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Journalism of Courage
Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar’s film Badhai Do has been creating quite a buzz since its trailer dropped recently. Even though it joins the growing trend of LGBTQI stories in Bollywood, the Indian audience is still far from comfortable when it comes to watching homosexuality on the big screen. However, when one man stood up to social prejudices, the audience cheered with a big round of applause.
“Tujhe bade maze aa rahe hain… kahin tu bhi isi category mein toh nahi? (You are enjoying it too much… do you also belong to the same category),” he quoted a group of friends, sitting ahead of them, as saying. “Are main toh galat movie dekhne aa gayi (Oh ho, I think I have come to watch the wrong film),” another remarked.
Although Johari admitted to being “pissed”, he tried to control his anger. However, he was moved by one particular scene where the male lead makes a strong monologue and comes out. Unable to suppress his emotions any longer, Johari told his followers, he “started clapping, hooting” in the hall.
Seeing his reaction, a fellow moviegoer remarked: “Ye pakka gay hoga. (He must be gay for sure.)” By then, Johari had had enough. “Haan bro GAY hu! Apne bande ke sath aya hu (Yes, I’m gay and I’m here with my man),” he yelled back.
Adding that they have been in a relationship for four years and that their families know about it, Johari asked: “Bol… koi dikkat? (Do you have a problem?)”
“Everyone heard me yell. The whole theatre fell dead silent,” he continued. However, soon the entire movie hall burst into applause, and the group making obnoxious comments stayed quiet.
The Harshavardhan Kulkarni directorial, being dubbed as the spiritual successor to Badhai Ho, revolves around ‘lavender marriage’. For the uninitiated, it is a male-female mixed-orientation marriage seen as a ‘marriage of convenience’.
Often both parties get into it because one or both parties conceal their sexual orientation from their families or the society, owing to the stigma attached to it. In the film, Rao plays a queer cop Shardul Thakur, who gets married to a lesbian girl, played by Pednekar, to get his family and society off his back.
Johari’s post has since been praised by many celebrities including Pednekar and Ayushmann Khurrana, who played a queer character in the 2020 film Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan.
