As his male friend plants an excited kiss on 30-something virgin Pinu Patel after winning a lottery, he wonders whether he might be gay. Parvati Balagopalan’s Straight, a funny tale of a London-based businessman’s confusion about his sexual orientation adds to the list of recent Hindi mainstream movies that talk about homosexuality. Notwithstanding its obsession with stereotypes, mainstream media finds it increasingly difficult to ignore a contemporary social reality — the confident coming out of the sexual minorities of the country. However, gay love even when it comes up as a theme to be parodied in Bollywood is all about well-educated, urban characters (both in Kal Ho Naa Ho and the more recent Dostana). The other end of the rainbow spectrum consisting of ‘kothis’ ( a man who adopts femnine modes of behaviour and dressing), hijras, and MSM men, homosexuals from lower-middle and working class backgrounds is largely underrepresented in mainstream cinema and theatre.

Even in most plays by Mahesh Dattani — who has received critical acclaim for his portrayal of homosexual relationships — gay working class men are mostly peripheral characters (except in the play Seven Steps Around the Fire). The audience is never led into the mind of the chowkidaar who sleeps with the owner of a posh apartment in On a Muggy Night in Mumbai or the auto-rickshaw driver who has a surreptitious liaison with Nitin in Bravely Fought the Queen.

This exclusionary politics ensures that inspirational narratives of homosexuals from lower social strata, who fight deep entrenched prejudices, the apathy of the state and the class politics within the queer community to assert their individuality remains unheard. Take the case of twenty-four year old Simmi Sharma. Simmi has traveled quite a journey — from the reticent back-bencher in a nondescript government school teased for his effeminate mannerisms to being a successful performer at Ramlilas, a beautician and a gay man who proclaims his sexuality in a country where draconian laws curb self-expression of homosexuals and where the state mouths platitudes about an imagined Indian culture.

... contd.