The film industry has had a long tradition of comic sequences or songs featuring effeminate and cross-dressing male stars. One of Sanjeev Kumar’s avatars in the 1970s blockbuster Naya Din Nayee Raat was that of an effeminate character. Amitabh Bachchan donned a sari in Laawaris. But these portrayals have been largely perceived as elements of comic relief and don’t interfere with the main plot.

In new-age movies this has been replaced by films like Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Onir’s My Brother Nikhil that have made conscious efforts to break the stereotypical representation, but have been categorised as ‘parallel’ cinema. However, the current wave of films, like Fashion and Dostana, may be able to bring the topic to the forefront and into the mainstream cinema.

In Karan Johar’s Dostana that releases next month, the Bollywood hunks and lead actors, Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham, pretend to be a couple in a bid to rent an apartment in Miami. Madhur Bhandarkar’s recent release, Fashion, in one of its sub-plots, has Harsh Chayya and Samir Soni play a homosexual fashion designer-couple. This may just be an indication of the acceptance of the queer among the audience.

Says Bhandarkar: “My characters are real people and not mere caricatures. And the audience will not accept them as normal unless we do so without stereotyping them.” Bhandarkar’s film Page 3 also included a gay sub-plot wherein the protagonist Konkana SenSharma’s lover is involved with her best friend. These current representations of hunky men with queer tendencies are indeed symbolic of the change.

Nandita Das, one of the homosexual protagonists in Fire, too acknowledges the change but feels that “misrepresentation or derogatory connotations to the characters by Bollywood can stigmatise the community and force them to remain closeted”. Her co-star in Fire, Shabana Azmi, also feels the need for stronger scripts like that kick up the debate. Azmi was also part of Honeymoon Travels, where one of the seven couples split on their honeymoon after the husband confesses to being a closet homosexual.

Onir feels the acceptance of homosexuality in movies will happen only when the characters are portrayed without fussing over them. “For example, why not let one of the band members in Rock On!! be gay and leave it at that without elaborating on it?” he explains and adds that hopefully things will change once homosexuality is made legal.

As a movie-goer from the gay community, interior designer Krsna Mehta appreciates the industry’s efforts but understands that one can’t expect much so soon given that on-screen kissing between a heterosexual couple is a recent phenomenon. “Of course it can be better since so many people in the film industry are homosexuals themselves,” smiles the designer, promising to watch Fashion and Dostana, “Hopefully Karan’s will be a good job.”