The Great Indian Family is in transition

Published : Jul 10, 2022 18:00 IST “Everyone knows that hating a father only strengthens his power over you,” literary critic Merve Emre wrote in her essay about the encyclopaedic novel Ulysses, which celebrated 100 years of being in print, in conversation, and in contention, this February. That the family has so emphatically become the source of both conflict and catharsis that it refuses to dim its burnish even decades after being the centre-piece of cinematic storytelling perhaps says a lot about the culture from whose cracks it grows: From Guru Dutt’s conception of the family as greedy and isolating to Raj Kapoor’s conception of rich families as loveless and stringent, with both making concessions towards the maternal figure; from Nirupa Roy’s pathetic, virtuous affection towards her cine-children of the 1970s to Karan Johar’s patriarchal conception of the father, which eventually leaks out of his filmography, with the conflicts in his last film, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, happening entirely outside the purview of parental involvement. Parmesh Shahani, author of Gay Bombay and Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion In The Indian Workplace, offers a way of thinking through this question vis-a-vis queerness, “Being queer in India is all about negotiating family.” EXCLUSIVE | Parmesh Shahani: ‘We are still not equal today’ In Queeristan there is an entire chapter dedicated to how Indian queerness is defined by its fixation on the family. To wit: the 2017 Vicks ad with Gauri Sawant, a transgender activist and mother; the Bhima Jewellers ad about the parental acceptance of their trans daughter; the Satyamev Jayate episode with Aamir Khan not only speaking to trans scriptwriter Gazal Dhaliwal but also her parents and extended family; commercial films such as Dostana, Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhaan, and Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga focussing on the family’s journey of acceptance instead of queer desire. Queerness quotient As queerness becomes a staple presence on streaming shows, there is a frequent depiction of how the family reacts to queerness, or how queerness lends itself to the institution of family—the lesbian cops in The Fame Game curating a family of their own; the gay cop in Aarya who is moving towards marriage; the bristly, bursting coming-out to parents in Masoom and Guilty Minds; the insistence on marriage as the logical next step of queer love in Modern Love: Mumbai’s episode “Bai”.