Read/See Between The Lines

Later, when Veeru prods Jai to meet Basanti’s aunt to talk about marriage, he jeopardises Veeru’s chance by calling—and yet not calling—him a gambler, a drunkard, and a womaniser. (Was that a friend looking out for another friend—ensuring that he doesn’t marry in haste—or a jealous partner guarding his turf?) In the climax, Jai literally dies in Veeru’s arms, as the sad strain of the same song, with different lyrics, recurs: “Aage tu nikal gaya/ Saathi tu badal gaya/ Todi dosti.” Only death could—and did—do them part.

Over the last few years, after the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, many Hindi films and web series have featured LGBTQIA+ characters, where their sexual orientations don’t call attention to themselves and, instead, just exist as textured realities. Some dramas, such as Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019) and Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020), devote their entire plots to same-sex romances. Made in Heaven (2023) had a transwoman, Trinetra Gummaraju, playing a transwoman character. Aligarh (2016) had a star, Manoj Bajpai, playing a homosexual protagonist. This increased representation, though, also runs the risk of positing a simplistic binary between the old and new Bollywood: now, progressive, then, regressive; now, visible, then, invisible; now, empathetic, then, pathetic. But what if these demarcations are not wholly true? What if Bollywood had conned us all these years, and we didn’t even know? What if queerness in old Bollywood hid in plain sight?

Before that, an obvious question: Why read queerness in films where none exists? After all, the makers of Sholay (1975) don’t call their characters gay. “Never trust the teller,” wrote D H Lawrence, “trust the tale.” Besides, for an industry historically sheepish to depict even heterosexual desires, it won’t, well, play straight when it comes to homosexuality. Same-sex romance was also considered a taboo for a very long time (it still is for many), so for a subject whose textbook doesn’t exist, we’ve no option but to read between the lines.

But more importantly, just because we don’t know about a world doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. “[Yeh Dosti] has become a gay diasporic male anthem,” writes Gayatri Gopinath in Impossible Desires (2005), “sung at pride parades from New York to London to San Francisco.” The song ends with Veeru perched on Jai’s shoulders, as if making the line “we’re not two but one” literal. It’s very similar to a sombre drama, Dosti (1964), where two male friends—one can’t walk, the other can’t see—complete each other. Their debilitating bodies make their bond much more physical: Mohan (Sudhir Sawant), who is blind, has to literally touch Ramu (Sushil Somaya) to feel his presence, to ‘see’ him. “Do you not have anyone else?” Mohan asks him in their first meeting, when he finds out that Ramu, too, sleeps on the pavement. He replies no. “I’m also alone,” says Mohan. “God has made us meet well—we’ll be together.”

Mohan keeps his hand on Ramu’s shoulder, while walking. Ramu plays the harmonica (just like Jai), while Mohan sings. The passersby flock to them and give them money. With their lives entwined in practically every way possible, they first experience anxiety at the thought of separation. “Once you find your sister,” says Ramu, “you’ll leave me and go with her.” Mohan smiles: “Why will I? I’ll never leave you.” A visibly moved Ramu looks at Mohan, holds his hands, and says, “I can’t leave you as well.”

Even though the movie is called Dosti, something else is going on in this scene—and in many Bollywood films with homoerotic undertones—which can be best encapsulated in a word unique to the South Asian context, a word that hides more than it shows, a word that flows like water dignifying fluid relationships: yaari. “Its etymology lends it an illicit character, as the Sanskrit jaara initially denoted an adulterous lover,” writes Oliver Ross in Same-Sex Desire in Indian Culture (2015). In Urdu poetry of the 18th and 19th centuries, he adds, yaar “described men and women’s male and female beloveds”. With no direct equivalent in English—friend, buddy, chum, mate, sport, pal, all fall short—“the term blurs the distinction between friend and lover”.

If Sholay and Dosti indulge in effusive affectionate expressions by their male leads, then Anand (1971) is much more muted. It also demarcates its protagonists, producing conventional gendered binaries: introvert and extrovert, angry and jovial, reticent and vulnerable. When Anand (Rajesh Khanna) shows up at Bhaskar’s (Bachchan) house to live with him, as he finds the nursing home dreary, he says this (which sounds very similar to a dialogue from Dosti): “Aye Babu Moshai, you don’t have anyone and so do I. Till the time I live, let me live with you.” It’s the first time in the movie that the ice-cold Bhaskar melts.

It can be even argued that it’s Bhaskar in Anand, and not Vijay in Zanjeer (1973), who should be called the first Angry Young Man. Just look at the doctor in the first few minutes. He goes to a slum to treat a patient, but the abject living conditions—the “dukh, dard” and “bimaari”—fills him with rage. His voiceover plays in the background: “I could have treated diseases, but how could I fight hunger?” “I had been thrust into a war for which I had no weapons.” When Anand meets him for the first time, he senses Bhaskar’s anger and ‘diagnoses’ him with pitch-perfect precision: “You’re not angry at me. You’re angry at yourself that you can’t treat me.” He then adds: “Aye Babu Moshai, so much love is also not good.”

Even more than Sholay, Anand’s plot, climax, and resolution hinge on a crucial detail: death. Given that it’s such an integral part of life, Bollywood screenwriters have used it to interrupt ‘alternate’ narratives, wielding it as a tool to placate the audiences, uphold the status quo, and resurrect the heterosexual haven. Jai’s death in Sholay, for instance, works both ways: It stops his marriage from a widow (a taboo in the ’70s) and kills any possibility of a union with Veeru, the ultimate impediment, even more than Gabbar, to a happy climax.

Death interrupts another dosti in Silsila (1981). Amit (Bachchan) and Shekhar (Shashi Kapoor) may call each other “bhai”, but their closeness transcends most male bonds. “We first smoked together, then drank together, then fell in love—with the same woman,” Amit tells Shekhar’s fiancé, Shobha (Jaya Bachchan). “Before that, we used to bathe naked together.” Around 17 minutes later, the two are in the shower, naked. Shekhar throws a bar of soap on the ground: “Amit, pick it up.” Amit begins to bend, stands up again, and says, “Aye bhai, I’m not picking up any soap.” They both laugh, recognising the true meanings of the exchange. They’re so inseparable that Silsila can only find its heterosexual steam after Shekhar’s death.

Two decades later, another film triangulated male bonding, homoerotic humour, and death: Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003). Made a decade after economic liberalisation—which had spawned concerns about the erosion of ‘Indian values’—this drama, like many Bollywood romances, is a love triangle. Aman (Shah Rukh Khan) loves Naina; Naina (Preity Zinta) loves Aman; Rohit (Saif Ali Khan) loves Naina. But Aman, who is about to die from a heart disease, seeks to unite Naina and Rohit instead. Ostensibly a heterosexual love story, Kal Ho Naa Ho acquires charged meanings when seen through a queer lens.

Take Aman’s first scene, which foreshadows his (probable) sexual fluidity: He’s on a boat, quite literally on water, floating between two pieces of land. He loves Naina, but his sacrifice comforts Rohit the most—a sacrifice so huge it can only approximate love. When he’s about to die, his last conversation is not with Naina but with Rohit, where he closes his eyes and holds Rohit’s hand. Twenty years later, when Naina remembers Aman while talking to her adopted sister, she says, “I can never forget him.” Rohit comes from behind and says, “We. We can never forget him.”

Besides, it’s quite evident that, despite claiming to love Naina, Rohit, like many men, craves the validation of other men (Aman is, in fact, a literal concatenation of A-Man). As Rohit ‘learns’ to neg and net Naina, his maid, Kanta-ben (Sulabha Arya), sees the two men in close proximity several times, thinking they are a couple. It’s made many call the movie homophobic. But is it that simple? Because when we laugh at Kanta-ben, who are we laughing at: Are we mocking her incredulous reaction (in that case, we seem to be laughing at her homophobia)? Or are we laughing at the impossibility of two Bollywood stars being gay (which is a joke on the industry’s insularity)? Or are we laughing at gay romance itself—or is it a mix of all three? Even though the movie equates heterosexual love to “normal”—in a conversation at a strip club between Rohit and his father—the Kuch Toh Hua Hai song, depicting love in all shades, shows two American men kiss and hug near a phone booth.

It’s casual sexism, in fact, that’s much more prevalent here than homophobia. In several scenes, Rohit and Aman salivate over women’s legs, indulge in ‘bro banter’, and treat Naina like an object in a game of passing the parcel. And it’s this sexism that finds its most natural culmination—its most apt release—in their homoerotic humour. Three decades after Sholay (1975), where dosti and yaari commingled, the anxieties about homosexuality in Bollywood donned self-aware humour, post-economic liberalisation (present in several films of the decade, such as, besides Kal Ho Naa Ho, Masti (2004) and Dostana (2008)). This self-defence tactic, then, seemed to be responding to the fears of ‘cultural colonialism’—as many considered homosexuality a ‘Western’ construct—and, thus, tried hard to mitigate its ‘dangers’. “The suggestion that desi masculinity is more feminine or lacking harkens back to the era of British colonialism,” writes Dinah Holtzman in a 2010 paper, “when native ‘effeminacy’ was cited as justification for British ‘paternalism’ and the ‘civilizing mission.’”

Bollywood directors have also used another device to explore homoerotic tension: songs. A style unique to Indian cinema, they’re inherently melodramatic, opening up possibilities, conjuring up dream-like worlds subverting regular rules. “Since songs allow things to be said that cannot be said elsewhere,” writes Gopinath, “it’s not surprising that often in these moments of fantasy that queer, non-heteronormative desires emerge.” Sometimes, their lyricism—eliding direct gendered references—further opens them up to multiple interpretations. (Main Hoon Na’s title track is a classic example, which can be read as either romantic or familial, where the genders of the singer and the listener are as subjective.)

In some Bollywood dramas, only isolated songs had homoerotic strains, not the whole movie. But in some, like Main Khiladi Tu Anari (1994), both are present. It’s most evident in the title song itself. Centred on a naive romantic actor (Saif Ali Khan) tailing a tough cop (Akshay Kumar) to research a realistic role (as he’s impressed by his ‘macho’ style), this drama resembles a typical ‘buddy’ film. Set in a dimly lit bar, the number drops around the three-fourth mark where, amid countless female dancers and lyrics underscoring the heroes’ fixation on women, the actors’ bodies tell a different story. Their chests, not more than a few inches apart, undulate like waves; their synchronised pelvic thrusts, present throughout the song, chart a three-act structure; and their heads jerk towards each other in a motion so oscillatory and feverish that kissing seems like a fundamental right. “They literally can’t keep their hands off each other,” writes Thomas Waugh in his 2001 research paper. “Akshay puts his tie on Saif, slaps his ass, even seems to touch his groin.” And academics weren’t the only ones noticing a film-within-a-film. “Bombay Dost [India’s first English gay magazine] interviewed Akshay Kumar and got him to acknowledge and welcome his gay fans,” adds Waugh, “but this discourse made Saif so upset that he punched out the gay critic [Ashok Row Kavi] who spoke the unspoken.”

Songs have also helped foreground the same-sex desires of women which, unlike men, are fewer in number (not surprising given Bollywood’s obsession with male stars). But consider Khwab Ban Kar Koi Ayega from the period drama Razia Sultan (1983), featuring the eponymous princess (Hema Malini) and her confidant, Khatun (Parveen Babi), on a boat. At first, nothing about it stands out—Razia lies on the bed dreaming about her lover (Dharmendra)—but soon, Khatun inches close to her, caressing her hair, arm, and body. Razia responds, moving ever so slowly, till their faces almost touch each other, and then, a giant feather hides them both.

Khwab Ban Ke doesn’t end there (leaving our imaginations to fill in the blanks), for Razia Sultan kisses and tells: It cuts to a reaction shot, where a young boatwoman giggles and covers her mouth. This song has several striking facets. First: its impressive audacity in almost showing a kiss between two actresses at a time when even regular lip locks were indicated via two flowers canoodling. Second: it referencing a kiss from Mughal-e-Azam (1960)—one of the most iconic cis-het romances ever, co-written by Kamal Amrohi, Razia Sultan’s director—where Salim (Dilip Kumar) hides his face with a giant feather as he kisses Anarkali (Madhubala). Third: it showcases the same-sex desires between women without labelling either of them “lesbians”, thereby making a “saheli” as complex as a “yaar”.

Sometimes a song creates its own language, subverting the film’s style. Take Didi Tera Devar Deewana from Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994), where insults, innuendos, and desires—all sexual in nature—come to the fore in a ‘sanskari’ movie. Celebrating the pregnancy of her sister (Renuka Shahane) in a large hall, where only women are present, the heroine, Nisha (Madhuri Dixit), takes relentless digs at the hero, Prem (Salman Khan), played by a woman, Rita, dressed like him. Nisha calls him a lecherous lout: ‘He’ runs his hands on her back, puts a stethoscope on her breast, and sleeps with her. The song allows Nisha to switch identities—she plays both herself and her sister, flirting with Prem—reminiscent of many Bollywood numbers taking striking liberties through suggestive lyrics, cross dressing, and elaborate fantasies.

If such desires materialise like a drop in Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai (which, performed for male audiences both on and off the screen, actually unfolds as an erotic banter between two women), then they flow like a waterfall in Phalguni Pathak’s music videos, the vintage queer icon of the ’90s. Her song, Meri Chunar Udd Udd Jaye, features a young girl (Ayesha Takia) remembering and pining for her partner (Pathak), ignoring a man interested in her. It ends with him literally walking in on her secret—her dancing with a woman from a framed painting in a room—and as she shuts the door behind them, she puts her finger on her lips, suggesting that he protect her secret. It reminds you of the relationship between Bollywood filmmakers and their audiences over the last few decades. For an industry that’s often called brain-dead and regressive, its elaborate game of (queer) hide and seek seems to take a cue from a line in Prestige (2006) by Christopher Nolan (considered the most cerebral director): “Are you watching closely?”

(This appeared in the print as 'Read/See Between The Lines')