Prathyush Parasuraman
There is a relentless trickle of queerness on streaming. It began with Cuckoo (Kubbra Sait), the trans woman in Sacred Games set in the grime of Mumbai and Karan (Arjun Mathur), the gay wedding planner in Made In Heaven's gilded Delhi. Slowly, queerness cascaded on the small-screen to the ALT Balaji melodramas — The Married Woman in post-Babri Delhi along with His Storyy and Mentalhood in contemporary Mumbai.
In the past year itself we have had the gay cop in Aarya, the lesbian talent agent in Call My Agent Bollywood, the baby dyke in Bombay Begums, the struggling gay teen of The Fame Game, the cloistered lesbian doctor in Human, the closeted cricketer of Inside Edge, the "Hi I'm Muskaan, I'm 23, and I'm bisexual" sketch of a character in Feels Like Ishq, the lesbian lawyer of Guilty Minds, and the ruffians in Mai
One of the stand-out films from last year was, in fact, queer — Neeraj Ghaywan's Geeli Pucchi starring Konkona Sensharma and Aditi Rao Hydari, which despite its unsubtle dialogues lacking in rhythm, establishing queerness and desire with hammer and tongs.
A lot of the conversation around queerness, however, is still stuck at representation, repeating itself with increasing insistence with every new film or show — cast queer people to play queer characters, hire queer writers, lasso in queer directors.
Desire is central to queerness and if it cannot be central to queer cinema, then of what use is queer cinema at all? Where's the sensuality — one that Cobalt Blue and Made In Heaven produced? The way characters touch and smell in Cobalt Blue or shove and thrust in Made In Heaven — where is that?
One way to think of queer cinema is to insist on queerness as its own cultural territory, with its own internal logic, its own grammar of narrative. Examples include films like LOEV, Do Paise Ki Dhoop Chaar Aane Ki Baarish, Cobalt Blue. To be clear, this is not about what makes "good" queer cinema, but what makes cinema queer. It is, I think, reckless, seething desire.