Gay portrayal tests limits in India
By Somini Sengupta The New York Times
Friday, April 8, 2005 MUMBAI Late last month, a low-budget drama called "My Brother Nikhil" opened in movie theaters across India, telling the story of a gay man's struggle with his family and his country after contracting the virus that causes AIDS. . Quietly, gently, "My Brother Nikhil" has tested the limits of the Indian cinemagoer's sensibility. . Commercially, it is no runaway Bollywood blockbuster, nor is it meant to be. Rather, its impact lies in having served up a story about love and loss - sentimental staples of contemporary Indian cinema - with a gay man at its center, and having done so without kicking up the slightest fuss from India's cultural conservatives. As one review published in the latest issue of Outlook, a mainstream newsweekly, put it, "The two lovers seem just like any other couple." . Playing here in Mumbai, formerly called Bombay, and in about a dozen other major cities in India, "My Brother Nikhil" is part of a new breed of Bollywood pictures known here as the "multiplex movie" - appealing to an urban middle-class audience, peppered with English phrases and easy on the song-and-dance numbers and potboiler story lines usually associated with Indian commercial cinema. . "For me, it's a film about relationships," said its director, who goes by one name, Onir. "Between father-son, brother-sister, lovers, a gay couple, friends." Even so, it was the gay relationship that had to be most carefully rendered. Onir, 35, said he took pains to make a film that would speak not to an elite, worldly, film-festival set, but to ordinary Indians who watch ordinary Bollywood films. . There are no explicit love scenes in the film. There is not a single kiss between the two men in the leading roles, and nothing approaching a bedroom scene - this at a time when Bollywood is witnessing an explosion of skin flicks, albeit all heterosexual. . The film comes at a time when rights activists are pressing for the overturn of India's constitutional ban on homosexuality. This week, the Supreme Court agreed to review the law.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/07/features/nik.html