Marriage has been around for ages. Whatever its roots—conditioning, social obligation, religious ritual, pleasing parents, loneliness, feeling broody, a sense of security—holy matrimony has always sold itself as a blissful state. Despite the financial independence of women and a growing number of them choosing to stay single, marriages gamely go on, pretending it still has a lot to offer both parties.
Planned and preserved as a hetero union, for man-woman only, the institution silently forced anyone gay to mask up, thereby ushering their spouses into a special hell. No one’s fault, but there it is. Millions of our ancestors looked longingly at others, but remained trapped in loveless unions. Denied the chance at same-sex relationships, many steadfastly refused to get married, got called the eccentric uncle or aunt, or were pitied for being left on the shelf. But yoked into these nightmare arrangements, both husband and wife could only suffer—one living a lie, the other tragically denied true intimacy.
Karan Johar’s segment in Bombay Talkies, with Rani Mukerji and Randeep Hooda, where Saqib Saleem enters their life only to rip off a façade, was one of the few times the gay character was neither lampooned nor sidelined. Even taking homosexuality centre stage—from Kal Ho Naa Ho to Dostana, where Kanta bai and Kirron Kher amplify the ha ha element—was only in comic mode.
TV series Heartstopper seduced even the most strictly straight audience into sighing whenever Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson cuddled. This romance was lapped up by the desi brigade, who still at the back of their mind could relegate this to a white-people thing.
Now with the Malayalam film Kaathal: The Core, the trauma of just such marriages has entered mainstream viewing. Casting a superstar like Mammootty in the lead role, audiences were perhaps predisposed to the empathy they brought to the story. But even then, to play convincingly a man suffocating in a love not for him, never for him, and to sensitise many to his plight despite their blind trust in traditional marriages is no mean feat.
Hetero Indians, who travelled out, have always been puzzled by being the minority couples in many gatherings. Their pride in being in the ‘right’ union suddenly appearing foolish, they came back home babbling about the freedom and experimentation in foreign societies. Sexual orientation, taken completely for granted, never had to be defined or defended. Desire was a girl-boy thing. Of course, this lack of suspicion also meant for the longest time gay couples could go about their business as ‘friends’; society was always happy to see two men or two women go on a holiday or lock their bedroom door.
Love between men and women need not always include lust—now that’s a novel idea.
Shinie Antony
Author
shinieantony@gmail.com