The film industry has had a long tradition of comic sequences or songs featuring effeminate and cross-dressing male stars. One of Sanjeev Kumar’s avatars in the 1970s blockbuster ‘Naya Din Nayee Raat’ was that of an effeminate character. Amitabh Bachchan donned a sari in ‘Laawaris’. But these portrayals have been largely perceived as elements of comic relief and don’t interfere with the main plot.

This was replaced by films like Deepa Mehta’s ‘Fire’ and Onir’s ‘My Brother Nikhil’ that made conscious efforts to break the stereotypical representation, but were categorised as ‘parallel’ cinema. However, the current wave of films, like ‘Fashion’ and ‘Dostana’, may be able to bring the topic of homosexuality to the forefront and into mainstream cinema.

In Karan Johar’s ‘Dostana’ that releases next month, the Bollywood hunks and lead actors, Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham , pretend to be a couple in a bid to rent an apartment in Miami. Madhur Bhandarkar’s recent release, Fashion, in one of its sub-plots, has Harsh Chayya and Samir Soni play a homosexual fashion designer-couple.

This may just be an indication of the acceptance of queers by the audience. Says Bhandarkar: “My characters are real people, and not caricatures. And the audience will not accept them as normal if we stereotype them.” Bhandarkar’s film ‘Page 3’ also included a gay sub-plot wherein the protagonist Konkana SenSharma’s lover is involved with her best friend. These representations of hunky men with queer tendencies are indeed symbolic of the change.

Nandita Das, who acted in ‘Fire’, acknowledges the change but feels that “misrepresentation or derogatory connotations by Bollywood can stigmatise the community and force them to remain closeted”. Her co-star in Fire, Shabana Azmi, also feels the need for strong scripts to kick up the debate. Azmi was also part of ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd’, where one of the couples split after the husband confesses to being a closet homosexual.

Onir feels the acceptance of homosexuality in films will happen only when characters are portrayed without creating much fuss. “For example, why not let one of the band members in ‘Rock On!!’ be gay and leave it at that without elaborating on it?” he explains and adds that hopefully things will change once homosexuality is legal.

As a movie-goer from the gay community, interior designer Krsna Mehta appreciates the industry’s efforts but understands that one can’t expect much so soon, given that on-screen kissing between a heterosexual couple is a recent phenomenon. “Of course, it can be better since so many people in the film industry are homosexuals themselves,” smiles the designer, promising to watch ‘Fashion’ and ‘Dostana’, “Hopefully Karan’s will be a good job.”

Johar’s first attempt at the concept was through ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’, which had a funny ‘gay’ subplot between Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan. And though the two also camped up to bring homosexuality on to film award shows, there’s a long way to go before a Bollywood film, solely focusing on homosexuality, wins an award a la ‘Brokeback Mountain’.