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Queering Bollywood
Queering Bollywood is an exhibition and demonstration of a collection of queer readings in Indian cinema. It is open and collaborative in nature. The idea for doing something like this was born at the Queer film festival organized by Pedestrian Pictures in 2003. The idea was to initiate the process of analysing and collecting information on queer representations in cinema, especially in the Indian context, by creating a database of resources ranging from articles, film clippings, magazine stories etc., aiming eventually to create:

a new dynamic of working together collaboratively towards a film or other such outputs around the idea of queer representations in cinema a database on queer and subversive readings that can be used in group discussions, classroom, support groups even theme parties, nightclubs etc. an exciting media product that is interactive and innovative, going beyond textual analysis of cinema, and making it a creative and academic exercise, thus reaching different kinds of publics

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Table of Contents Hyperlinked essay

Tableof Contents
Articles [Indian]:

Gopinath Gayatri - Queering Bollywood : Alternative Sexualities in Popular Indian Cinema; ESSAYS ON CINEMA AND TELEVISION Gayatri; Rao; Wadia; Raman; Arnold; Vasudevan; McLean; Bielby R.Raja Rao - Memories Pierce the heart ; Homoeroticism, Bollywood-Style; ESSAYS ON CINEMA AND TELEVISION (Editors - Gayatri; Rao; Wadia; Raman; Arnold; Vasudevan; McLean; Bielby) Ashok Row Kavi - The Changing Image of the Hero in Hindi Films; ESSAYS ON CINEMA AND TELEVISION (Editors - Gayatri; Rao; Wadia; Raman; Arnold; Vasudevan; McLean; Bielby) Riyad Vinci Wadia - Long Life of a Short Film; p 313 - 323 (Queer Asian Cinema : Shadows in the shade 2000); ESSAYS ON CINEMA AND TELEVISION (Editors - Gayatri; Rao; Wadia; Raman; Arnold; Vasudevan; McLean; Bielby)

Queer Bollywood, or "I'm the player, you're the naive one": patterns of sexual subversion in recent Indian popular cinema - THOMAS WAUGH, Keyframes - Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies Tinkcom, Matthew; Villarejo, Amy Eds.

Queer Pleasures for Queer people - Film television and Sexuality in India, Shohini Ghosh, Queering India, Same sex love and eroticism in Indian culture and society (Ed. Ruth Vanita) Sexuality in the Chess Players, Vinay Lal, Deep Focus (Film Journal), Vol.6, 1996, p.48 Cultural Politics of Fire - Ratna Kapur, Economic and Political Weekly, 22-5-1999

Articles [Other]:

Batman, Deviance and Camp - Andy Medhurst Glen or Glenda, Pyschiatry, Sexuality and the Silver Screen, Bright Lights Film Journal The Buddy Politic, Cynthia Fuchs But I'm Beautiful - Muriel's Wedding Responsibilities of a gay film critic - Richard Dyer Judy Garland and the net fandom - Cohen The Hypothetical Lesbian Heroine - Chris STraayer Outing in Cinema Queer and Present Danger Notes on camp, Susan Sontag

Webpages
note: some of links below point to archived versions of the original pages as the original sites have since removed the content or made it inaccessible.

feminist/visual/culture: A 30th anniversary celebration of women make movies - Questions of Transnational Lesbian Identity - including excerpts from Gayatri Gopinath, Ratna Kapur and others Eunchs in Bollywood - Nishma Hindocha Gay Times In Bollywood Girlfriend - the movie website Gay stuff in Kal ho na ho - a discussion Sex doesn't sell (about Girlfriend, Hawas, Murder, Tum) Why Will Smith is so adored, Bright Lights Film Journal About the film Cruising, Bright Lights Film Journal Gay Cartoons Queer film reviews, Bright Lights Film Journal

Queer horror, Bright Lights Film Journal Queer kisses, Bright Lights Film Journal

Movie clips

Kaun mille dekho kissko remix of Kal ho na ho Taxi driver Buddyfilmswith queerpossibilities(male and female) Lawaris Mera naam joker Crossdressing

Sholay Paisa vasool Munnabhai MBBS Mein khiladi tu anaari Dostana Namak Haram Zanjeer Naam

Baazi Aankhen Raja Hindustani Out of control Potrayalof hijras Amar Akbar Anthony Sadak Chameli

Chal mere bhai Tamaana Movieswith a gay/lesbiancharacterin side role Darmiyan Moviesacceptinghomosexuality,but not mainthemeof film Mumbai Matinee

Mast Kalandar Anjaam Taal Split Wide Open Lesbianundertonesin film or scenes

Bend it like Beckham Bollywood Hollywood Monsoon wedding Chandini bar Kama sutra Rules - pyar ka superhit formula Homosexualityas maincharacter/theme(or one off) in movie Bombay Boys

Mere Mehboob Humjoli Yeh aag kab bujhegi Mandi Choli ke peeche kya hai


jaye

Hum aapke hai kaun Darmiyan Subbah Razia Sultan Pran jaye, par chawl/shaan na

Utsav Falguni Pathak Gori hain kalaiyan - Remix Movieswith gay subtextin film or scenes

Fire Mango Souffle Chakkasor the sissyas the side character Ghulam Xcuse me Gayicons/divasat differentpointsof timeand imagesin erotic circulation Carnival Queen Pakeezah Parveen babi Sridevi Bipasha Basu Kareena Kapoor Akshay kumar Jackie shroff Salman khan in bikinis (Baaghi)

Saathi Kal ho na ho Anand Namak haram - Pag gunghroo bandh mira nachi Parinda Silsila Uncategorized

Zakaria

Judwaa (Salman Khan) Dosti (Satyen Bose) Holi (Ketan Mehta) Sangam (Raj Kapoor) Veeru Dada (M. Bhatt) Chaudvi ka chand Gehri Chaal Khel khel mein Daira - Nirmal Pandey - Arif

Mahaan Adhoora - Ashish Balram Nagpal (unreleased)

Jassi jaisi koi nahin

Film Reviews

Bollywood dares to be different - movies about alternate sexuality Review of Bombay Boys Lesbian critique of Fire Homo/Transphobic comedy Masti ain't so funny

Other

Ambiguous Gay Duo - Gay comic strip characters in dubious position About public awareness of gays and lesbians - Gay Delhi news and reviews - Amrita Shah Cover of India Abroad Magazine- Brave New World / Being Desi, being Gay Bollywood's Beat Is Loud And Queer -- Steve Dollar Desi Queens Saif Ali Khan and Nikki Tonight Debacle Lihaaf or the Quilt I was a suicidal teenager, Keya Arti, Scripts Pretty Boy - Kalyani Pandya Ulsoor Lake - lovers according to the newspaper

Queering Bollywood
Queering Bollywood is a series of conversations - each conversation with a person, whether the guy at the video parlour, or friends, or anyone interested, led to more ideas and suggestions about movies to watch. Often recollected vaguely from the subconscious - yes, there was a controversy, a moment of seeming stillness in a film, an intaken breath. Speculation about same sex activity in cinema or its reflection on celluloid is not however confined to today, but seems like there have always been moments of anxiety, whether a film like Utsav, or Rajnigandha from the 70s80s, or popular films like Zanjeer, or controversies like the Saif Ali Khan attack controversy. Shohini Ghosh in her article on queer pleasures, talks about the privileging of romantic love in Hindipopular cinema as opposed to any other emotion, and also the romanticisation of friendship - we will die for each other, we will never forget each other, best exemplified by the Sholay song - Yeh Dosti. This is also reflected in Raja Rao's article on

homoeroticism in cinema especially reflected in the songs. The article also gives an interesting insight into rendezvous' in cinema halls amongst men watching Amitabh Bacchan films. Another film that Shohini Ghosh talks about is Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (the song - Didi tera dewar deewana), the so called "family film" that contains a moment of queer pleasure which is carefully hidden and coded, but nonetheless is there. This also points to an interesting facet that it is the super blockbusters of Indian cinema, like Sholay, Hum aapke hain kaun, Kal ho na ho that seem to contain these moments of queer pleasure. This genre that envelops many others - which gives action for action fans, romance for romance fans, songs for all the music lovers, drama for the family film, also has somehow included within its repertoire, moments of homoeroticism. However the art films or offbeat films do have a very important role to play as well. The ones that bravely take a stand like Fire, Bombay Boys, Mango Souffle or even ones like Bollywood Hollywood, Bend it like Beckham that contain minor gay characters, confront issues directly, but also cater to a limited audience of middle class English speaking people but this audience is not necessarily a non-homophobic one. Here the focus, because of limitations of space rather than anything else, is for that moment encoded in the film, and about conversations such as this one about the gay stuff in Kal ho na ho on a web based bulletin board. The obvious films circulate within the community of those aware, including films like Happy Together, Wild Reeds, Wedding Banquet, Antonia's line and many more. A similar exercise of coming out of the closet was done for Hollywood in the form of a book by Vito Russo and the film - Celluloid Closet, and numerous articles. Richard Dyer's article on theresponsibilities of a gay film critic and several of the interviews in the film, reveal a trajectory of slow but steady coming out - a movement from ridicule to villainous to .... a main character who is multi-faceted, but unfortunately dying as in Philadelphia. Richard Dyer's comment on stereotyping is in fact also reflected in certain Hindi movies like Raja Hindustani and Excuse me where the sidekick of the woman masquerading as the maharani too is obviously kothi. The slight playing of stereotypes is also evident in Kuch na kaho. In his article he also talks about how stereotypes infact become useful in recognizing certain characters as queer. What marks the documentary as a journey through the history of Hollywood is that it is interspersed with personal comments about reactions to movies and the meager space that some - abysmally few do provide. What is different from Hollywood, and is most evidenced by the documentary film Celluloid Closet (available for borrowing from Pedestrian Pictures in Bangalore) is the lesser possibility of homoerotic pleasure for women. Madhav Prasad talks about the enveloping of the women centric genre into the social genre in the context of Indian popular cinema, which is probably why there isn't a form of women-centric cinema as there is in Hollywood (Thelma and Louise style). In Indian cinema the physicality between women is much less obvious, even in a self-conscious copy of male buddy films like Paisa Vasool, the images don't offer much queer pleasure or desire, but they do offer a sort of montage of lives of two women together, sharing a bed, cooking, walking on the beach like couples and hatching an evil plan that they eventually do succeed with, which is very unusual. Hindi popular cinema has often almost reveled in negating women's desires. Whether this is Sangam that entirely ignores the women's desire, or Jism that allows a sensual Bipasha Basu to rule the roost till near the end, and then kills her off. Paisa Vasool also has moments of affirmation of friendship and lovebetween the two women and juxtaposition against heterosexual desire (couples on the beach). The clip about the Morocco in Celluloid Closet, reveals the possibility of expression of lesbian desire, not yet explored even in a coded manner as popular male buddy films like even Sholay do. Fire did break some of the rules, but also came in for critique for its depiction of the relationship between two women as some kind of lesser choice, because of the failure of both their marriages. Similarly the upcoming movie Girlfriend's (www.girlfriendthemovie.com) storyline

also is about a possessive best friend who comes between a couple, and rather than reciprocated desire it is about one slip by the character played by Amrita Arora. However rather than critique, this exercise is meant to be creative, innovative - seriously frivolous. As Susan Sontag says in Notes on Camp - "The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious." Queering Bollywood is a project that mixes the sense of frivolous about the serious and the serious about the frivolous. Its serious about subversive, queer readings of popular Hindi cinema which many consider extremely frivolous. Its frivolous about the deadly serious nature of ownership of cinema, freely copying and mixing from various sources. One of the things done is a remix of a popular film Kal ho na ho. KHNH is categorized as a film which has a gay subtext (like Saathi, Anand, Main khiladi tu anaari) - the very notion of two men who are competing for the same woman supposedly, becoming friends so easily and remaining close, especially physically throughout the movie, is a very thin disguise for a gay love story. The remix attempts, on an average PC with pirated software and a pirated copy of the film, to unearth this story of 2 gay men and a woman in between. Several stories are actually possible, versions of which were even made. One of them is bisexual and the other is gay, the woman is the third angle. Both of them are gay, the girl falls for one, or the version that both are gay, but one is forced to get married because of his parents to an unsuspecting girl. Infact many collections of lesbian and gay literature like Scripts, Facing the Mirror contain stories andpoems that refer to Bollywood. Films like Gulabi Aaina, Tedhi Lakeer thrive on the imagery and songs of cinema. Kal ho na ho takes unlikely men with conflicting interests (for the same woman) and puts them together. Unlike this most other films take very good friends, even brothers and it is between them that there are moments. In the song Yeh Dosti from Sholay, both the characters flip a coin to see who will get the girl, and the coin stands on its edge. This gives neither of them the girl but ostensibly leaves them with each other. Sholay also has the interesting conversation between Amitabh and Mausi, because of how he tries to prevent his friend's wedding. A film that seems to follow from Sholay is Saathi, apparently made keeping a gay audience in made. Saathi uses some of the same imagery of two guys on a bike and the movie revolves around the intense relationship between the two men. The songs are about their friendship elevated to love, and also in the fight scene between the two men the woman in Mohsin Khan's life is obviously made the villain who came between them. The song Yaarana has them dancing together like usually men and women in Hindi films dance with each other at that point of time (P.T. style facing the camera). Another film Main khiladi tu anaari that also led to the controversy of the attack by Saif Ali Khan because he was called gay, has several delicious scenes, especially one where the two men get up close and personal only to be interrupted by a woman, who in the film is going to be the love interest of one of them. How believable is that? Waugh in his article wonders who - the dance choreographer, the director came up with the shot of the pelvic thrust by one man, and the response by the other in the background of the frame in this song. The scene in Silsila has been mentioned by Shohini Ghosh as well, where two men are bathing together. The undercurrent between the two in the beginning of the film is completely lost and layered over by subsequent stories of death, Rekha, adultery etc.etc. Two other brothers who are again "suspect" are in Parinda, where they role-play as man and woman, and also significantly disappear inside a closet. And inNaam again the song seems to say what can't be said in dialogues, about love and loss between people of the same sex.

There has been an anxiety about the representation of the private in Indian cinema for a rather long time it seems, as is evident from the informal prohibition on kissing that Madhav Prasad talks about in detail. The idea that this prohibition on kissing on screen was not a law but something that the cinema industry took on voluntarily does in some senses say a lot - but about what? That kissing is not part of Indian culture as the argument raised by the people in the industry at that time, but that argument discounts the existence of sexual vulgarity. The inference could be that this prohibition on kissing actually targets the representation of the private, and the private in Indian cinema is invented in and through the relationship of the family to the State. If the private itself is so contested, then how could desire and pleasure find expression, unless affirming the role of the modern nation State in society. Several statements in public seem to keep gay bollywood in the papers in some way or another, whether it is Shobha De on television talking about the gay gaze in Indian cinema making the hero and several gay directors and actors in the industry, or Karan Johar's oft-repeated ravings about Shahrukh Khan, or the new movie Girlfriend - there seems to be a buzz. Remixes, the bad child of the media industry, too play with identities. Chod do Aanchal by Bombay Vikings ends with the girl dipping the guy at the end of their dance, signifying changing times. Another song Gori hai kalayian is about two girls competing for a guy, who eventually decide to stop fighting with each other and dump the guy. The last moment, often left out by the music channels who play snippets of the song, has the two women looking at each other, while the guy walks away. The most obvious in the pop genre is Falguni Phatak, whose music videos repeatedly involve a guy who looks extraordinarily like her, and in thisvideo she seems to have gone past that, but there are still some sensual scenes between women that account for the major portion of the video. Often cinema is viewed as the product solely shown in cinemas, but media is an extremely disaggregated form. Even posters, stickers and other such paraphernalia has some erotic circulation, some of which must be queer as is evidenced by Thomas Waugh's article that talks about posters and images also. Audiences in specific spaces also make a lot of difference. Gayatri Gopinath talks about the queer reception of films such as Hum aapke hain kaun by a queer diasporic audience. The same family film and even the same scene wouldn't raise a single doubt in any cinema in Ahmedabad catering to a completely Gujarati family audience. She draws a connection between the scene where two women disappear under a sheet, and the quilt in Ismat Chugtai's Quilt. Hence it is important to look at queer readings distributed over different forms that cinema takes (posters, pirated VCDs, images, screensavers, webpages, gossip sites, magazines etc.), different spaces that cinema inhabits (cinema, video parlours, homes, collective screenings etc.) and also the content of cinema which is then read in different ways because of the form and the space that it encounters. Compiled by Namita Malhotra, Lawrence Liang and many others at Alternative Law Forum and in Bangalore.

http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?227507

Arts & Entertainment / Cover Stories / Essays

MAGAZINE | MAY 30, 2005

Arts & Entertainment / Cover Stories / Essays

MAGAZINE | MAY 30, 2005

Arts & Entertainment / Cover Stories / Essays

MAGAZINE | MAY 30, 2005

ESSAY

The Closet Is Ajar

Homosexuality has been largely absent from popular cinema, but the idea is catching steam
SHOHINI GHOSH

At the turn of the 21st century, the rapid spread of satellite TV and new media technologies continue to transform the cultural practices of the urban middle class. There was excitement and apprehension in the early '90s as an endless diversity of images flowed into private and public spaces. The anxieties emerged directly from the increasing popularity of TV and the expanding space being devoted to the expression of sex and sexuality. Throughout the '90s, the Hindu Right and other organisations attacked the more transgressive representations of women's bodies and demanded stringent legislation and greater censorship. Sexual speech came under special attention as newscasts, talk shows, sitcoms and a variety of TV shows challenged conventional family values and sexual normativity including monogamy, marriage and heterosexuality. In the mid-'90s, sitcoms (like Hum Paanch, Shriman Shrimati) featured characters who were unmistakably queer while mainstream films like Daayra, In the mid-'90s films Darmiyaan and Tamanna challenged heteronormativity by presenting queer like Daayra and Tamanna presented protagonists. The term 'queer' is being used to challenge the naturalised polarities of queer protagonists. sex and gender like masculine/feminine, homo/heterosexuality and gay/lesbian. Reclaimed by queer activists, this once-derogatory slang now affirms that genders and sexual preferences are fluid, trans-gendered and transsexual. Film and cultural studies argue that spectatorship is not necessarily predictable. Texts do not carry the same meaning for everybody. Instead various factors (like the viewer's location, history and predisposition) contribute to how images are read and interpreted. Therefore, we may suggest that all images are essentially ambivalent and allow themselves to be read differently by different people. Film scholar Andrea Weiss suggests that queer spectatorship is inherently contradictory as it embodies a desire to see while being perpetually invisible. Therefore, she writes, "it resembles a love-hate affair, which involves anticipation, seduction, pleasure, disappointment, rage and betrayal". Explicit depictions of homosexual love have been largely absent from popular cinema except as minor sub-plots, comic relief or transitory suggestions in the song-anddance sequences. The song routines of Bombay cinema have always allowed the plot and protagonists to escape conventional expectations and the narrative confines of the script. Therefore, transgressive desires frequently appear in these spaces. Take the Didi Tera Deewana sequence in a family entertainer like Hum Aapke Hain Koun? where two women enact a sexually charged performance. Or Choli Ke Peechey in Khalnayak where the otherwise chaste heroine called Ganga masquerades as a sexually assertive tawaif. Radical ideas have frequently emerged first in the realm of independent films before entering mainstream cinema. Therefore, it was Riyad Wadia's experimental film BomGay (1996) that inaugurated queer-identified films in India. Starring the now popular star Rahul Bose, BomGay, a highly stylised avant-garde film, structured around six poems by R. Raj Rao, circulated widely in queer circles and international film festivals. His next film, A Mermaid Called Aida, was a portrait of well-known transsexual Aida Banaji. The debate on queer sexuality exploded into public life with the release of Deepa Mehta's Fire (1998) starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das. Fire is about the relationship between two sisters-in-law in a middle-class Delhi neighbourhood who fall in love. The posters of the film allowed the two women to occupy the same visual space that had conventionally belonged to heterosexual lovers. Predictably, a furious public debate ensued. The Hindu Right attacked the film as endangering "marriage" and Indian culture while others defended the human rights of queer people and freedom of speech and expression. Fire is a significant film as it places queer sexuality at the centre of the narrative. Most
The posters of Fire showed two women in the same visual space kept for heterosexual lovers.

http://www.literophile.org/?p=78

JULY 16, 2013

QUEERING HINDI CINEMA: A COMMENTARY ON GAY (MIS)REPRESENTATION IN HINDI CINEMA

Hindi Cinema is widely acknowledged as one of the most popular and influential medium of entertainment in India. It is most probably one of the few sources of entertainment, other than cricket, which not only geographically but also culturally binds and brings the country together as a whole. Though in certain regions like inSouth India, local films may be more popular than Hindi films, however, even there Hindi films influence over popular culture and especially on the youth is very crucial to understand current trends, behaviour, fashion and lifestyle. Yet within this modern-consumerist-universal Indian identity that seems to emerge from contemporary Hindi films, there are also markers and upholders of the traditionalconservative Indian family. The 1990s was a phenomenal period for the Hindi film industry as it began its metamorphosis into a modern world class industry as it upgraded its technology and began to make contemporary, edgy and darker films instead of the timeless and repetitive themed soppy stories on love, honour, friendship, where there was a clear distinction between good and evil, between black and white. This influenced transformation in the notions of the masses and specially influenced the newly emerged, the mobile and consumerist, urban middle-class Indians. Shohini Ghosh comments that the nature of contemporary spectatorship changed because of the multiplicity of images that were made available (Ghosh 212). The anxieties created were expressed in debates about the media and certain kinds of images were censured for corroding Indian culture and tradition. These images were accused of being provocative and vulgar. Shohini Ghosh explains that the debate on censorship is about sex and sexuality, as explicit sexual representation in the form of imagery or speech had been very limited and were stray incidents before the 1990s (Ghosh 214). Despite public and Hindu right wing anxieties, representations on/of sex and sexuality continued to find space in different forms of media, which went against conventional family values and at times heteronormativity. Queer1 images/ portrayals rarely found prominent space in commercial ventures, though, whenever they did, it was in the form of humour which could be found in umpteen number of Hindi films. Gay representations in Hindi cinema are seen and received in various ways and it is visible in different ways in a narrative of a film. Broadly, it can be read that there are four ways in which Hindi films have incorporated gay (queer) characters and narratives in the plot of the film. The first is in the form of the hijra, the second is in the form of humour, the third is in the form of mental sickness, and lastly, which is

the rarest, is in the way in which it shows the complexities of the lives gay people lead. However, at times the distinction between the categories overlap and are blurred. Being Hijra is being Gay The first category as mentioned earlier is the portrayal of the hijra. The 1991 film Sadak (directed by Mahesh Bhatt) shows a hijra keeping the naive heroine (Pooja Bhatt) in his/ her custody in capacity as the main villain of the film. This movie was a commercial success. Another very recent movie, Murder 2 (2011), shows the villain as a homicidal murderer who is a married straight-man, who castrates himself with the help of a hijra because he hates women and is shown to be a devil-worshipper. Not only does the hijra identity gets attached with such a character but such representation misleads the public about a community which is forced to live at the margins of society and portrays them in a negative light while ignoring the low status that they have and the hardships that they face with no job opportunities and no recognition by society and the State. This movie made was made on a budget of Rs. 14 crores and it made about Rs. 66 crores. The 1997 film Tamanna (Wish) is based on the real life story of a hijra, Tikkoo, who worked in the Hindi film industry. It is based around his/ her long time companion, Salim, and their adopted daughter, Tammana. In the movie, Tikkoo attempts to behave and dress like a man but because of Tikkoos campy mannerisms, she/ he is never accepted as a real man. It is interesting to note that in real life, Tikkoo did not attempt to be a real man. The revelation of Tikkoos hijra identity to his/ her daughter is the emotional highpoint of the movie and the drama that follows. According to Ruth Vanita, the film uses the trope of closeting and outing, which are relevant to homosexual people in India today who often lead double lives, but not as much to hijras who usually publicly display their difference (Vanita 184). She says this because the revelation of Tikkoos being as a hijra to Tamanna is like an act of coming out of the closet. Here the onscreen representation simultaneously imbues the characteristics of both of a hijra and a gay man or a lesbian woman. The movie focuses on the relationship of Tammana and Tikkoo while Tikkoos relationship with his/ her long time partner, Salim, is in the backdrop and is given the position of two heterosexual lovers. Vanita writes that the masculine-feminine coding is clear as Salim plays the strong and silent man while Tikkoo is often dramatic, sensitive, hysterical and emotional. The actor who portrayed Tikkoo is a well-known actor, Paresh Rawal, and he was praised for his performance. There are also other hijra portrayals in films like Bombay (1995), Darmiyaan (In-Between, 1997), and another reality inspired film, Shabnam Mausi (Aunt Shabnam, 2005), which is about a hijra who gets elected as a member of the legislative assembly in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The trope of using the identity of a hijra has further strengthened stereotypes of hijras being abnormal, mystical and something that one should be scared of. Even the movie, Tammana, which attempts to portray a hijra identity somehat sensitively ends up misrepresenting the community and confusing the audience. Gayatri Gopinath has pointed out that one of the ways in which non-heteronormative characters were portrayed was in the form of hijras. According to her, the portrayal of a hijra character was the generalised category of portraying all forms of gender and sexual deviancy. At times, the hijra community has used this fear to extort money from passengers in trains and on traffic red-lights, which can be commonly seen in some of the bigger cities of India. Their social status and poor job opportunities have put them in a situation where they have to resort to begging and prostitution. Being Comic is being Gay One of the first characters to indicate a gay identity was Pinkoo from the 1991 film Mast Kalandar (Happy Go Lucky). Pinkoo in this film is the main villains spoilt son and, by this relation, is shown as one of the bad guys who is, yet, comic at the same time. He is shown to be flirting with men and trying to get their attention by trying to touch them and by his gestures. In one of the scenes, he is shown to be running his

hand over his father and asking Daddy humara body aapke jaisa strong aur muscular kyun nahi hai? (Daddy, why is my body not as strong and muscular as yours?), after which his father catches hold of his hand and puts it away. Immediately, Pinkoo targets his fathers friend who enters the scene, and who then clearly rejects Pinkoos advances. This kind of portrayal signifies that such characters do not have any inhibitions of flirting and trying to seduce any men that they can get. Viewers can read that such characters are debauched and have no morals. Pinkoos character is also used to critique and parody gender roles as in the instance where he rebukes two women laughingly by saying Aap logo ko ek akele ladke ko raat mein iss tarah chedte hue sharm nahi aati hai kya? Aap logo ke ghar mein baap-bhai nahi hai kya? (Arent you people ashamed of teasing a boy alone at night? Dont you people have fathers and brothers at home?) or when he does a cabaret number, Ek, Do, Teen (One, Two Three), which is a very famous song from an earlier movie, Tezaab (Acid, 1988), enacted by a famous heroine, Madhuri Dixit. It took Kal ho Na Ho (Tomorrow May or May Not Be, 2003), with a funny gay sub-plot between the two lead heroes that created queer debates once again in the media. The movie has a comic sub-plot of mistaken identities and the story takes place in New York, USA. This is a triangular love story of three friends, Naina, Aman and Rohit. Both Aman and Rohit like Naina; however, the interaction between Rohit and Aman, who are both heterosexual, as seen by Rohits housekeeper, Kanta-ben, is mistaken for a gay relationship which shocks and disgusts her. Her reaction to their alleged relationship and Amans mock insistence that they are in a relationship are some of the humorous parts of the movie. The reaction of Kanta-ben and the interrogation of Rohit by his father at none other than a strip club shows familys and societys paranoia over homosexuality. In this sense, Kanta-ben being the object of comic-relief at some level is a critique of societys paranoia. In another scene, after Rohit and Naina have agreed to marry each other, the wedding planner/designer is an effeminate white man who is shown to be cheering when Rohit and Aman accidentally come in close proximity to each other while dancing, and at his reaction, Kanta-ben pushes the designer away in anger/irritation and he holds on to Rohits father out of shock/fright, and Rohits father reacts by pushing him away violently. It almost seems as if that homosexuality spreads by being touched by a gay man.2 It is interesting to note that such behaviour is considered to be foreign and un-Indian. For example, in the British film, Bend it Like Beckham (2002), based around a teenage girl, Jesse, who is British by birth and Indian by ancestry, is questioned about her sexuality and close-ness with her female best friend, Jules, because both of them like to play football. In one scene, Jules mother accuses of being a hypocrite and a lesbian to which someone exclaims But she is Indian!. This scene quite accurately captures the perception that homosexuality does not exist in India or among Indians who do not live in India. It is commonly considered that homosexuality is a foreign import or western phenomena. Being Abnormal is being Gay The film Girlfriend (2004), by Karan Razdan, is based around the two girls, Tanya and Sapna, and their close friendship, which at some point becomes sexual because of and after a night where they both get drunk together. When Sapna gets into a relationship with a guy named Rahul, Tanya becomes overtly jealous and schemes to break them up. It was shown that Tanya as a child was sexually abused and it indirectly pointed towards the reason for her lesbian sexuality. This movie pathologises the so called sexual deviancy of its character Tanya and queer sexualities is conceptualised as essentially being abnormal and mentally unstable. There is one particular scene where it shows that Tanya is not only abnormal but aggressive and masculine as well when she is involved in a ring-fight at a shipping yard where people have bets on who will win. The scene opens with Tanya riding a motorbike at a break-neck speed after meeting Rahul and quickly shifts to a fight sequence where Tanya defeats her opponent, who

looks like a WWE wrestler, without much difficulty and collects only ten thousand rupees from the girl who was collecting the money from the audience; further, as she leaves, Tanya suggestively touches her cheek with the bundle of money. There were a few stray movies in the 1980s which had queer characters, like the films Holi (Holi, 1983) and Subah (Morning, 1983). In the film, Holi, which is set in a boys hostel, one of the boys is shown to be effeminate and accused of sexual relations with other boys in the dorm. He is bullied and harassed because, firstly, he is not masculine and, secondly, it is implied that he is the one who is passive and most probably penetrated; while the boys who have had some kind of sexual relation with him or who have penetrated him neither are harassed or bullied. Subah, which is set in a womens rehabilitation centre, shows two women inmates in a relationship being singled out for punishment; when the protagonist of the film, who is a warden, speaks up for them, everyone is shocked by their relationship. Thus, such characters are shown to be harassed, to be bullied and are pathologised or punished, and rarely the violence against such characters are shown. Being Gay is being Queer A breakthrough movie was My Brother Nikhil (2005), directed by Onir. This movie is about the marginalisation of state swimming champion Nikhil Kapoor (Sanjay Suri) once he tests positive for HIV. His marginalisation happens at two levels, the public and the private. For example, when Nikhil enters the swimming pool, all others in the pool leave, and also, when he is arrested by the police and put into a rat infested sanatorium. On the private, when he is physically thrown out by his parents from their house and has to move in with his boyfriend Nigel (Purab Kohli). In My Brother Nikhil, other than gay representation, the notions of masculinity and social normativity, amongsgt others, are challenged through its text. Shohini Ghosh points out, firstly, that Nikhil Kapoor is an athlete whose masculinity passes as heterosexual and this challenges the categories by which gay men are sorted into. Secondly, womens attraction towards Nikhil and his sexual orientation would compel the spectator to revise their idea about gay and straight masculinities. Finally, through Nigel and Nikhils relationship, this movie provides a space where it can be seen that homosexual relations are more than just the desire for sex. The director of My Brother Nikhil (2005), Onirban, feels that Hindi Cinema has hardly ever done justice to homosexuality or the gay characters in their films. There have been very few films that have focused on the lives of queer people without being stereotypical like Fire (1998), My Brother Nikhil (2005), I am (2010),Turning 30 (2011), and some of them have tried to show queer people in an unbiased way but end up indirectly reinforcing stereotypes like Page 3 (2003),Fashion (2008), Pankh (Wings, 2010) Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun (Dunno Y Wonder Why, 2010) to name a few. Most of these films are targeted at a niche audience who live in cosmopolitan cities, belong to middle and upper classes, have been educated in English schools (there is a lot of English usage in these films) and they are shown at a fewer cinemas, usually the multiplexes. This gives the impression that gay issues and lives are an urban and cosmopolitan phenomena and that they can be recognised and received only within this area. Conclusion Through the methodology of this piece, representation of queer (gay) characters and images has been grouped which highlight an evolutionary pattern. The initial phases of representation were primarily indirect and operating within the ambiguous categories of friendship as well through stereotypes such as that of the hijra as being representative of all sexual deviancy. The move to more direct forms of interrogation emerged later in tandem with economic, social and political changes.

The role of the audience has also emerged as a significant aspect of understanding the impact of Hindi films. At the most fundamental level, this is informed by the commercial nature of the film industry which is driven by market demands and must, therefore, take the audiences opinions and beliefs seriously. However, the Hindi film industry still remains an industry that largely operates through the use of stock characters articulating stereotypical notions, which may further reinforce those stereotypes and may perpetuate negative notions and attitudes towards non-heteronormative sexualities and individuals. Thus, we may observe that a complex interplay of forces shape the internal dynamics and politics of representations and, hence, the question of homosexual discourses must be viewed as being embedded in these political, social, economic and cultural processes. ___________________________________________________________________ Notes Please note that the terms gay and queer have been interchangeably used throughout this article. The term queer is an umbrella term which is convenient and often used to describe the various sexual minorities like Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, etc. 2 The success of Kal ho Na Ho led to the more recent Hindi film Dostana (Saga of Friendship, 2008), by the same film-production company, which had a very similar light hearted take on gay people, to the extent that it parodies such behaviour and people. Bibliography Ghosh, Shohini. Queering India: same-sex love and eroticism in Indian culture and society . Ed. Ruth Vanita. Routledge, 2002. Print. . The phobic and the erotic: the politics of sexualities in contemporary India . Ed. Brinda Bose and S. Bhattacharya. Seagull, 2007. Print. Gopinath, G. Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the shade. Ed. A. Grossman. Harrington Park Press, 2000. Print. . Impossible desires: Queer diasporas and South Asian public culture . Duke University Press, 2005. Print. Kavi, A. R. Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the shade. Ed. A. Grossman. Harrington Park Press, 2000. Print. Pandey, V. N. Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: sexualities, Masculinities and culture in South Asia . Ed. S. Srivastava. Sage Publishers, 2004. Print. Rajan, G. (2006). Constructing-contesting masculinities: Trends in South Asian cinema. Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 31.4 (2006): 1009-1124. Print. Rao, R. R. Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the shade . Ed. A. Grossman. Harrington Park Press, 2000. Print. Shahani, P. Gay Bombay: Globalisation, love and (Be)longing in contemporary India . Sage Publishers, 2008. Print. Shahani, P. Global Bollywood. Ed. A. P. Kavoori, A. Punathambekar. New York University Press, 2008. Print. Vanita, Ruth. Lovers rite: Same-sex marriage in India and the West . Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print. . Gandhis tiger and Sitas smile: Essays on gender, sexuality and culture . Yoda Press, 2005. Print. _________________
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ULY 16, 2013

CLAIMING HINDI CINEMA: A QUEER READING

There has been a growing body of work which looks at viewing Hindi (Bombay) films from a queer1 perspective. The reason for that is, as Ruth Vanita writes, Bombay cinema, although in Hindi, represents perhaps the closest thing to an all-India cultural language that exists today (Vanita, in Lovers rite, 209). She states that the languages used in its narratives range from Urdu, Hindi and English to, in many cases, other Indian languages like Punjabi, and that it often uses dialects that are commonly used in urban spaces. The popularity of Hindi films is not restricted to native Indian audiences, as they are popular amongst the Indian diaspora, in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Fiji, Dubai, and Singapore. Thus there is an immense fascination for films, especially Hindi films, among millions of people for their entertainment and glamour offering people a two-three hour escape into a diverse array of situations and locations. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the reason for Hindi Cinemas popularity, but the way Hindi films reflect on peoples lives must nonetheless be critically examined. It is important to understand the relationship between representation and reality, wherein more than one reading of popular cultural texts (films in this case) may exist. Reading Films as Cultural Texts, and Spectatorship The interpretive mechanisms that have been used for certain Hindi films by scholars like Gayatri Gopinath, Ruth Vanita, Shohini Ghosh and others indicate that there is always scope for newer cultural reinterpretation of films that highlight the presence of a multiplicity of images in a single cultural text/film and point towards the fact that processes of interpretation are dependent on the location and expectations of the audiences. Anthropological research may indicate that studying culture is more of an observational activity rather than an interpretive one. However, according to Clifford Geertz, culture is something that is continually re-interpreted because it is essentially semiotic. The cultural meaning that is embedded within one culture may be incomprehensible to another one because of the inaccessibility of meanings from that particular culture or the lack of knowledge, and it may end up giving things an entirely new or different meaning. In a similar way, when films are viewed, and because of the visual codex, there is a possibility of generation of multiple meanings, as an individual spectator may interpret films from his or her own cultural setting. Spectators, while viewing a film, may have at points an analogical identification with a film. This analogical identification or a sense of empathy by spectators, while viewing a film, may be over socially proscribed or transgressive love which could be over class, caste or other identities and this may arise out of numerous factors. For example, the portrayal of a romance between the lead hero and heroine may not be acceptable to the family and/or society on religious grounds and in this case, queer spectators would be aware of such a couples location as an outsider, which they would be able to identify because of the transgressive element of the narrative. The interpretive mechanisms that an audience uses depend on the audiences practises, knowledge and expectations which intersect with the film. The impact of such a narrative may depend on the context in which a film is viewed and subsequently, the spectator may

construct an imaginary self while viewing or after viewing the film and therein lies the possibility of the generation of new meanings and modes of conduct. A Queer Interpretive Reading of Hindi Films Gayatri Gopinath highlights how the film Fire allowed for a new interpretive strategy to read between homosociality and homoeroticism: for example, when Sita (Nandita Das) massages Radhas (Shabana Azmi) feet at a family picnic or when Sita oils Radhas hair where these activities become erotically charged because of their sexual involvement (Gopinath 286). It can be said that Fire opened up a new way of reading films using an interpretive strategy. A queer reading looks at the narrative of a film which may have homosocial elements which could be interpreted and read as homoerotic. The concept of homosociality and homoeroticism was then applied to dosti, yaari or male bonding which was re-looked through a queer perspective and a new homoerotic angle emerged to study some movies. R Raj Rao, Gayatri Gopinath, Shohini Ghosh, Ruth Vanita, Hoshang Merchant, Ashok Row Kavi, etc. have tried to interpret certain film narratives to understand the influence of Hindi cinema on film goers, irrespective of their sexuality. Thus, films like Sholay (1975),Namak Haram (1973) and Anand (1970) may be read as homoerotic texts. The movie Dosti (1964) by Satyen Bose is about two orphaned boys, Ramu and Mohan. The focus of the movies is their friendship/ relationship. Vanita points out that their relationship fulfils all necessary criteria of true love/friendship. The intensity between Ramu and Mohans equation is portrayed through the medium of poetic speech, song, and narrative. The relationship develops in the context of shared ordeals, a chosen family and break-up, and ends on a happy note with the public acknowledgment of their union. The final scene in the movie shows an old lady blessing them by saying bhagvan karey tumhari jodi isi tarah bani rahey (May God keep the pair of you united thus forever ) (Vanita, in Gandhis tiger, 183). Vanita points out that the word jodi is popularly used for a married couple and this blessing is usually provided by elders to couples. Thus the movie represent the pair to share, somewhat, the same space that a heterosexual couple does except here the couple is a male pair. Dosti has been seen as one of the oldest movies to have queer connotations. However, from the early 1970s, homoeroticism has been specially associated with Amitabh Bachchans onscreen characters. The audience for an Amitabh movie was predominantly young men in their twenties and thirties. His films were action films and did not primarily cater to women. According to R. R. Rao, the bond that Amitabh Bachchans character would form with his other male co-actors onscreen complemented the presence of an all-male audience that had gathered to watch him and a sort of homoerotic interaction (like holding hands, putting arms around shoulders and waists, etc.) would take place in the darkness of the hall. Amitabh Bachchan expresses undying love for other men onscreen, all in the name of yaari, and this may have inspired homoerotic interaction among male film-goers. Raj Ayyar explains yaar as an individual with whom one feels a deep almost intangible connection. Definitions of this term have varied through time, sometimes denoting a lover, at other times a frienda yaar embodies elements of both a friend and a lover (in Rao 304). Amitabh Bachchan and his co-stars reinforced the idea of yaari in their films and if their involvement was sexual, it is up to interpretation. In both Namak Haram and Anand, Rajesh Khanna plays the role of the hyper-emotional, feminised man while Amitabh Bachchan plays the intense brooding lover who is consumed by the rage of losing his beloved friend in his arms. InZanjeer (1973), Amitabh and Prans friendship is similarly located in the heterosexual arrangement. Another example of homoeroticism in Amitabh Bachchan and his co-actors character is Sholay (1975). The two protagonists, Jai (Amitabh Bachachan) and his male friend Veeru (Dharmendra), are shown to have a very special equation. In a sequence of the movie, Vanita points out that the villain calls the love between Veeru and Basanti (Hema Malini) as yaarana,, which is another

construction of the word yaar that has been applied to the male-male bond . Lastly, as Jai dies in Veerus arms, Jai tells Veeru to never forget their friendship and that Veeru will pass this story on to his children, and before he breathes his last, he says he does not regret dying because he spent his life with his friend and he is dying in his arms. In most Hindi movies, when the heroes share such an equation, one of them is either killed or they find themselves getting married to a woman; very few films have shown the men to be together at the end. Again using the example of the movie Dostana (1980), Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha compete for the attention of Zeenat Aman and in this competition Zeenat Aman gets merely passed on from one to the other. There is a song sequence where Amitabh sings about his grief of losing their friendship. Amitabh Bachchan sings to Shatrughan Sinha in a tear-filled voice about his bewaffai (unfaithfulness), which is usually associated with an unfaithful lover. Words such as yaar andbewaffai can be applied to both a friend and a lover, and there is a scope that the social taboo provides enough space for friendship between people of the same-sex, which may have sexual undertones. Of course, at the end Zeenat goes away and the movie closes with both the friends holding hands and walking into the sunset. The heterosexual love interests in some of these films seem to be secondary. Ghosh points out that Hindi cinema hardly ever uses sexually explicit scenes to convey love, and to depict friendship, it uses similar devices as it uses for love. They have used the plot of friendship, love and sacrifice in numerous ways. In some of these male bonding movies, one male protagonist would give up his beloved to his friend, thereby establishing love between friends as superior to love between lovers. Homoeroticism in Hindi film song-and-dance Another example of homoeroticism in Bollywood songs is the characters enacted by Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra in Sholay (1975). The song Yeh Dosti from Sholay has been used in many Gay Pride Parades in New York and San Francisco, which has Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra singing a duet of undying loyalty and love. This can be viewed as an instance of diasporic interpretation where that which may be acceptable in a certain culture may be found queer in another 2. Waugh also notes the physicality present in the narrative of this song, highlighting how the two friends, clutch and caress each others hands, shoulders and head and thighs more consistently than the handlebars (of their motorbike) (Waugh 291). Even the lyrics of the song, like Though two in body/ Were one in soul- /never shall we be separated, play on the notion of friendship and love and the importance of male friendship over all else. The song echoes themes and motifs usually employed for romantic songs in heterosexual contexts, such as the notion of two bodies- one soul. Ruth Vanita observes that Hindi songs enjoy immense popularity among the gay subcultures because of their ungendered character and the relative autonomy of songs from the main narrative of the films. The narrative of most Hindi film songs is romantic in context and its articulation emphasises the objective category of love rather than focus on the gender of the characters of the movie. Thus, by lyrically rendering a generalised paean, they make themselves accessible to reinterpretation and to being appropriated to express love in a non-heterosexual context. Songs also serve as interludes to the main narrative of the film. They often articulate such non-temporal events such as dreams hallucinations, fantasies, etc. The lyrical and visual narrative of a song usually relies on elaborate dance sequences in exotic locations. Thus, we may conclude that songs provide an alternative space within the narrative of a film and in this space things which otherwise cannot be accommodated in the main narrative of the plot are accommodated. This, Ghosh observes, may be understood with Mikhail Bakhtins notion of the carnivalesque. It is used to express peoples desire to

transport themselves into a space which might be exaggerated and surreal, but which nonetheless provides them the opportunity to break free from oppressive hierarchies to utopian freedom. Another characteristic of Hindi film songs is that the songs often serve to resolve erotic tension in the narrative. In the pre-1990s era, this may be seen in the fact that the lead pair burst into song and dance at the moment where their expression of love threatens to become unacceptably erotic. Songs, therefore, replace onscreen sex and sensuality and the present day avatar can be seen in the popular Hindi film item number. Thus, sexual undertones form an integral part of the lyrical and visual imagery of songs and this may be seen as a reason for their popularity and interpretive feasibility for articulating nonheterosexual love and sexual desire. The songs of some films stand out in the context of interpretive significance. A song in the film Dosti sung by one of the protagonists presents the relationship between the two male friends as a consolation for his sorrows of being physically challenged. Here the relationship between the two is articulated as chahna or love. Further on, he puts his arm around his weeping friend and continues: At least your companion on the journey (humrah) is someone of your own (Vanita in Gandhis tiger 189). Vanita says that this song, with its ambiguity and overlap of the categories of friendship and love serves as a good example of how the un-gendered love song functions out of context. Continuing this theme of male-bonding songs in the 1990s, the title track of the film Main Khiladi Tu Anadi (1994) also expresses male-friendship in lofty and exaggerated sense. However, as Waugh notes, the genre of male-bonding songs has also undergone a change in the interval, and the latter song exhibits both parody of the genre as well as greater suggestiveness through bolder physical gestures and dance sequences, and the semiotic play of winking. The synchronised pelvic thrusts of the heroes may be homoerotically interpreted. Moreover, the prelude to this song in the film is a spat between the two friends after which they tearfully make-up and this making-up provides the context for this song. The re-appropriation of Hindi film songs for different contexts also occurs in movies themselves through the device of parody. An example of such a parody in the homosexual context is the cabaret number in the movie Mast Kalandar where the presumably gay/ non-heteronormative character of Pinkoo parodies famous songs like Madhuri Dixits hit number Ek, Do, Teen, and uses songs and their meaning to serve his own interest, which is to flirt with men at the bar. Before the beginning of the song, Pinkoo sings the lines aadmi hoon aadmi se pyaar karta hoon from the film Pehchan (1970), which here is taken out of context and becomes an articulation of Pinkoos ambiguous sexuality. A contemporary song that has gained immense popularity is the song Ma da ladla Bigar Gaya from the film Dostana (2008). This song not only comically expresses the plight of a conservative mother who learns about her sons deviant sexuality, but its lyrics also playfully re-appropriate romantic legends such as that of Heer-Ranjha. Here the folktale is inverted, and Ranjha meets Ranjha. The implications of such a comparison are potentially many, not the least because the tragic nature of the original Heer-Ranjha legend itself. However this song can be read as an attempt to understand sexuality through the inversion of old traditions and legends and their expropriation, thus highlighting another case of re-interpretation. Conclusion The politics behind queer readings of film narratives allows for mainstream discourses and gender ideologies to accommodate gay identities. Not only that, multiple readings are like incisions through which aspirations and desires of peoples who have been invisibilised by hegemonic forces emerge. Hence, such readings and interpretations by audiences and scholars allows for queer identities to find and claim a history that has always been there, as well as to make newer places in popular culture.

___________________________________________________________________ Notes The word queer has been used to identify the various sexual minorities that exist. Identities like gay, lesbian, transgender, etc. has been interchangeably used with the word queer. It becomes a convenient way to bring all such minorities under one umbrella term. 2 Gopinath (2005) has used a framework of queer South Asian diaspora or a queer diasporic viewing practice which attempts to look at various same-sex desires in popular Indian cinema, from multiple sites and the contradictory meanings that emerge from these locations. Bibliography Geertz, Clifford. The interpretation of culture . New York: Basic Books, 1973. Print. Ghosh, Shohini. The phobic and the erotic: the politics of sexualities in contemporary India . Ed. Brinda Bose and S.Bhattacharya. Seagull, 2007. Print. Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible desires: Queer diasporas and South Asian public culture . Duke University Press, 2005. Print. Ramasubramanian, Srividya., and Mary B. Oliver. Portrayals of sexual violence in popular Hindi films, 1997-99. Sex Roles. 48.7/8 (2003): 327-336. Print. Rao, R. R. Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the shade . Ed. A. Grossman. Harrington Park Press, 2000. Print. Vanita, Ruth. Lovers rite: Same-sex marriage in India and the West . Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print. . Gandhis tiger and Sitas smile: Essays on gender, sexuality and culture . Yoda Press, 2005. Print. Waugh, T. Keyframes: Popular cinema and cultural studies. Ed. M. Tinkcom and A. Villarejo. Routledge, 2001. Print. ___________________________________________________________________
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Ankush Bhuyn is an independent researcher, and freelance writer and editor. He has worked with various publishing houses and holds a Masters degree from the University of Delhi. He has presented student research papers at various national and international conferences. His interests vary from travel and wildlife to films to sexuality among many other things. He may be contacted at bhuyan.ankush@gmail.com.