by REENA KUMAR
DESPITE being a thriving industry which last year celebrated 100 years since it burst onto our screens, gay and lesbian sexuality is rarely explored fully in Bollywood. Even when it is, homosexuaL characters are often simply the butt of jokes and issues affecting their lives are not touched upon.The movie industry has, however, long influenced the LGBT [Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender community] through subtle homo-erotic storylines, camp queens and drag, according to Dr Rajinder Dudrah, a senior film lecturer. Dudrah will be speaking at London’s LGBT film festival, BFI Flare, during its Bollywood themed weekend, when audiences will get the chance to enjoy classics such as Mughal-EAzam and Pakeezah. “Mughal-E-Azam has a very historic setting. Social norms and conventions are in place in a very conservative setting with marri age and people speaking through codes,” Dudrah, who lectures at the University of Manchester, said. “These films speak to them (the LGBT community) about their repressed sexuality and desires. They can read the characters and see their love was pure and relate themselves back into these texts, with those moments of looking at each other, wanting to touch each other and yet being unable to, and having to stand up to their parents. “These became helpful subtexts,” he added. One of the most expensive and critically acclaimed Hindi films of all time, Mughal-E-Azam, the 1960 epic starring Madhubala, and Dilip Kumar, tells the story of the 16th-century Mughal prince Salim and his doomed love for courtesan Anarkali. And Meena Kumari’s tragic turn in Pakeezah has always appealed to gay audiences, according to Dudrah, because of the actress’s unconventional lifestyle and refusal to conform. “Meena Kumari spoke to lesbians– she had lots of tragedies off screen,” he said. “She was quite an unconventional woman, and what she stood for spoke to them. She had a stormy relationship, she took to drink. She was an independent woman, and a symbol for lesbians in not conforming. “Courtesans would have also had lesbian relationships and slept with men for work,” Dudrah added.
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