A foot-tapping sequin-doused disco number, a hot-pink wedding and a kiss between the two male leads: Bollywood’s latest release, billed as India’s first gay rom-com, is making no bones about its subject matter.
To be released tomorrow, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (“Be Extra Careful About Marriage”) stars popular actor Ayushmann Khurrana as a young man bucking social disapproval to be with his beloved — a time-tested Bollywood plotline, except the object of his affection is male.
India’s Supreme Court scrapped a colonial-era ban on homosexuality in 2018, but the LGBT community remains on the fringes of society — many face discrimination or even violence, including at the hands of their own families, and their stories are rarely celebrated in mainstream cinema. Until now.
Photo: AFP
A trailer for the film shows Khurrana sporting a rainbow cape and armed with a megaphone as he announces to anyone listening that his lover’s father suffers from “a disease with no cure”: homophobia.
The scene is played for laughs, but unlike earlier Bollywood movies, the gay characters are not the butt of the joke.
The film’s writer and director Hitesh Kewalya said that he felt the controversial subject matter had to be treated “in such a way as to make it accessible, and humor seemed to be the natural choice to achieve that.”
The movie is a follow-up of sorts to 2017’s Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (“Beware of Marriage”) — a sleeper hit written by Kewalya that won Khurrana praise for his portrayal of a man dealing with erectile dysfunction.
It is not the only taboo tackled by the 35-year-old star during his career. He has played everything from a money-making sperm donor to a pianist pretending to be blind.
The coproducer of Khurrana’s latest film is T-Series, a Bollywood giant which started with recordings of Hindu devotional songs before hitting the big time with movie soundtracks and becoming the world’s top YouTube channel with 128 million subscribers.
T-Series chairman and managing director Bhushan Kumar said that the company had no hesitation in backing the project.
“When we heard the story, our first reaction was that it’s a perfect family entertainer that subtly speaks about the fact [that] love has no boundaries, no gender,” Kumar said.
Bollywood does not have a good track record when it comes to portraying the LGBT community, and many film have faced the ire of extremists, such as Fire, a 1996 drama about two women in unhappy marriages who have a sexual relationship.
When the film was released in India, Hindu protesters attacked cinemas showing it.
It is hardly surprising then that as recently as last year, the producers of Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (“How I Felt When I Saw A Girl”), about a family accepting their lesbian daughter, kept the movie’s theme firmly under wraps until it hit the screen.
In contrast, the promotional trailers for Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan feature Khurrana and Jitendra Kumar — who plays his boyfriend — sharing everything from a kiss and romantic scenes to flamboyant dance numbers.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not