Gaysi: The Gay Desi - Yes, we're legal!

Zilch is my faith in the Indian Main Stream Media. Be it their Breaking News claims, Current Affairs, Political Opinions, Reviews; anything and everything that is highlighted by them I refuse to buy it. In today’s competitive scenario, by default they all seem to follow single shameless funda – TRP (Circulation) ke liye kuch bhi karega – and therefore lies and exaggeration form a crucial element of the daily news bundle.

But once in a while we have a blue moon night (Yes! Yes! We are grateful) where a thing called “conscious” awakens and makes its presence felt. What? Where? You ask…

Folks at Hindustan Times have started a new series of Ad campaigns, pretty much on the lines of “Jaago India” types introduced by Tata Tea guys.

One of the Ad campaign focuses on Gay Rights. Agreed its self-promotion harping business but as long as it sends out the right message, it’s all good, me thinks.

Hopefully now HT will do more than just preaching and not let it all breeze by as wishful thinking. Or else we will continue to use their newspaper as a cheap mosquito repellant. What say you?

[Guest Author : Sophie Parisse]

Queer Nazaria, the event was well attended (more than houseful, roughly about 90 to 100 people), by a mixed crowd, ranging from individuals of our very own LGBT community and visiting LGBT individuals from Singapore to members of the Alliance Française. This allowed for very diverse and heated interventions after the films screenings.

There was a brief introduction of the films as well as the film makers before every film.

We kicked off with The Marching Season by Grace Chapman and Emma Jones. The film had a beautiful response. It was so appropriate to this pre-march event since it looks at the history of pride marches while drawing a parallel between the London and Riga pride marches that had been twinned in 2007. The film was followed by a brief update on the Riga marches in 2008 and 2009.

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[Guest Author : DeepSeas]

I can’t think Straight was a much awaited movie – not the least because of its sexy trailers of the romantic scenes between Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth. It is based on the novel by the same name by Shamim Sarif, who has also directed the film. It is, in essence, a cute lesbian romantic story between the protagonists Tala (who comes from a rich Jordanian family) and Leyla (of Indian Muslim origin, settled in UK), neither of whom has considered any kind of Lesbian-orientation very seriously – not even properly acknowledged it to their own selves.

The movie opens with the story of Tala – a chronic engagement-breaker (she has called of 3 engagements already). The story starts with her 4^th (and hopefully last) engagement. She meets Leyla through Ali –whom Leyla is currently dating. Tala comes across as an outspoken, rebellious girl with a mind of her own while Leyla is shy, introspective girl who dreams of becoming a writer. The romance unfolds slowly, with neither of them being ready to label their relationship as anything more than friendship at first. Finally one scene between Leyla and her sister, where she confronts Leyla about her friendship with Tala, brings out Leyla’s confused emotions. Matters come to a point-of-no-return when Tala and Leyla are on a holiday together and finally acknowledge their real feelings. From thereon starts the drama – as both are under pressure from their families to get married and must make a choice between family and social norms & true love and inner calling. Although, Tala seems to be the more headstrong of the two, it is Leyla who comes out to her parents first, while Tala is fearful of upsetting her parents by breaking off her engagement. At this point they break-off, only to (predictably) get back together in the end.

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[Guest Author: Jane Doe]

The deal with being bisexual is that no one takes you seriously. I mean for most people it isn’t even a thing. It’s like “You like men don’t you? Yeah, then you’re straight.” But no, that’s just the point, I like women. A lot. So much so that I can’t walk through my crowded college mess without checking one or two out.

It’s just that I like different things about the two sexes. I like the softness of women and how we’re so strong inside and I like men, with their sports and bikes, and facial hair. And body hair.

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[Guest Post by Amrita, from Indiequill]

I’ve never found Sean Penn attractive. Shocking, I know, but all that brooding intensity is completely wasted on me, I’m afraid. Five minutes into Milk, however, as I watch him seduce the entirely-too-pretty James Franco in a matter of minutes with nothing more than a silly grin and a pick up line so tired they should shoot it to put it out of its misery, I suddenly got the hype.

It’s one of the many ways in which Penn so perfectly inhabits the character of Harvey Bernard Milk, the closeted insurance salesman from New York who became a gay rights activist, the first openly gay elected official in California and a symbol of hope for the LGBT community in the 1970s.

From the moment he bumps into Scott Smith (Franco), his lover for many years and a friend upto his assassination in 1978, in Milk, we’re constantly reminded that this is not a man who is conventionally handsome and is way too old to be deemed attractive in the gay scene he inhabits. But with his salesman charm and the sweetest smile you ever saw, his is a charisma that cannot be denied.

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While we continue to bicker over the existence of an antiquated law (IPC 377) in courts. Allow human rights violation by the very protectors of law in the form of torture, extortion & abuse on Gay men. Not flinch a muscle on reading stories of increase in lesbian suicides. Watch helpless young girls get beaten up in the name of propagating the so-called ‘pub-culture’ in the comforts of our living rooms. And then continue to have the chalta hai India hai attitude when the ones responsible for such gruesomeness, walk away scot free.

Here’s what Iceland has been upto.

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