are viewed as undesirables.

 

Leila is about Shalini’s search for her daughter while being forced to live in humiliating, squalid conditions like all women who married outside their community.

 

The show is helmed by the India-born Canada-based Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta who is the series’ creative executive producer and has directed the first two of Season 1’s six episodes. The remaining four are directed by Pawan Kumar, maker of the acclaimed Kannada films Lifeu Ishtene, Lucia and U-Turn, and National Award winning cinematographer Shanker Raman who debuted as a director with 2017’s Hindi-Haryanvi feature Gurgaon.

 

On a warm summer afternoon in Mumbai, Mehta joins me for a conversation about Leila. Doesn’t the compulsory segregation in the story mirror the way Indians of certain social groups already choose to keep away from certain others, I ask? In that sense, is it not as much about the present as it is about a terrifying possible future? “I think every dystopian novel is actually about that time, and the extreme of that becomes dystopia,” Mehta replies, before mentioning the Canadian literary classic many critics cited while reviewing Akbar’s novel: “That’s the great thing about Gilead in Handmaid’s Tale – the seed of Gilead, the sexploitation and patriarchy is set in the ’80s when Margaret Atwood wrote the book.” In the iconic British novel 1984, Mehta reminds me, George Orwell wrote “exactly what was happening, the Cold War was on when he wrote it in the 1950s and he thought 1984 would be totalitarian, for him it was what happened in Russia”.

In a separate meeting at the same venue, Huma Qureshi dips into her stage background to describe her notion of dystopia. “In theatre,” she explains, “you do something called a clown workshop. You have a smile and you keep smiling smiling smiling, at some point that smile becomes grotesque.” The actor best known for Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs Of Wasseypur films physically demonstrates the exercise as she speaks, stretching her lips incrementally with each “smiling” until the edges of her mouth reach as close to her ears as is possible. “That is what dystopia is. The idea or thought could be quite harmless, it could be small but if you keep stretching that thought it can become extreme.” 

 

In this context, Qureshi highlights a scene from Leila in which Shalini chides Sapna for washing her face at what looks like the kitchen sink. The mistress’ objection is not to the unsanitary use of a basin reserved for cleaning dishes (which would be a fair point, in my view), the objection she articulates is that Sapna is wasting expensive water but her subsequent actions imply an additional concern: she sprays a purifier on the area.

 

Qureshi says the scene prompted her to introspect. “I was talking to my Mum,” she explains, “and I was like, it’s so strange that we still keep the cups, saucers and plates of our servants who work in our house, our domestic workforce, separately. She of course had her own logic, that ‘no no, we do it because they break things or they get dirty or they don’t clean it properly’, and I said, ‘No, actually you know where it comes from? It comes from a very deep ingrained sense of untouchability.’ And my mother who is actually quite progressive was like, ‘oh my God I did not even realise that’.”

 

In a short interview sandwiched between my appointments with Mehta and Qureshi, in response to a question about Shalini’s prejudice, Akbar says one of his book’s intentions was “to show all of our complicity in this system, it’s not just a top-down thing”. He explains: “The reason we live in these sort of segregated towers you know like, I am talking metaphorically like, the reason we are constantly searching to isolate ourselves is because we are complicit in, you know like if you look out of this window it’s kind of a perfect Leila visual – there’s this slum, and our hotel pool is down there, just beyond it there is a, when I came in in the morning these two boys were running into the ocean and out, and that was when I saw that it was like, god, these are inescapable realities of our urban living in India.” He is referring to the geography of Mumbai where swish residential complexes and five-star hotels stand contiguous with sprawling slums, a geography “that fed into the book while I was writing it”.

 

Mehta quotes this comment from the legendary Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel that she has repeated in interviews for years: The minute you’re particular is the very minute you become universal. Leila, she says, “is very particular but very universal.”

 

The universality of Leila comes from several particulars it has drawn from reality. In a scene featuring child slaves in a filthy, mammoth slum on the show, Mehta intentionally referenced the cages in which Donald Trump’s administration has been placing migrant children crossing into the US.

 

“In the script, the children were tied to little posts,” she recalls. “And I said, ‘no no no, let’s make cages for them’ because that’s the time the immigration happened and these kids were put in cages. So you borrow from the horrific nature of what’s happening in the world and bring it to the particular place, that’s when it becomes universal.”

 

Context counts for everything. Half a decade back, Leila’s cage children would not have had the global currency they have today because of America’s “Mad King”. In the India of 2019, Joshiji whose image is ubiquitous across Aryavarta, who appears as a gigantic hologram in a mall, whose childhood as Bal Joshi is chronicled in animation form, and whose devotee says her baby is already Joshiji’s “bhakt” resonates with a meaning these motifs did not have five years back.

 

Obviously those associated with Leila are aware of the risk such a series entails. When I meet them I am briefly frazzled by what I interpret as defensiveness on their part: both Qureshi and Akbar do not want to comment on the show’s approach to the book, and at first I assume they are being diplomatic to avoid offending each other or anyone involved, until my interview with Mehta gets me wondering if their hesitation to speak on even relevant subjects is just a sign of the team’s overall caution. The realisation dawns when Mehta suddenly, in the middle of a pleasant conversation, goes on the backfoot when I ask if she felt any trepidation before signing up for Leila considering her encounters with India’s fundamentalists so far. (Her 1996 film Fire, a story of lesbian love, was greeted with violence by Shiv Sena protestors claiming that homosexuality is against Indian culture. Following vandalism and threats from extremists, Water – a film about Hindu widows in Varanasi – was delayed for four years and ultimately shot in Sri Lanka with a new cast.) 

“I don’t think (there is any risk in Leila). Is there? What way?” she shoots back in response to my question, following that up with, “So you think I should be scared? Is that what you are asking me?” She finally settles into a long answer that suggests she interpreted “Did you feel any trepidation...?” as an accusation and/or an effort to start a fire – actually, social media Hindutvavaadis were already up in arms against Leila’s trailer when we met before the show’s June 14 premiere.

 

“The conscience has to be clear, no?” says Mehta. “Why would I want to do anything that would put me in that kind of jeopardy again? If I felt it even smelt of controversy, or put me into anything, I am not interested. Whether it does or not, who knows, I hope not, and you should hope not either because it kills discussion.” She becomes progressively less guarded as she adds, “Aren’t we a democracy in India? We are. The death of democracy is the death of dialogue. So I like the idea of dialogue. Some people might say it (Leila) is anti-Hindu, some might say it isn’t, but then have a dialogue. Band na karo (just don’t stop it).”

In the days since its premiere, Leila has drawn strong reactions on both sides of the ideological divide. Liberals have praised it for its courage and relevance, and some on social media are adopting the show’s “Jai Aryavarta” slogan to denote present-day newsbreaks so bizarre that they feel like something out of a dystopian future. Meanwhile, conservatives have trended the hashtags #Hinduphobia and #Hinduphobic on social media and circulated false claims that Leila reserves its criticism for Hindus alone, when in truth it is a denunciation of all orthodoxy and discrimination expressed most starkly through the portrayal of Aryavarta’s efforts to control women’s uteruses and marginalise “doosh”, the equivalent of India’s Dalits.

In a country where an overwhelming majority belongs to a single religion, chances are that stories will by and large be dominated by that community from among whom will emerge most heroes, victims and villains of fiction – thin-skinned conservatives avoid noting that if a Joshiji is the despot-in-chief of Aryavarta, its most prominent victim is a Shalini, and they coincidentally fail to mention the significant role played in the plot by the self-destructive, self-defeating bigotry of Shalini’s brother-in-law Naz. If anything, Naz is a reminder that majority and minority fundamentalism feed off each other, with each making the other the excuse for its existence.

At a creative level, Leila is not flawless. The first two episodes are impeccable but Episode 3 and the finale abruptly take on the air of a thriller by ending on needless cliffhangers. The leeway that Shalini and the labour camp inspector Bhanu (Siddharth) get in the last two episodes are not entirely convincing either. And slip-ups arise from what seems like the writers’ assumption that every viewer has read the novel. For instance, late in the season Bhanu uses the word “repeaters” out of the blue for the “pavitra paltan” (purity squad), the government-employed thugs who abducted Leila – “repeaters” is the book’s term for them.

If a second season is commissioned, these rough edges need to be smoothened out. Because the otherwise fascinating Orwellian, Atwoodian apocalypse of Akbar and Team Juvekar’s imagination is definitely worth returning to.

At a time when many mainstream entertainers are bowing and scraping before the government, Leila is a much-needed indictment of rabid nationalism and patriarchy, a condemnation of caste and class exploitation, a warning bell against ecological devastation and authoritarianism, and an envisioning of what could happen if, instead of equality, rebellion leads to an inversion of circumstances between the oppressors and the oppressed. Under this totalitarian regime, even dominance does not buy peace of mind. No one seems happy and completely secure in Aryavarta, not the Faiz Ahmed Faiz loving Mr Rao who is Joshiji’s No. 2, not Sapna the former maid, not Shalini the former mistress, and not Mrs Dixit her present employer with the terrified, constantly watchful saucer-like eyes.

Huma Qureshi is still in an introspective mood as we wind up our interview. Leila brought up questions that disturbed her greatly, she says. “I enjoy many privileges. I have had a comforting caring protective family, the privilege of education, a certain amount of wealth, now what if something were to happen and all this was taken away from me? Would I stop being me and become some animalistic version of me? Or would I be able to retain my humanity?”

 

A glance at this morning’s newspapers suggests that the future she worries about is closer than it seems.

This article was published on Firstpost on July 4, 2019:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/leila-and-the-world-of-aryavarta-the-future-is-here-and-now-and-it-is-scary-as-hell-6933821.html

Photographs courtesy: IMDB

LGBT PORTRAYALS IN BOLLYWOOD / PUBLISHED IN MAXIM

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & An Evolving Bollywood

By Anna MM Vetticad

(This article was originally published in Maxim magazine’s August 2014 edition)

“Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” For millions of Indian bibliophiles, these words conjure up images of a pretty Caucasian teen on a balcony, as a young man looks longingly at her from the courtyard below. Transpose that to an Indian setting and the latest visual etched in popular imagination is of Deepika Padukone, eyes sparkling with a new-born passion, while a muscular, moustachioed Ranveer Singh gazes up at her in Ram-leela (2013).

Now imagine another scenario. Imagine on that verandah a man being gazed upon by his male lover. Or the fellow below replaced by a woman. After all, Romeo and Juliet is not a metaphor for heterosexual love, but forbidden love. And is there a love more forbidden today than love between two people of the same sex?

Enter Ekta Kapoor. The news that she may produce a gay version of Romeo and Juliet elicits both curiosity and caution. Kapoor’s reputation as a flag-bearer of desi conservatism in melodramatic tele-soaps raises concerns about whether the film will spoof the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community or be a progressive, thoughtful take on homosexual love. The fears are legitimate since Hindi movies at large have long responded to same-sex liaisons with sniggers or, perhaps at best, silence.

“A sensitive Hindi film where a gay person is not being marked out as gay, where gay people are treated like straight people, is rare,” says Sanjay Suri who co-produced director Onir’s landmark 2005 film, My Brother Nikhil, and starred in it as a gay swimmer with AIDS.

Sensitivity reared its head again this year with Abhishek Chaubey’s Dedh Ishqiya. Neither is it an issue-based film designed for a niche market, with homosexuality as the “issue,” nor does it mock its lesbian characters to tickle the audience. In fact, the indication of their sexual preference is so understated that India’s morality brigade — those who denounce same-sex love as a vice of the wild white West — probably didn’t notice.

“I was sure there would be no protests against Dedh Ishqiya,” says Chaubey, “because the kind of idiots who protect their sanskriti (culture) through protests over a film are the kind of idiots who will not even get that angle in this film.”

Rewind to the scene in which Khaalujaan (Naseeruddin Shah) and Babban (Arshad Warsi) are being held captive by Begum Para (Madhuri Dixit-Nene) and Muniya (Huma Qureshi). As the ladies play hopscotch, the camera quietly shifts to the wall where their shadows fall, and we watch as their game turns to frisky jostling before a fleeting moment when silhouettes intertwine.

In 1996, Deepa Mehta’s Fire had sparked off violence from agitated right-wing groups for its far more patent and protracted depiction of lesbianism. By telling an Indian story, Fire gave the discourse on same-sex love in India a new impetus, despite being an Indo-Canadian production by an NRI director. Hindi cinema, by then, had already delivered abundant LGBT portrayals — some overt, most covert, some sympathetic, some prejudiced, some well-fleshed-out, most not.

Anupam Kher played what was arguably mainstream Hindi cinema’s first openly gay man in living memory in 
Mast Kalandar (1991). Pinkoo’s screaming effeminacy, a clingy tendency towards straight men and their revulsion, made him a caricature, as was the norm. Yet, he also defied the norm by not being a minor player or a mere distraction from the main plotline, and by being frank about his obvious interest in men. In showing Pinkoo spurning a man who unabashedly pursues him, the screenplay also gave him agency and contradicted notions that all gay men are romantically desperate.

At one point in Mast Kalandar, an unexpected flash of IQ in the writing leads to some genuine — and layered — hilarity when Pinkoo sings a line from the song Aadmi hoon aadmi se pyaar karta hoon (I’m a man who loves men) from the 1970 Manoj Kumar-starrer Pehchan. The original, of course, was sung to exemplify an innocent villager’s love for humanity, not men in particular.

While most gay men in commercial cinema have been cartoonish like Pinkoo, at least some allusions to homosexuality have been amusing without being scornful. In Silsila (1981), a bathing scene featuring buddies Amit (Amitabh Bachchan) and Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) added a sub-text to their relationship with humour. The two are showering together when Shekhar slyly chucks a bar of soap on the floor. Amit jocularly refuses to pick it up, prompting both to burst out laughing. Shekhar adds: “Remember in the hostel bathroom, too, no one wanted to pick up the soap?”

Romances between women have 
been less common in mainstream Hindi cinema. In 1983’s Razia Sultan, Razia (Hema Malini) is shown with her lady-in-waiting (Parveen Babi) who sings to her and draws a feather over their faces to hide a kiss, while two attendants exchange meaningful glances. The clandestine nature of the relationship and even its representation — and Razia’s possible bisexuality — are all illustrated by the fact that the song is about her male lover (Dharmendra) who she is visualising right then.

Hijras or transgender persons are the most neglected LGBT group in Hindi cinema. Over the years, they’ve occasionally appeared as entertaining asides in songs or other brief scenes. Mahesh Bhatt’s Tamanna (1997) is unusual for the centrality of its hijra character. So was the well-written part of Maharani, played by Sadashiv Amrapurkar in Sadak (1991). Though it was the principal villain’s character, it had a real-world edge, then a rarity.

Saleem Kidwai, co-editor with Ruth Vanita of the book Same-Sex Love In India, takes us back to his first memory of a Hindi film with an LGBT character. The black-and-white Manzil (1960) starred Mehmood as a paanwala who befriends the hero, Raju (Dev Anand). One day when Raju leaves the paan shop with a female admirer, the paanwala is singing “Jaao, hato, kaahe ko jhooti banao batiya.” “This is 
a disappointed man singing about his attraction for another man,” says Kidwai.

“Then, of course, there’s Dosti,” he adds. “It was the 1960s, I was entering my teens, and I could relate to those guys. I could see how a situation like that could have been sexual. These things are so coded that only people looking for those messages could have gotten them.” This is where we enter tricky territory. Dosti is the 1964 classic from Rajshri Productions, about a friendship between two physically challenged teenagers. Assuming that they were gay seems bizarre at one level. Besides, Rajshri is too conventional to countenance such non-conformism.

Yet, Dosti comes up repeatedly in conversations with chroniclers of Hindi cinema’s homosexual — or bisexual — history. So do most films based on the once-frequented dosti-yaarana formula: Sangam (1964) with Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar, Anand (1971) and Namak Haram (1973), both starring Rajesh Khanna and Bachchan, Sholay (1975) with Bachchan-Dharmendra, and numerous others. You could see this interpretation as an over-reading of those films never intended by the writer, with all that searingly intense boy bonding merely proving mainstream Hindi cinema’s penchant for over-statement. The analysis could also be seen as emerging from a conservative school of thought that cannot fathom an intimate same-sex relationship sans a romance. Alternatively, you could see homo-erotic undertones as a possible logical explanation for those powerful (usually male) friendships involving utter devotion to a degree that goes beyond what’s accepted in the average non-romantic tie.

Vanita says: “I’ve shown these films to my students here (at the University of Montana, the US), and all of them commented on the fact that the men are singing romantic songs to each other like Diye jalte hai (from Namak Haram) and the songs from Dosti. If you played those songs without knowing that a man is singing to a man, it sounds like a man is singing to a woman. The way they look into each other’s eyes while singing, put food into each other’s mouths, all these gestures have meaning within the economy of cinema. My students say, and I agree, that in Hollywood you have the buddy movie but buddies don’t behave in this intense romantic way.” Vanita further cites songs featuring cross-dressing women as a cinematic device used to represent same-sex eroticism for the audience.

Not everyone takes kindly to such deconstruction. Saif Ali Khan was reportedly so enraged by LGBT rights activist Ashok Row Kavi’s take on the sparks and suggestive exchanges between him and Akshay Kumar in 1994’s Main Khiladi Tu Anari, that he reportedly went to Kavi’s home and hit him.

As you may have already gathered, this is an unending debate. For many present-generation cinema-gazers, though, the starting block for deliberations on LGBT films is megahit producer-director Karan Johar. An old-fashioned Kantaben’s suspicions of hanky-panky between Shah Rukh Khan and Saif on the sidelines of Johar’s 2003 production Kal Ho Naa Ho, preceded Dostana’s central theme of straight men pretending to be gay in 2008, loosely inspired by the Hollywood comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. In 2012, Johar directed Student of the Year, starring Rishi Kapoor as a gay school principal.

These films have received both condemnation and commendations. The book, The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, quotes National Award-winning filmmaker Onir slamming KJo without naming him. “It’s absolutely okay not to do films which have gay characters but 
at least don’t do the opposite where you harm your own community,” he says.
“As long as you’re making jokes where you are laughing along, fine, but if you’re laughing at all the time? Not funny... Very often, Hindi mainstream films have over-the-top trans-dressers as gay characters. The only representation is that, and you’re always laughing at. At the end of the day, the word that the audience goes back home with is ‘Ma ka whatever bigad gaya’... India as a society is not homophobic. You see men walking hand in hand all over the place. But now, suddenly, it’s ‘Oh dekh, Dostana ja raha hai.’ (See, there goes Dostana.)” The reference above is to Dostana’s song Ma da laadla bigad gaya (Mother’s darling son has been spoilt).

Johar’s response is uncharacteristically acerbic: “Onir was born to be upset. He just wants to be upset all the time. If you want to be offended, you can be offended by the opening of an envelope. Dostana did more for the community than My Brother Nikhil. There are gay people who came out to their parents after Dostana. Yes, it has a light-hearted tone suited to commercial cinema, but it brought the discussion into the mainstream and many more people saw it than My Brother Nikhil, so I feel I’ve contributed tremendously.”

Dostana’s director, Tarun Mansukhani, adds: “Don’t people see that while John and Abhishek pretend to be gay in the film, they don’t play effeminate? I know I’ve to still stay on the borderline and say, ‘Let’s pretend they are gay’, so that audiences at least come in. Next step could be, ‘Maybe they’re actually gay. Who knows?’ But you can’t have that next step till you take the first.”

Support comes from unexpected quarters. Purab Kohli, who played the hero’s lover in My Brother Nikhil, laments the fact that commercial films use LGBT persons as comic relief, but also acknowledges: “It’s a light way of conveying a point. Dostana was funny, but at the same time one very important thing happened in it, which was Kirron Kher as the quintessential Indian mother, saying, ‘Hey, my son is gay and I’m okay with that.’ That’s bold for a commercial platform.” It’s only fair to also point out that even the over-the-top gay templates Johar sometimes uses are drawn with far more dignity than the LGBT caricatures in so many films, where limp-wristed, womanly men debase themselves to entertain.

Director Madhur Bhandarkar has featured at least one LGBT person in almost all his films. His marginal gay characters have been camp clichés, and the lesbian encounter in Heroine was terribly contrived. His 2008 film, Fashion, merits praise, though, for its delicate depiction of a lavender marriage (a male-female marriage in which at least one partner is not heterosexual, with the arrangement shielding the homosexual person in the relationship from social scrutiny). On the other hand, the heroine’s gay friend in Page 3 adhered to the social stereotype of gay men as sexual predators. So did the boy who seduced his female friend’s husband in the short film Johar contributed to the omnibus volume Bombay Talkies in 2013.

For a legally and socially ostracised people, is it better to be represented negatively or not at all? “Negative characters at least prompt a discussion,” says Kidwai. “Caricatures are not good, but if we wait for that perfect gay character to emerge, we’ll be waiting a long time. There’s a whole journey where lots of rubbish will be produced before a full-fledged gay character grows.”

Casting challenges are one reason for Hindi cinema’s LGBT caricatures. “Actors feel they can pass off caricatures as fun. But even smaller actors fear a serious gay role will spoil their image,” Bhandarkar explains.

“This just shows how little India has moved because even when I
 did BOMgAY, no actor was willing to take that part,” says actor Rahul Bose. BOMgAY is Riyad Vinci Wadia and Jangu Sethna’s 1996 short feature, believed to be India’s first gay film. More recently, Bose played a gay man going to extreme lengths to stay closeted in Onir’s I Am (2011).

Despite her background as a top commercial star, Juhi Chawla was liberal enough to play a gay man’s sister in My Brother Nikhil, and to co-produce I Am. Yet she frankly admits she’d hesitate to play
 a lesbian woman. “I’m a little shy of any kind of intimacy on screen,” she explains. Would she refuse even if there were no sex scene? “Perhaps. Because I cannot imagine having a relationship with a woman. It’s not natural for me. I don’t say it’s not natural for others. I accept it of others. I may say no because I can’t understand it and don’t know how to portray it.”

So when will mainstream Hindi cinema deliver leading and supporting LGBT characters played by major stars in commercial films, in which their gender and sexual orientation are not a source
 of jokes or the fulcrum of the plot? Not anytime soon, going by this assessment from actor Imran Khan, who starred in a satirical video in 2013 lampooning homophobia in India: “Hollywood is so open that in a film like Mean Girls, targeted at children, they have a gay character among the leads and they show that you should respect this person. Archie Comics recently introduced a gay character. If Tinkle were to introduce a gay protagonist, India would come to a standstill, politicians would shout that we are corrupting our youth, newsstands carrying it would be burnt down, the writer and artists would be killed. In the West, if a gay character is stereotyped, it is remarkable and people point fingers. For us, it’s remarkable if a gay character is treated fairly.”

This is not to say Hollywood does not stereotype. It does. But it offers sensitivity too, far more than Hindi cinema. Clearly then, a Brokeback Mountain from Mumbai, or a big-budget My Brother Nikhil produced by a moneyed studio, could be a while in coming. Small beginnings, though, have already been made.

Photographs courtesy:

(1)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Brother…Nikhil

(2)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dostana_(2008_film)

(3)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_(1996_film)