Un moment indienne

The 2 nd international queer film festival  by Kashish is coming out to M-town this summer; May 22- May 25 to be exact. I wish it every success. My only hope for this festival is it's not hijacked by the so called creatives and the thinkeratti from Bollywood who have the fullest potential of turning it into some kind of a SoBo narrative, which it clearly is not.

In the past we have seen  K.Jo churn out films - the likes of  KHNH and Dostana, which at best were stabs at pillorying the gay community for some spills and thrills  aimed at a rigidly hetero audience.  I hope I am not right but this gentleman comes across as a boy man too eager to share of his first brush with the GLBT community on one of his many escapades to the West, and take that to film  - again and again, and yet again. I could puke, at this, to say the least. Let's hope the film fest does not impregnate even more Bollywood directors with the seed, trying to populate their masala films with a rainbow theme for wallpaper effect. It doesn't work for the rainbow cause even if it works for the producers at the box office. On the contrary, it does more harm than it does good for the MWHSWM brigade.

So who would come watch?  Living where we do it will take a huge leap of faith even for borderline gays i.e. people that are generally less sure of their heterosexual orientation to come attend film screenings of this genre, even if  for free. On homophobes and supposedly normal straight people, I have my doubts few will attend. Such is the scope of denial we are in. Although I identify with 'the Q-factor', and stay about a beer can's throw away from the Alliance Francaise which is where the film fest is at, I am going to have to muster all the courage I can get from my homeobox read house keeper genes (see there's not even a sparing of the genes from a "homo" aura) to register and go walk into a film. How do I put it ? I wouldn't want to emerge," the  canary in the dark mine shaft." Now you know why I like describing myself as Queerly Queer (never mind that I am also almost always turned on more by straight men than homosexual men).

Branding it a ' Queer Film Fest, ' I reckon the organisers figured they would run into a lot less trouble with right wing Hindu vigilante groups who aren't vigilant  enough to understand  subtle nuances of the English language. Call it a homosexual or gay film festival, and they would come up in arms. Brilliant strategy there, if that's what they had in mind! But it is quite another thing if we ended up admonishing the youth of this country to steer away from the queer route by giving it a queer label. Per se, are the films queer or are they films for a queer audience?  And by a queer audience, I don't necessarily mean GLBT either. Just queer - people with a queer taste, say  for the off beat. Since the answer to both of the above  questions is not in the affirmative, we need to put a sock in it, trying to call all things GLBT, queer. If what we are saying is it's okay to  be  queer, and yet somehow queer is the new "nigger" word then do let's stop calling it queer period. GLBT would do just fine. There's nothing queer about being gay, lesbian or bi-sexual in today's world any more than being single,  divorced, widowed or vegan  is, in my view.

So let it pour HOMOSEXUAL in Mumbai this summer. Can't wait already for the 3 rd international Gay-Lesbian-Transgender Film Festival from Kashish !  We could be on to something here : a new destination perhaps, for the Gay Cannes.