Rainbows on the Silver Screen
From Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Lagaa, Badhai Do, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, and more, a fresh lease of life seems to have been granted to a responsible on-screen LGBTQIA+ representation in the glitzy-verse of commercial Bollywood over the past decade.
Ever since the 1913 release of Raja Harishchandra, the first film production in India, cinema has been a potent agent of social influence, triggering discourses and swaying the country’s psyche and sentiments to socio-politically significant degrees. In this country, superstar actors are literally worshipped as demigods; some of them periodically bathed with ritualistic milk by their fans, just as devout Hindus perform milk abhishek of the Shivalingam. In this land, films across history have become either the transformative fodder for open minds, calls for social change, or contributed as fuel sparking social disharmony and communalism.
The sway Indian cinema holds over the Indian subcontinent is no secret. This is even more true of the industry giant, Bollywood, which produces a huge number of commercial Hindi films each year, making up about a whopping 43 per cent of the total annual revenue earned by the Indian film industry.
And as the old adage goes, with great power comes great responsibility. However, in this regard, the history of Bollywood showcases a rather inglorious track record to its name when it comes to its social responsibility towards the LGBTQIA+ community of the country. Until very recently, any deviation from the on-screen heteronormative cishet romance was to be witnessed only in Indian art films. As early as up to a decade back, only a handful of directors who made socio-culturally subversive art films were associated with the few non-heteronormative or queer stories on screen. Be it Prem Kumar’s Badnam Basti (1971), often described as India’s first queer film, Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996), Rituparno Ghosh's Memories in March (2010) and Chitrangada (2012), or Aligarh (2015) a Hansal Mehta film based on the real-life tragedy of Professor Siras of Aligarh University: all these titles unequivocally come under the umbrella of Indian art, alias parallel cinema.
For the first century since Raja Harishchandra, LGBTQIA+ representation was rare in commercial cinema across all the different regional film industries of India, including Bollywood. Hardly any commercial film producer dared to invest in queer stories and queer protagonists. According to filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan, “Mainstream cinema has been too slow in changing its portrayal of LGBT cinema.”
Besides this shocking lack of queer representation in Bollywood what has been far more disturbing is the grossly irresponsible and rampant misrepresentation of the said community on screen. While extremely scarce, the queer characters showcased in commercial productions from the previous decades were either toxically stereotyped and/or turned into comic caricatures
Besides this shocking lack of queer representation in Bollywood what has been far more disturbing is the grossly irresponsible and rampant misrepresentation of the said community on screen. While extremely scarce, the queer characters showcased in commercial productions from the previous decades were either toxically stereotyped and/or turned into comic caricatures, (e.g. Kammo and Gulab Singh in Raja Hindustani), or worse, negatively portrayed, as figures of utmost villainy and a threat to society, (e.g. the brothel-running evil transwoman Maharani in Sadak or Lajja Shankar Pandey, the transwoman kidnapper and murderer of children in Sangharsh). While both Shadashiv Amrapurkar (Maharani) and Ashutosh Rana (Pandey) were praised for their spine-chilling performance, it only further reiterates the atmosphere of acute homophobia and transphobia in the country.
In recent years, fortunately, a fresh lease of life seems to have been granted to a responsible on-screen LGBTQIA+ representation, beyond the sombre ambit of ‘art films’. The representation is slowly but steadily making its way into the glitzy-verse of commercial Bollywood too.
Before diving into the said scene, two films beg to be set apart from it. Though director Shonali Bose claims that her film Margarita with a Straw (2014) is “a (typically) Bollywood film and also has five songs in it,” yet, for now we shall keep it outside that list of queer commercial Bollywood flicks, not only because the story is about a disabled bisexual girl struggling with cerebral palsy—a subject that undeniably evokes strong vibes of ‘parallel movie’—but also because it was sent to several film festivals and won many national and international film awards. The other milestone queer movie is, of course, Aligarh (2015) that remains an important release that, despite its box office failures, received critical acclaim. Aligarh is said to have impactfully paved the path for what is today claimed as Bollywood’s first gay romance, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020).
The first mainstream queer movie with a big budget and big casting was perhaps Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Lagaa (2019). The Shelly Chopra Dhar film, inspired by a P.G. Woodhouse novel (that albeit had straight protagonists), tells the story of a closeted lesbian Sweety (Sonam Kapoor) coming from an acutely conservative Punjabi family that still upholds an archaic and toxic patriarchal belief system and social norms. Ek Ladki’s plot pivots around Sweety’s external conflicts with her homophobic family and larger community, while also exploring her internal struggles with her own queer identity right from her adolescent years, and her incessant daydreams of a same-sex Indian wedding. She also feels an acute sense of interpersonal and social alienation until, much later in life, she meets Kuhu (Regina Cassandra) and the two girls fall in love. Set against the backdrop of Moga, a village in rural Punjab, their story unfolds upon a canvas of stark cultural contrast, and follows the journey of Sweety from being a shy, scared, self-doubting girl who’s being constantly threatened by her elder brother to expose her, or told that she must try to ‘cure this illness’, up to her bold personal transformation and growth.
Like in any mainstream heterosexual romance, Ek Ladki includes two Bollywood numbers featuring the two female protagonists. Albeit, a vital element glaringly lacking in the film is the portrayal of physical intimacy or any hint of sexual passion between Sweety and Kuhu; the audience is not given any glimpse into their togetherness beyond the insipidly symbolic handholding or brief embraces, that make them appear more like two platonic women friends and less a lesbian couple. Had this been a heterosexual pair, the film would most certainly have included more intimate scenes between the protagonists. It’s a shame that the portrayal of sexual chemistry and intimacy between the two women seems to have been deliberately avoided, perhaps on the presumption that it might turn too risqué for the Indian audience (a large section of which arguably might still be acutely homophobic).
In this regard, a year later, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020), written and directed by Hitesh Kevalya, does better in portraying the gay romance between ad-man Aman (Jitendra Kumar) and his Delhi based partner Kartik (Ayushmann Khurrana). The audience is given glimpses of them hungrily smooching aboard the train; we hear Kartik complaining about having gone too long without touching Aman; we also hear indiscreet mentions of them having gay intercourse. Sexual intimacy is an undeniable facet of most romantic relationships; therefore Indian queer rom-coms cannot (should not?) shy away from showing the same with as much flamboyance and glitz as they do in heterosexual on-screen romances. In Shubh Mangal Zyada, the backdrop is an even bigger contrast to the plot than the previous film discussed, Aman being a middle-class young man hailing from an acutely conservative middle-class Brahmin joint family from Allahabad.
As expected in such heteronormative and conservative cultural settings, Aman’s mother is perennially preoccupied with securing the most eligible girl-next-door from their own community, Kusum, as her son’s future bride. Aman’s father, though a scientist, at core is quite a traditionalist and homophobic, and is revolted when he accidentally witnesses his son making out with a man.
Amidst the utter chaos of a large glitzy North Indian wedding, Aman publicly comes out as gay, shocking the entire community. In a bizarre ritual, Aman’s parents decide to declare their son’s homosexual identity as dead, and metaphorically rebirth him as straight, christening him with a new name. This sequence presents a tragicomic visual inversion of the common ‘dead-naming’ of a queer or trans person.
While escorting Kartik away from Aman’s house uncle Chaman asks him, “Ek baat batao beta... yeh kab decide kiya ki yeh banoge?” (Tell me something, son. When did you decide to become… this?) Kartik gives a befitting reply, “Aapne kab decide kiya ki aap gay nahi banoge?” (When did you decide that you won’t become this?) This dialogue takes a befitting jab at, a major segment of society that still nurses the homophobic misbelief that gender and/or sexual orientation can be consciously and arbitrarily chosen by one, and hence homosexuality must be a deliberate and sinful, or at best, an unnatural choice that needs to be willfully relinquished in favour of heterosexuality.
Amidst the utter chaos of a large glitzy North Indian wedding, Aman publicly comes out as gay, shocking the entire community. Soon in a bizarre ritual, Aman’s parents decide to declare their son’s homosexual identity as dead, and metaphorically rebirth him as straight, christening him with a new name.
Aman is seen repeatedly attempting to explain to his scientist father how the basic science behind heterosexual and homosexual attraction comprises of the exact same biochemical and hormonal triggers, and how gay love may go through the same stages of intimacy as does a cishet one. Tripathiji the scientist, however, remains convinced that his son is plain wrong and gross in being gay. The film’s climax is set at a timeline when the entire nation is seen awaiting the Supreme Court of India's final verdict of Article 377 the following day. This event is a reference to the real-life benchmark judgement given by the Supreme Court of India, on September 6, 2018, two years before the movie’s release, that decriminalized consensual homosexual acts under Article 377.
Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan ends on a positive and hopeful note, of the historic judgement decriminalizing gay consensual relationship in India. It also brings much hope for the potential of mainstream queer films in India as the film made close to a whopping Rs 10 crore at the box office on its opening day itself.
After one lesbian and one gay rom-com to its name, the following year, Bollywood further outdid itself and dived into the love story of a transgender person. Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021) is an unprecedented Indian film that collides head-on with transphobia and addresses trans rights. Manu (Ayushmann Khurana, again), a stereotypically chauvinist, masculine Jaat bodybuilder from Chandigarh falls in love with Maanvi (Vaani Kapoor), a young and attractive aerobics trainer, without realizing that she is a transwoman. The character arc of Manu traverses a wide range from being a hardcore transphobe to then educating himself on the subject, in his pursuit to understand and accept Maanvi with her trans identity.
No denying, a slightly problematic portrayal of Maanvi lies in the character been envisioned as a stereotypically beautiful feminine woman, so much so that Manu fails to recognize her gender identity. But if Maanvi were to be outwardly distinguishable as a transwoman, Manu, who at the beginning of his arc nurses severe transphobia and toxic male chauvinism, would never have indulged in a relationship with her, rendering the plot non-existent.
Once his misperception is shattered, Manu’s initial reaction is that of shock. Manu is utterly repulsed and starts belching. Mortified by his own mistake, he keeps repeating, “Haay... Maine munde naal sex kar liya. Rabba mainu chak le!” (Damn! I had sex with a guy! God, please strike me dead!). He jumps into a hot shower, and thoroughly scrubs his body clean, as if he’s polluted himself by commuting a terrible sin and is now cleansing himself of the filth. While such a reaction may seem overdramatized, in real life transphobia has been witnessed manifesting in worse possible ways. This extreme horror and loathing that Manu displays in the film is not too far removed from reality.
We see a promising sequence of Manu googling information and reading up on gender and sexuality, watching videos on gender affirming surgery, and journeying through some heavy introspection to arrive at life-transforming epiphanies. The film helps us envision an ideal world, where all the Maanvis may find their happy ending in an LGBTQIA+ inclusive and empathetic society.
What may not resemble real life is the speed with which Manu opens up to educating himself. We see a promising sequence of Manu googling information and reading up on gender and sexuality, watching videos on gender affirming surgery, and journeying through some heavy introspection to arrive at life-transforming epiphanies. The film helps us envision an ideal world, where all the Maanvis may find their happy ending in an LGBTQIA+ inclusive and empathetic society.
Badhai Do (2022), by director Harshvardhan Kulkarni, is a heartwarming and equally heart-wrenching small-budget commercial queer rom-com revolving around a closeted gay police officer Shardul Thakur (Rajkummar Rao) and a closeted lesbian PT instructor Suman/Sumi Singh (Bhumi Pednekar) who decide to enter into a lavender marriage only to get their individual marriage-obsessed families off their back. The reality of lavender marriages in India is both nuanced and potently problematic, given the pervasive social taboo and atmosphere of homophobia in the country, and the consequential high rate of such marriages of convenience in the same. Though the movie received some criticism around unwittingly promoting and normalizing such a marriage, it was in reality just holding a mirror to the Indian society, which regularly forces closeted queer people to opt for such unideal choices to escape the virulent social stigma and homophobia, and somehow still afford a life of dignity.
Both Shardul and Sumi belong to the Thakur community, an upper caste Rajput clan from Uttar Pradesh. Their background intensifies the conflict around cultural dogma and resistance to homosexuality. Shardul’s brother-in-law, a homeopathy doctor, describes homosexuality as a “disease that has no cure”, just as Sweety’s brother does in Ek Ladki. Sumi's father laments about his daughter being a lesbian, “Why did this (misfortune?) have to occur in our home?” We see Shardul constantly fearful of getting outed and he tells Sumi at one point that he considers himself a ‘homocop’, who is ironically afraid of other cops because of his closeted truth. When Shardul and Sumi get into a lavender marriage, neither of their families suspect anything, until of course, it’s already a year and Sumi still isn’t pregnant. More shenanigans ensue as Sumi begins to live with her lesbian partner in Shardul’s police quarters, and the Thakurs send his mother to watch over the married couple.
Beyond the comic elements, however, the film presents a deeper soul in its portrayal of the varied pangs of queer life. We see Shardul going through a breakup, and his heartbreak is as palpable as any heterosexual man might experience. This plot-point challenges the much prevalent misconception that gay relationships are mostly frivolous, centred around carnal gratification, one-night stands, and promiscuity and are not based on meaningful long-term connections. We witness a beautiful and empathetic friendship developing between Shardul and Sumi out of their lavender marriage, over their individual existential challenges in their shared, tremendously conservative cultural context. These two closeted queers become each other’s source of support through their respective struggles, heartaches, fears, yearnings, and personal growth. The shy and fearful Shardul’s story takes an optimistic turn when he bumps into the openly gay lawyer Guru Narayan. Remaining true to the tradition of commercial rom-coms, the film gives a brief but cheesy romance sequence between Shardul and Guru, and another sweet, slow one between Sumi and Rimjhim, against two respective romantic background songs. The character of Guru portrays the other facet of the LGBTQIA+ community in India, where those few that are not closeted, more so if they’re in any sort of position of power, try to live a bold and unapologetic queer life publicly.
The film goes ahead further, to highlight some of the burning discourse relevant to the Indian LGBTQIA+ community, such as same sex marriage and adoption rights for queer couples, both of which have not yet been legalized in the country. One of the foremost reasons why lavender marriages are so frequently opted for here, to secure the varied social, financial, and legal benefits, otherwise denied to queer people.
Sumi, who had always yearned for a baby, decides to stay married to Shardul and adopt a child with him. Shardul reiterates how initially this lavender marriage was a compromise to appease their families, and now, once again, they're forced to compromise due to the unfair laws of the land.
Badhai Do ends on a less than ideal note that stares hard in the face of the prevalent social and legal discriminations against the LGBTQIA+ in India. The audience is forced to reckon that, unless our society turns less homophobic and the Indian Constitution makes the long overdue legal provisions that allow equal rights and dignified living for the LGBTQIA+ people of India, we won’t leave much choice for closeted queers.
A more recent, out of the box commercial flick that portrays the romantic relationship between a human and a robot, Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (2024), is co-directed by Amit Joshi and Aradhana Sha. The film indirecly explores the queer-adjacent themes of robophilia / robosexuality: Aryan (Shahid Kapoor), a robotic engineer, falls in love with SIFRA (Kriti Sanon) without realizing that she/it is a robot. Urmila, Aryan’s aunt and CEO of E-Robotics strategically appoints her creation, SIFRA, as Aryan’s caretaker during his visit to the USA, to test if such robots can become indistinguishable from humans, and the plan works smoothly. As SIFRA attends to Aryan, he not only suspects nothing amiss, but also begins to grow a fondness for her, due to all data she has been fed to be perfectly compatible to Aryan. He goes ahead and gets physically intimate with her/it under the presumption that she’s just another cisgender heterosexual woman.
Upon learning the truth, Aryan initially feels a shock similar to Manu’s in Chandigarh Karein Aashiqui. He spews bitter sarcasm at Urmila, “Oh yes! I should be happy I just had sex with a robot!” But soon afterwards, when Urmila attempts to dismiss their intimacy as a mere one-night stand, he confesses his strong romantic feelings for SIFRA. When Urmila opposes Aryan’s plans to marry SIFRA, Aryan has to explain to her his deep sentiments for SIFRA and the validity of their relationship, just as any queer person is often forced to sit their family down and explain the legitimacy of their love for their partner. Though Urmila’s objection cannot be labelled as homophobia, it mirrors the heteronormative society’s strong prejudice and resistance against all types of non-conventional or atypical relationships. At the end of the movie, the audience is made to consider the possibility of one day robots being capable of forging meaningful and lasting romantic relationships with humans.
In the last half a decade, Bollywood has demonstrated a newfound courage and social relevance by being willing to tell previously untold and/or often silenced stories of a chronically oppressed and denied minority, and by portraying these non-heteronormative/non-conventional characters
It is precisely in these plot points that the film moves beyond the genre of mistaken identity, and into robophilia / robosexuality, as Aryan, after learning SIFRA’s true identity, makes a conscious choice to continue his romantic and sexual relationship with her/it. Thus, Teri Baaton Mein is not only another commercial Bollywood film to portray the macro world of non-conventional / non-heteronormative / atypical relationships, but it also gives the much smaller queer community of robophiles and robosexuals their first ever Bollywood representation by delving into this previously-untouched territory (despite certain problematic stereotypes). Surprisingly, the film was a huge box office success, making a worldwide total of ₹133.64 crore and becoming Kapoor’s third-biggest career hit.
Amidst these positively pro-LGBTQIA+ commercial films, there is one other recent Bollywood rom-com that demands to be discussed, as a glaring example of how not to namedrop terminologies related to the queer world, and/or misuse queer concepts. Director Sameer Vidwans’ Satyaprem Ki Katha (2023) briefly veers into the realm of asexuality, when Katha (Kiara Advani) tells Satya (Kartik Aaryan), her husband, that she is an ‘ace’, and so she doesn’t ever feel the desire to have sex, which is why she cannot consummate their marriage. This definition of asexuality in itself is blatant misinformation, as asexuality simply refers to the inability to feel sexual attraction towards someone/something, and not the inability to either experience sexual desire or to actually enjoy sex. A little later in the story, Katha confesses to having lied to Satya about being an ace and attempts to get intimate with him. It is only then revealed that she’s suffering from severe sexual PTSD ever since she was raped by her ex-boyfriend.
Misusing the label of asexuality to make the protagonist cover up her trauma of rape is clearly a problematic narrative, because asexuality is a definite position on the human sexuality spectrum and it is either innate or grown into naturally, and definitely not a suddenly acquired sexual aversion as a byproduct of sexual trauma. Mostly whenever such sudden aversion occurs in an individual, it is either a case of sexual PTSD, or Sexual Aversion Disorder (SAD), and not rooted in the queerness of ‘asexuality’. Hence the plot point showing Katha briefly self-identifying as an ace and mis-explaining the condition away is potentially capable of fueling further misinformation about aro/ace, which already remains a misunderstood topic, even within the LGBTQIA+ community.
Overall, in the last half a decade, Bollywood has demonstrated a newfound courage and social relevance by being willing to tell previously untold and/or often silenced stories of a chronically oppressed and denied minority, and by portraying these non-heteronormative/non-conventional characters and their atypical journeys on the silver screen known for selling undying hope and unchartered dreams to its audience.
All these movies are clearly political statements, and Indian cinema is yet to normalize queer representation on screen. To quote Gazal Dhaliwal, the queer scriptwriter of Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Lagaa “could be a run-of-the-mill rom-com between two gay characters, or a murder mystery where one boyfriend has lost gay lover. That’s how you will normalize these narratives. These stories just need to be out there. They don’t need to be political.”
Though such an advanced milestone in the movement is yet to be achieved, the shift has clearly begun. And because slowly but surely a huge and powerful industry giant like the Bollywood is taking up this mantle, the Indian subcontinent is perhaps standing on the threshold of a new era with regards to the long pending queer liberation and rainbow hope in the land.
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Nivedita Dey is a poet from Kolkata, India. Her poetic philosophy is one of hope and transcendental humanism, and her debut poetry collection was Larkspur Lane: Branched Labyrinths of the Mind (Notion Press, 2022). Dey holds post-graduate degrees in English and Psychology. She can be found at niveditadey.com, Twitter: @Nivedita_Writes, and Instagram: @niveditadeypoetry.
