GAY BOLLYWOOD

story at the cross section of religion and sexuality.

The Pink Mirror is still banned in India. Do such restrictions dishearten you? How do you work around them?

The Pink Mirror still doesn’t have a censor certification. Our application was rejected thrice and we didn’t have the energy to follow up. That was back in 2002-03. The censor board has definitely been more liberal since then. My film Purple Skies received a ‘U’ (universal) certificate though it was about lesbians, bisexual and trans persons; and our latest film Evening Shadows received a ‘UA’ certificate (children below 12 need parental guidance). My attempt has never been to sensationalise the issue or use it as a peg to promote the film. My films deal with LGBTQ issues as normally as in real life.

How has Section 377 affected the LGBTQ community in India?

While Sec 377 hasn’t been used often in legal terms, it has been misused by the police and blackmailers to both extract money and sexual favours from LGBTQ persons. Our feature-length documentary film Breaking Free (now available on Netflix) is a detailed account of how Sec 377 impacts the community - with real life testimonies of those affected as well as lawyers and stakeholders – and also the two-decade-long legal challenge to change the law. The film won the National Award for Best Editing (non-fiction) at the National Film Awards, which is the highest recognition for creative excellence in the country. It was a big victory for an LGBTQ film to receive the award and was a proud moment for me receiving it at the hands of the President of India.

Same sex marriage has recently been legalised in Australia after a postal ballot, but the Indian community’s vote wasn’t an unequivocal ‘Yes.’ What do you want to say to them?

There are always some people who will have regressive views. Perhaps they are not even their real views, they just want publicity by standing out. My message to them is, ‘Don’t be the barricade, it will fall. Be the wings, so you can soar too.’

Evening Shadows will be screened on Sun 25 Feb (7.30pm) at Event Cinemas on George Street. Stay on for a Q and A with director Sridhar Rangayan and lead actress Mona Ambegaonkar

In the West it’s Armie Hammer and Timothy Chalamet giving interviews as a couple for their gay love story Call Me By Your Name. We haven’t reached that nirvanic stage in India. But Ranveer Singh and Jim Sarbh’s homoerotic act in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat comes closest to obtaining a kind of legitimacy for same-sex relationships that this country has so far only seen in fringe films by Hansal Mehta (Aligarh) and Onir (My Brother Nikhil). Of course, detractors will argue that showing the villain as bisexual in Padmaavat doesn’t legitimise homosexuality as much as demonise it. Then there will always be those who will look at mainstream cinema’s attempts to validate non-mainstream sections and relationships with suspicion and distrust. But the fact remains that Ranveer Singh playing a man who is sexually attracted to another man is a big deal in Indian cinema.

He even gets into a bath-tub with Sarbh and at one point in the nubile narration, Sarbh gestures to ask if he can join his lord and monster..., pardon me, master, in bed.

Says Onir, “I love the chemistry between Ranveer and Jim Sarbh. I really like the shades that Sarbh has brought to his gay character.”

We can now tell you that there was a lot of debate on the sets of Padmaavat as to how Sarbh should play Ranveer’s “doosri begum”, the first one being Aditi Rao. The director wanted the character to be ruthlessly macho and not the least effeminate, so that when Sarbh bursts into an evocative erotic number about unrequited love we almost feel the stretched-out strains of a gender-free love that has no definition or demarcation, only rejection and ridicule.

And then there is the tenderness between the two men. There is a sequence where Sarbh takes Ranveer’s hand and places his face in it... the tenderness and anguish of that moment are clear. Call him by any name, but the gay lover is finally here to stay. Indeed, there is more chemistry between Ranveer and Sarbh than there is between Ranveer and his screen wife Aditi Rao.

In the global cinema, though, the movement towards mainstream legitimisation of same-sex relations has been in the making for years, with the mould being perhaps broken by Brokeback Mountain in 2005.

In the new flamboyant franchise film Maze Runner: The Death Cure we see another homoerotic relationship being given a healthy fillip - in the intense relationship between Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) and Newt (Thomas BrodySangster). Not that anyone says they are gay. But their passionate friendship runs through the course of this sinewy tale of dystopian derring-do, almost topping the hero’s passionate relationship with the film’s official female lead.

The film ends with Dylan reading a posthumous love letter written to him by Newt which very clearly states the passionate nature of their mutual affection. All this is in the domain of the forbidden being forced out of the uncapped tube of moral freefalling that would have been frowned at by the moral police in the past.

Now that there is, what shall I say, more acceptance, a forthcoming film, Surmayee Sham directed by Sridhar Rangayan, talks about a young man coming out of the closet on the eve of his marriage.

Just two years back, it took a Fawad Khan from another country to play the gay son of a Delhi business family in Kapoor & Sons

Given a chance, would Karan Johar have cast Ranveer Singh in Fawad’s role? And more importantly, are we ready for the long-delayed sexual revolution in Hindi cinema?

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