Sita in Fire to Rahul in Kapoor & Sons: How Bollywood has portrayed homosexuals in 20 years

Deepa Mehta showcased an unlikely couple of Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das, who despite being married to two brothers, find solace in each others’ arms. The film was a brave move, to showcase two married women as lesbians, but was opposed strongly by right-wing activists.

The next time we got to see a mainstream depiction of gay couples was in Karan Johar’s Kal Ho Naa Ho, the 2003 movie that used the homosexual thing as a comic relief. Both the main leads, Aman and Rohit, played by Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan, were caught in wrong moments every time they were in the vicinity of Rohit’s house help Kanta Ben. The reactions that Kanta Ben gave to these two actors were what fuelled many jokes in the coming years, making homosexuals a butt of many jokes to their utter discomfort. This also showed in true light society’s biased behaviour towards homosexuals.

The movie, which was nothing but a mockery of a lesbian relationship, showed Ishaa Koppikar as an obsessive friend, who lusts over her friend Sapna, played by Amrita Arora, and things go out of hand when Sapna starts dating a man. The movie ended with Koppikar’s character falling to her death, which ideally should have been the end of the story when it was conceived in the first place.

Probably the first time that a homosexual relationship was handled maturely by a Bollywood director, My Brother... Nikhil was directed by Onir, and starred Sanjay Suri (Nikhil) and Purab Kohli (Nigel) as a gay couple from Goa, who have to face opposition not only from the society but also from Nikhil’s family at first. The movie was said to be based on a true event, and critics applauded the way Onir handled the sensitive issue and Suri and Kohli both got praised for their reviews. In fact, the movie was more about how people suffering from AIDS deserve to be treated equally, and Nikhil being gay was just a sub-plot.

There were many stories folded into one in this movie by Reema Kagti, but one side plot of this movie also carried a homosexual touch to it. Vicky, a character played by Karan Khanna who is on his honeymoon finds Bunty (Vikram Chatwal) very attractive, and feels drawn to him. Confused by this sudden attraction, he doesn’t know that Bunty is actually a homosexual. The way Kagti handled the whole situation was acclaimed for being mature and sensitive, and praised for not showing homosexuals in a bad light and it looked like Bollywood was finally starting to accept gays as a part of the society.

Probably the most memorable movie when it comes to portraying homosexuals in Bollywood, this movie didn’t have any gays, just two straight guys claiming to be gay to get a room in the city. However, both end up falling for the same woman, who considers them as a couple and keeps them off their limit. Even though the film was a humorous take on homosexual relationships, it didn’t cross any limit barring a few stereotypes, for which the movie is actually remembered.

A collection of four short stories, I Am was a crowd-funded movie in which one of the short movies was about the way gay men are perceived in the dark lanes of the society. The movie, called Omar, showed Jai hitting it off with Omar, a stranger, and making out with him in his car. However, he later realises that he was part of an operational crime, which forces him to both have forced sex and lose a huge sum of money.

The movie had four stories about human relationships, one of which carried a homosexual angle. Karan Johar directed Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh, in which Avinash (Saqib Saleem), an openly gay man, finds out that her boss’s husband Dev (Randeep Hooda) is a closeted gay. The movie showed an upper middle-class man living a lie to be honoured in the society, but failing miserably. The movie had a few sensuous scenes between the two men, including a kiss, and both were applauded for their brave portrayals of these crucial roles.

The recently released movie was basically about a family figuring out the hidden layers in their relationship, and one of these hidden layers was of the elder son of the family being gay. Rahul, played by Fawad Khan, is a closeted gay who is trying to gather courage to tell his family about his boyfriend back in London. However, it’s not until the later second half of the movie that we get to know that Fawad’s character is gay, which tells the brilliance with which this character is handled by director Shakun Batra. The character had a lot of other things to offer other than him being a homosexual, including his humour and his caring attitude. The scene in which Fawad comes out to his mother is one of the best scenes in the movie, as he apologises to her for lying to her, but fails to apologise for what he is. Applauds to the director and the actor for a brilliant portrayal of a complex character.