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How to lose friends and antagonise people

Where, where is it? Have you seen those people anywhere?
-- Sudha Churi, chief of the Mahila Aghadi Sena, on homosexuality.

The film is against our culture, it does not depict proper social values.
-- Pramod Navalkar, Saviour of Maharashtra's Culture, on the movie Fire.

The theme of the film is alien to our culture and a highly exaggerated one.
-- CM Manohar Joshi, congratulating Churi.

Even if two women are indulging in sex, they should do it behind the closed doors of their bedroom; there is no need to bring this into public. The movie is being banned to protect society and our own daughters, wives and sisters from the Western concept of lesbianism.
-- Sandeep Kherdekar of the Patit Pavan Sangathan.

I think I'll become a lesbian. And an activist at that. If only to show these low-level grunts that homosexuality is alive and well in India, and that they cannot control anybody's will.

In 1996, the myth of the American live-and-let-live mindset was blown by the Defence of Marriage Act, a bill designed to nullify Hawaii's legalising of gay marriages. The US government defined marriage as solely a heterosexual union – which, in effect, forbids citizens to lawfully assemble as man and man, or woman and woman, in their own bedrooms (the next step could well be the State outlawing all but the missionary position). In the Senate, the terms bandied in the debate included "sodomy," "depravity, perversion and sin," "self-centred morality," "family values," and "the flames of hedonism and narcissism licking at the very foundations of our society." Well, well, well... was that the Ayatollah I heard...? Or is it the Shiv Sena?

No, I'm no champion of gays, here or abroad; outings and in-your-face camp intensely annoy me. But let's get this, er... straight: Having *always* existed in *every* culture, homosexuality is out of the closet and that's where it will stay. The process is irreversible. (When secularist dingbats can't counter my logic, in frustration, they affix abusive adjectives to it: one wrote, "warped arguments that will not endure even a mildly rigorous examination" -- but wouldn’t demonstrate that; another said that racism isn't comparable to communalism, that *I* "lack basic understanding of the terms" hahaha... Or, they demand I lay out statistics. Guys, move ass yourself for the research: I ain't spelling out why I think homosexuality has always been rife.)

The plight of the melancholy gay cordoned off from the altar didn't bring me to grief (I counsel everybody against the plunge anyway). However, I was enraged by the phrase "defence of marriage" -- implying that the hoary institution is under attack from homosexuals. Now, I am hopping mad at that "to protect society and our own daughters, wives and sisters from the Western concept of lesbianism." There's a presumption that, even at the turn of the century, women must be "protected" from their own sexuality, whatever that may consist. Bring on the chastity belts...

Worse, morons are going to do the protecting. These louts are fully aware of the existence of homosexuality in India -- but think that we are stupid enough to believe they aren't. Even if they don't know about Pandit Nehru's streak of gay at Cambridge, they certainly have heard about the proclivities of some of the greatest playwrights and actors of the Marathi stage from the 1920s, the folks of current Bollywood, and industrialists notorious for their risqué bashes. And what about the hordes who haunt Kolsa Galli and Gandu Bageecha (transvestite-prostitute areas, so named in BMC records)? Navalkar has spent years studying prostitutes in Bombay's red-light districts -- no way he can't have noted this feature. But I'm not here to "out."

Just what are these "proper social values," M/s Navalkar & Joshi? Don't you know that practically every other woman from orthodox joint-families belonging to a certain Hindu community is "satisfied" by some other male of the household? This occurs when the husband is indifferent to the wife or to women in general. And the perversity is condoned just so that the line be propagated and she may not stray out. Savvy has done exposés on this property of our proper society. Perhaps, proper social values must be those displayed in the case of Vaishali Kamble, who was throw out of her home by her family –- because she was kidnapped and gang-raped by three men. The girl then properly set herself on fire.

Secondly, who are you to dictate what aspect of life should or shouldn't be depicted in art forms? Since when have politicians become the cognoscenti? We gave you a mandate to administer (which you are doing abysmally, by the way) -- not to direct our private lives and aesthetics.

Thirdly, why should Sapphic sex remain behind closed doors? As citizens, don't lesbians have a right to gaze into a mirror reflecting their circumstances? Today, you attack lesbianism; tomorrow, you'll attack divorce initiated by wives! Is your manhood so fragile to be so threatened by women's desires...? What I truly suspect has been better put down by others: Norman Mailer wrote, "There is probably no heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality." Almost like an appendix to it, HL Mencken said, "The one permanent emotion of the inferior man, as of all the simple mammals, is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable."

Now for the movie itself. I just had to see it after Nirmala Kendre, Pune district chief of the Shiv Sena, announced, "The film is full of obscenity and nudity." (Acquainted with the tradition of the celebrated Marathi bard Patthe Bapurao, not to speak of Vatsayan and Kalidas, I relish obscenity. It's vulgarity, like the kind displayed by these culture-curators, that I deplore.) Unfortunately, Deepa Mehta's Fire was nothing of the sort. Unless you get your kicks from the flash of a just-about-discernible nipple, and a servant wanking away in front of a disabled grandmother. In fact, what works *against* the movie is the total absence of eroticism.

Hmm... either I was shown a different movie altogether, or these goombahs are all blind and deaf (wish they were mute, too). The movie is not about lesbianism at all! The relationship between the sisters-in-law is a chance symptom; the disease is the taking-for-granted of Indian womanhood -- as perpetuated in our glorious society. An Asian woman’s inferior position is unique: We have to contend with male chauvinism from birth to death. Before the husband and boss and colleague, there's the father and brother and uncle, till, finally, there's the son. All of whom society teaches that woman is an addendum to man. The film affects (thinking) women because all of us can see a bit of our own situation in the plight of the characters. The success of Mehta's film lies in that women do not need to be lesbians to identify with its heroines, nor do they have to come from a particular background or class.

Know why conservatives are in a tizzy? The parallel themes in the movie are: women have sexual desires, and, wifely duty is an overrated concept. Mr Joshi certainly wouldn't want Mrs Joshi to fling his tea at him the morning after...

The downside of the film is that the character of the sexual provocateur, the new bride, hasn't been developed at all. How could a young girl, out of the blue, kiss on the lips her elder sister-in-law? What set her desire for the older and dowdy woman in motion? Where are the clues to her bent? When did desire ignite? Where's the foreplay or the hesitation that would come before such a big step? In not wanting to sensationalise Fire, Mehta watered down, nay, deleted an essential part of the tale. Newly married girls from middle class homes don't become sexual firebrands overnight!

OTOH, Azmi's character is totally credible, due only to her own acting prowess. She doesn't need a tight script. It's all in her eyes: the pathos of a sterile marriage, the loneliness, the fatigue, the defeat, the kindling of life. And she seals it when she flashes at her vapid husband, "Without desire, I was dead." I tell you, this babe is the Meryl Streep of India. No, scratch that. Streep is the Shabana of the US.

Back to politics. Dilip Kumar, Javed Akhtar and Mahesh Bhatt (half-Mosie) filed a PIL in the Supreme Court and held a press conference to ask "every Indian to stand up and do his bit" to protect freedom of expression. They condemned the "lawlessness in cultural life"; they fumed over the film being re-sent to the Censor Board; they voiced their misgivings at the "current atmosphere of apprehension and fear," blah blah blah.

Point is, what did they do when Mani Ratnam's Bombay was taken off the screens after similar vandalism by incensed Muslims...? At that time, Muslims were "hurt" that a Muslim girl was shown to have eloped with a Hindu boy. None protested that the boy said, "Mazhab badal doon? Main tumhare liye sab kuchh chhod sakta hoon." Where were they when Rushdie's The Satanic Verses was banned...? Hey, I'm doing my bit now -- just as I did then. So may I assert that your selectiveness stinks; that it indicates an anti-Hindutva conspiracy?

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Varsha Bhosle