Pride in his veins

The story was published in the Indian Express on October 25, 2009.


Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 23, 2007

The girl, with her happy eyes, didn’t falter one bit. She looked into the camera and announced to the whole wide world she was lesbian. No justifications. No fear. No shame. Only pride, the raw, unfiltered pride tinged with hurt and anger, shone in those dark eyes.
Behind the camera, Ranjit Monga, the filmmaker, gasped, and let the camera roll. Yes, the young girl, who walked in the city’s pride march, came out to the world on the camera, beaming, defiant and yet tragic. And he shot her just like that, recording each moment of her coming out. Later, in his film on the pride march just days before the Delhi High Court gave its landmark judgment, the girls’ story became
one of the many personal tales that the six-minute documentary captures in their honesty and their unhindered optimism.
For Monga, the expression, the coming out was all part of the pride march, induced by it, and upheld by it as hundreds marched to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest street, in anticipation, carrying the rainbow flags, wearing head gears, and smiles.
A year ago, he had felt the rush, too, at the city’s first gay pride parade. For many years, the filmmaker and journalist had lived a life in the closet, attending underground parties, dodging uncomfortable questions, and hoping people would understand he was gay, that they will accept, and they will let him be.
Then, the city’s gay pride march happened. And it liberated him, he says.
From the other side of the street, Monga had watched the swelling crowd approach, he then crossed over, and marched with the rest of them, mingling with the young students as they danced drunk on the freedom, the opportunity, and the old who watched with a certain satisfaction as the city’s first gay pride march gained momentum. They had been in denial, in a limbo, not sure if the famed gay pride
marches of the west would ever happen here.
“It was an intense experience for me,” he said. “I came out. I celebrated. I was able to tell people I was gay. There were so many of us. There were others like me.”
So, next year, armed with a camera, Monga again crossed over.
The six-minute film New Delhi’s Pride 2009 will be shown at the Nigah Queer Festival on Sunday. In its third year, the festival, one of the very few in India to showcase films and arts that focus on LGBT issues and lives, has become a popular forum for filmmakers and artists who otherwise had a tough time negotiating for space. Until this year, homosexuality was illegal. After the Delhi High Court’s landmark
judgment, that space has expanded and more artists have dared to experiment with “unusual stories”.
For many years, entries from South Asia even in international film festivals have mostly been documentaries, or independent films.
Mainstream commercial cinema focusing on LGBT relationships are a rarity, Ponni Arasu, one of the organizers said.
“The lack of funding and screening opportunities is major hurdles,” she said. “From the western world, we receive a lot of mainstream film entries. I guess things will change because now homosexuality is not illegal here and public will be more accepting.”
The LGBT film movement started years ago in the west when filmmakers cast such characters like the comic homosexual, the tragic transgender or the villainous dykes, in their films. The movement itself can’t be categorised as one. It was a trend that slowly emerged. Most of these came from independent filmmakers who didn’t have to justify their stories or the theme to corporate and mainstream interest, or
preference. It didn’t matter if the public recoiled at the idea, or rejected the unusual love. It was an expression, unfettered.
The films, and its themes, reflected the movement’s journey over the years, including a barrage of films and television serials in the 1980s like Early Frost that focussed on AIDS. In the West that had an awakening to the alternative, to the other and to the queer side much before the other world, the world where being gay was condemned and was dismissed as deviant behaviour, finally the films gave way to
mainstream cinema that celebrated the gay life like Transamerica, Milk, and Brokeback Mountain.
But in India, the journey has only begun. In fact it started in the 1990s, but then the films were on the fringes, almost never making it to the mainstream cinema. A few attempts like My Brother Nikhil, a low-budget drama telling the story of a gay man’s tryst with AIDS and his struggles with his family and society were brave but except in the urban settings where the audience is perceived to be educated and
aware and fashionable, the film didn’t really make an impact. Not that it was made to be a success. A few producers even refused to fund the difficult project.
But that’s the story any filmmaker would recount.
Monga too went through a similar ordeal. When he decided he wanted to make a movie on the pride march because it made sense for him as a filmmaker to express his own struggles and his own pride that he claimed at the pride march itself years ago, he could not find sponsors. He put in the Rs. 6,000 that he had towards the project and
then a friend said he would pitch in the rest.
When he told his friends at Nigah he was planning to make a film on the pride parade, they were more than happy to showcase it during the festival.
“It is difficult but things are looking better,” he said. “I want to stick to this theme. We need more commercial cinemas on LGBT community.”
In 2006, an attempt was made to bring lesbian lovers into mainstream cinema by Ligy J. Pullappally who wrote, produced and directed a film depicting the love story of two lesbian lovers in The Journey that depicts the story of Kiran and Delilah, young Indian women who grow up together in a small rural village and then fall in love. But the film didn’t get the permission to screen in theatres in Kerela, Arasu said.
The first gay film in India was made by a young filmmaker Riyad Vinci Wadia. Called Bomgay, the documentary released in 1996 and is based on the poetry of gay poet R. Raj Rao and is a depiction of gay life in urban settings, in a metropolis where men accost other men in subways, and in dark, dank rooms. Many more came, made films, and showcased them at international film festivals, earned accolades but back home,
it was a muffled existence.
And even though the gay and lesbian expression is at an all-time high in the country now and many artists are coming out like Monga who hesitated for years before he mustered enough courage to shoot the film on gay pride.
“I was afraid. I didn’t want everyone to know. But I felt I must do it,” he said. “It took years but I did it. My next project will be a story on gay love in hinterlands, the acceptance of it. I don’t where the money will come from but I will see.”
But slowly, such films be it documentaries or low-budget films that play in multiplexes are testing the waters, teasing the audience, tempting them, challenging their limits, urging them to step out and see the other life. And festivals like Nigah are one of the first steps towards breaking the boundaries.