Badhai Do: Love is Love!!!
My first encounter with a member of LGBTQ community was when once a best friend of mine and now sadly a long lost friend Shivam came out of the closet and told me that he is gay and was in love with a member of our college society. Thanks to Delhi and the variety of people that you meet over there which helped me widen my perspectives about life- I didn’t act in any conventional rude way which might push him away and neither did it bother me whether he is gay, bi or straight. I love and respect (yet hate sometimes) Shivam ( and perhaps always will) as who is and even though I am no longer a memory of him or perhaps he couldn’t care less, the memories of the city and the hapiness his presence brought at that moment in my life shall always stay there till my last breath.
Well, being a freind with him helped me know as well as empathise with the community a bit more-it also made me wonder about a differential within the community as well. This differential which is a figment of patriarchy where over the past years I have came across more men coming out of the closet but however, women which are already in the shackles of the rules of the society are still somewhere hideous and hidden with less and less women coming out of closet. Imagine having weakness because of covid and then meeting with a serious accident on road, this is what being a women in india and that too being a lesbian is. A country like ours where fatwas are issued for not comforming to an attire, or not being polite enough, not sitting in a ladylike manner, or not doing what is being told-being a lesbian just exacerbates it. The judgement levels are off the roof. Add to it, the titilation towards it given by porn making leering eyes vent out towards you.
One thing that I absolutely loved about Badhai DO and absolutely hate about Ayushamn Khurana’s Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan was the fact that former made homosexuality a very mundane concept where two people dont need to have “lachak” in their walk or act or behave in a particular manner while Ayushman Khurana’s over the top acting just made the whole concept of LGBTQ more stigmatised with behaviours often thought of as peculiar with members of the community. They can be just as normal as me and you and can co exist. I just loved the use of symbolism in the characters. A physically fit and stud Police Inspector can be GAY and a beaitiful girl next door can be lesbian. Another interesting frame in the movie was the use of families in the whole system of marriage that prevails in our society where families intrude sometimes more than required in the lives of the couple. I really enjoyed the love angle and screenplay of it on screen with no unneccessary titilation and just showing LGBT people as just two lover of the same gender in the a pious, peaceful and beautiful manner as any two lovers would be- being insecure about each other, fighting with each other and yet accepting each other’s scar and camouflaging the pain that comes with it. The beautiful sound track of the movie just enhances the whole experience where each sound track and lyrics amplifies the whole scene. All in all, a much needed movie for a society like ours!!
Link of the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpMsvH7DpPc
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