Bollywood suffers from the messiah complex. Or perhaps that is a much-coveted status that we have thoughtlessly ascribed to the banal and innocuous films it produces. There was much hype around the release of Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga , which has same-sex love at its core. I watched it out of curiosity, given what we know about Bollywood’s despicable track record of depicting same-sex love. Remember Dostana ? Bollywood is particularly noteworthy in turning gay, lesbian and transgender characters into caricatures, perennial residents of marginalia. Their yearning, agony and desire remain entirely unexplored. Of course, this doesn’t include films such as My Brother... Nikhil or Aligarh .
Unsurprisingly, then, Ek Ladki... is at best a formulaic Bollywood film that features love between two women as merely a plot novelty. My hopes were expectedly dashed while watching the film amidst unending giggles and guffaws when Sweety (Sonam Kapoor) declares her love for Kuhu (Regina Cassandra). It has all the trappings of a quintessential Bollywood potboiler: the bucolic small-town Punjab setting where everybody is nice and happy, mind-numbing music, a struggling writer (again a classic Bollywood trope), a loving grandmother, and some moments in the big city (Delhi in this case, because how can these love stories originate in small towns?) amidst other props.
Further, Bollywood love stories cannot be realised without strife. Thus, there is the unfeeling elder brother and a prototypical villain from whom his beloved sister must be rescued. What’s new then? Only that homosexual love replaces heterosexual love? Same-sex love is thus reduced to a convenient plot point to enable the director to deliver a social message.
Besides, the women in love need a heterosexual man (Rajkummar Rao) as the knight in shining armour to bring them together and of course the dutiful patriarch of the family (Anil Kapoor) must approve the match. They have no agency, which is a seriously problematic position. Sweety and Kuhu’s first meeting and eventual falling in love are the most unimaginative I have seen in recent Hindi cinema. For the lack of a better description, it is a poorly etched fairytale far removed from real life experiences. When will Bollywood stop the ‘othering’ of the same-sex love story? I wonder if this discourse helps the cause or is more of a disservice.
During a conversation with his mother in the film, Rajkummar Rao is told to write sach (the truth) and not a story. After watching Ek Ladki... , one is left wondering whether this notion would apply equally to the filmmaker. The day when Bollywood films begin to tell stories that adhere to the sach principle and eschew blatantly simplistic narratives will be the day that the depiction of minorities, sexual or otherwise, will become truer to their ground realities.
The writer teaches literary and cultural studies at FLAME University, Pune
