Chatted up Mumbai filmmaker, who’s done more for LGBTQ rights than anyone I know; now that his new movie is out in theatres too!
A still from the film Kuch Sapney Apne
Gay couples just philander more, don’t they? It’s a joke I often pose to my gay friends. Only that when you throw such a stereotype to activist-filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan, as I do, he’s going to take it more seriously.
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Rangayan says, “Monogamy comes at a price, when you have so little to hold on to. Heteronormative couples are [often] bound by marriage. With gay couples, however—from society; and until recently, legal structures—there is every effort to pull them apart.”
Couples that find it hard to stay together, often stray together, Rangayan somewhat submits. This doesn’t apply to Rangayan, who’s been with his filmmaking plus life-partner, Saagar Gupta, for around 30 years.
They recently released their feature film, Kuch Sapney Apne (Dreams Such As Ours) into mainstream theatres—the reason I bring up the gay-couple stereotype to him.
The movie starts off with the lead character in Sweden—deeply in love with his partner back in Mumbai—almost giving in to tempting advances of his equally young, besotted, white-boy admirer.
Activist-filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan
Well, if this was a heterosexual couple, the script would remain the same: “People stray; period,” Rangayan tells me.
And that’s really how he’s positioned his sweet, sorted and simple movie—as any other Bollywood-like, song-dance routine, romantic drama, involving squabbling parents, and a crossdressing uncle, transitioning into his trans identity.
Kuch Sapney Apne received a 16+ rating from the Indian Censor Board. Given the theme, this rating itself makes the movie a big moment for the LGBTQ community.
The film is a sequel to Rangayan’s Evening Shadows (rated U/A), that also opened in select theatres in 2018. That’s the landmark year, when the Supreme Court struck down the draconian Section 377, that had criminalised love between same-sex couples, hence legalised hate towards them, for around 160 years, among British colonies, including India.
Bollywood, in particular, responded rather joyously to this move, with at least three hardcore, mainstream pictures, starring A-list actors in gay/lesbian roles—Sonam Kapoor in Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019); Ayushmann Khurrana and Jeetendra Kumar in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020); Rajkummar Rao in Badhaai Do (2022).
Why, even Vaani Kapoor (Befikre) in the transgender lead-part with Chandigarh Bane Aashiqui (2021). The latter film had great scope to cast a transgender actor, Rangayan feels. Which is what he’s done with cameo of a transgender person, Pradipta Ray, in Kuch Sapney Apne.
Ray, who teaches animation at National Institute of Design, plays an arts teacher in the film. Technically, any gender could’ve been cast for the part.
But it is through the inclusion of non-binary or trans actors/characters that Rangayan is looking to subvert the mainstream. And through his movies, of course, that’s opened in 10 top Indian cities, and that he hopes to push further into theatres in Tier II and Tier III towns.
That said, for LGBTQ cinema, nothing quite matches the Malayalam superstar Mammootty as the gay politician in Jeo Baby’s Kaathal—The Core (2023). Some Muslim clerics, apparently, hounded him for it.
The film was a major commercial success. Baby had earlier written-directed the strongly feminist, The Great Indian Kitchen, recently remade into Mrs in Hindi. Maybe Bollywood producers should’ve just signed Baby on for Kaathal itself. It’d save them money on remaking rights!
There are, of course, other major mainstream moments. Rangayan cites, for instance, the Prime Video series, Inside Edge, where the gay cricketer comes out, hugging his partner, before a stadium crowd!
But such representation on OTT platforms has, by and large, been reduced to “tick-box tokenism now,” while guys like Rangayan, who’ve lived through those experiences ought to find some space on the main table as well. “It’s similar with other [marginalised] groups, say, Dalits too,” Rangayan says.
Although with Dalits, perhaps, the society is yet to catch up with the laws. With LGBTQ communities, on the other hand, it took way longer for the law to catch up with ground reality.
I first met Rangayan back in 2012. He’s been championing LGBTQ rights “since 1990,” when he “came out”; joined Bombay Dost, India’s first gay magazine; also co-founded the hugely active, Humsafar Trust (along with Ashok Row Kavi).
He had me on the jury of Kashish, India’s biggest international queer festival in Mumbai, that he’d founded few years earlier. I was struck by thousands and thousands of viewers in an open, safe space, watching hundreds of films from 30+ countries, on just LGBTQ themes; partying thereafter. I recall actor Mona Ambegaonkar as co-juror.
She plays the warm mother in Evening Shadows, which is a movie on the young protagonist coming out to his parents that, Rangayan says, is “already dated, as a subject.” Sequel Kuch Sapney Apne, looked closely, is somewhat about gay marriage.
“One step at a time,” as Rangayan puts it, in his film too: “Being married, which I’d love to, with my partner, offers you simple things, like inheritance rights [once the partner is no more], or signing-off authority, in case of medical emergencies.”
Many Mumbai heterosexual couples, we know, get married, just so they can buy a flat together! It’s not that hard to understand. I hope, sooner or later, Supreme Court, or Parliament, does too.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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