Right questions

One of the interviewees in the video project,Are We Talking Straight?,was an English-speaking youth in his twenties. Like many others who were randomly interviewed on the streets of Kolkata about homophobia in our society,he was at the beginning of the interview,playfully forthcoming. When asked if he could identify homosexuals by merely looking at them,he said that it’s easy to identify “gay guys” because they leer at him and “proposition sex”. Even as he was enunciating these words,one could see him withdraw. It was as if a certain part of his urban,educated brain was advising him to disown this statement. He could have retracted and claimed that it was all said in jest. That gesture would have rescued us both—the squirming witness and the unwitting ‘bad guy’. But he didn’t. He was probably too embarrassed to do that. Now he was a homophobic man who had announced his derisive attitude towards homosexuality on record. He could be and probably is other things,but he will always be that as well.

For the roomful of initiated audience at Oxford Bookstore,where the Are We Talking Straight? was screened last Friday,the youth was obviously the easy villain—someone to snigger at. For the five youngsters —Anindya Shankar Das,Anirban Ghosh,Prachi Tulshan ,Soupayan and Sana — who made the this thought-provoking interview-format film to mark International Homophobia Day (May 17),he was “just another interviewee”. But in many ways the youth’s betrayal was that of our society’s too. The youth probably felt that he was wrongly pushed to a margin and then hoodwinked into committing to something he had no pre-knowledge of. He probably felt that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Maybe,that’s the fundamental problem when one tries discuss homophobia in the mainstream society. It’s one thing to spoon-feed some unfortunate realities of the homosexual persuasion to a mainstream audience that likely had not given it any prior thought,and quite the other to raise pertinent questions. Are We Talking Straight?,thankfully,manages the latter. Not everything is presented in an entirely digestible televised light where lifelong struggles are battled and won with the aid of minor life events and well placed speeches. Its straight forward interview format manages to hold the mirror,and does so without any glaring agenda. This is why the matronly lady from Lake Gardens can be called the voice of reason in the film. When asked whether the Indian society has come of age when it comes to dealing with the issue,she says-“It’s very easy to make sweeping statements,but homophobia can’t be fought with one revolutionary swipe. It’s a continuing process and I’m still negotiating with it.”

The film is an outcome of a collective effort by young Kolkata citizens who now study in colleges in Kolkata,Pune,Delhi and Ahmedabad. They were a part of Positive Spaces Campaign’ in Kolkata to engage college students in a six month long human rights workshop. To find out more about the campaign visit http://groups.google.com/group/peaceworksdefenders