If niche films are mirroring silenced loves, straight and narrow Bollywood plotlines are bending to allow the gay experience into multiplexes. Much of it is still crassly homophobic (Page 3 and Life in a Metro). But a film like Honeymoon Travels Pvt Limited allows a gay sub-plot to blow up on a multiple narrative on heterosexual marriages. The ensuing confusion of sexual identity is addressed with humour and sensitivity.

TimeOut columnist, who writes under the suggestive name of Dehleez Paar, sees the greater visibility of gay and lesbian people as part of larger changes sweeping the Indian mindscape. “More and more youngsters in urban India are resisting social pressures, marrying late. There’s greater questioning and loosening of accepted social norms, which is also the case in matters of sexuality.”

And as young Indians learn to break shibboleths, queer men and women are walking out of stifling, middle-class closets to find comfort in friends—straight or gay. Nineteen-year-old Amol (name changed), a student in a Delhi college, for instance, finds his greatest support from his pool of straight friends, mostly women. The Sunday gatherings helped Ajay (name changed), 21, a student of architecture, meet many more men like him, face up to his sexuality and come out to his father. “Two months after I attended my first social, I realised I wasn’t alone.” Ranjan recalls how relieved a 19-year-old was when he met other men like him at the gathering. “He said he realised he wasn’t all that bad. The next day, he went up to his father and blurted out the truth.”

... contd.