Thank God It’s Friday, folks! I have absolutely nothing planned this weekend other than brunch with my Girl & another friend. And once I finish this news piece I can shut my laptop & head home and kick off the weekend!
Let’s begin with the best news of all – Gaysi icon Lisa Ray is Cancer free! HUZZAH!
Ten months after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Canadian actress Lisa Ray says she is cancer free, has enjoyed being bald, and is ready to embrace her second home, India, with new vigour. [Link]
Lisa, all of us here at Gaysi Family are grateful that you beat the BIG C! We look forward to more gaysi-themed movies from you!
In more filmy news, Kashish, the Mumbai International Queer Film Festival has been a grand success and if you’re in Mumbai you can still catch a show if you make it by Sunday. Our gaysi bloggers were there and a write up is coming soon. I wish I could have been there. More than anything, this festival has made me happy because none of the usual effigy-burning morons have created any drama! I guess, India is changing for the better, faster than I ever imagined or hoped for.
The four-day festival will feature 110 films from 25 countries, including 27 from India, most of them short films in regional languages.
The festival will close with what could be termed Bollywood’s first mainstream gay film, ‘Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyon’, whose makers are hoping for wider audience acceptance. [Link]
For more pictures from the festival, go here.
The Dr. Siras case has made some progress and two ‘journalists’ (I find it really really hard to use that term to describe those men) have been arrested.
Adil and Siraj, journalists with a local TV channel, were arrested late on Sunday. The two along with another mediaperson filmed Siras in a consensual homosexual act with a rickshaw puller in his room in the AMU premises.
Of the three journalists, two have been arrested. …
Along with the three journalists, four AMU officials – Zubair Khan (proctor), Farheed Ahmad Khan (deputy proctor), Rahat Abrar (public relations officer), and NAK Durrani (media adviser) – were booked under various sections of the IPC. [Link]
Once again, I’m pleasantly surprised that the case is actually making progress. The Indian Express had an article about how the Naz case and the Delhi high court’s decision has had a ripple effect for our community:
But something else happened, something that hasn’t happened before. On April 1, the Allahabad High Court ordered AMU to reinstate Siras, holding that his right to privacy had been violated. And now comes news that the Uttar Pradesh police have arrested two of those who broke into Siras’s house and filmed him. A third, named in an FIR filed by Siras, is on the run. Many university officials have also been charged with criminal offences. This is not how the story was supposed to pan out. Those who broke into Siras’s house and AMU (and there are allegations that they are one and the same) assumed that Siras’s transgressions were so repellent, that their own would be forgiven. They now realise that the game has changed. [Link]
And in our final news instalment, Jadavpur University offers a course in Queer Studies – something that as far as I’m aware, no other Indian institution does.
Queer Studies in JU, offered every two years as an optional to the postgraduate students would be offered again in 2011. Striking a cord between academic discipline and beyond academics, the course remains as maverick as it was when launched. [Link]
Ok! Time to begin the weekend. You know what I just realised?! This entire edition has been gaysi news – not one international piece of news. And it’s been pretty good news all around! I was going to add some news about the new gay character in the Archies comic but I’m going to leave that for next week, after all how often do we get to have shudh-gaysi news that’s not all doom & gloom?!
Happy weekend!
