India’s LGBT community hail Bollywood lesbian romance as a milestone in country’s filmmaking
- This is How I Felt When I Saw that Girl, starring Sonam Kapoor Ahuja and Regina Cassandra, has been a huge hit among LGBTs in India
- A coming-out story of a small-town Indian girl, the film intends to normalise gay lives and struggles, and show how love transcends gender
An hour into the Bollywood film Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, the central character, Sweety, tells her male suitor she is in love with another woman. The inebriated young man is so amused that he cracks up with a loud “What?” Most audience members probably reacted the same way.
For Sakshi, a lesbian woman who goes by one name who saw the film in a Mumbai cinema recently, it was a prodigious and emotional moment.
“I was watching a woman committing to her love for another woman in a commercial film, on a big screen, in a packed multiplex, for the first time. It was overwhelming,” says the 35-year-old who runs Gaysi, an e-zine and online space for the Indian LGBTQ community.
“From the perspective of a lesbian born and raised in India, this film is what I’ve been waiting forever for,” she adds.
The Indian LGBTQ community has struggled for positive media representation for years, and is celebrating Bollywood’s first film featuring a lesbian romance with mega-stars in the lead roles.
Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (This is How I Felt When I Saw that Girl), which premiered worldwide on February 1, is the coming-out story of small-town Indian girl Sweety, played by Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, known for her roles in the dramas Neerja (2016) and Pad Man (2018). Her real-life father, veteran Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor, plays her father on screen, and Rajkummar Rao, lead actor in Shahid (2013) and Newton (2017), is her male suitor. Regina Cassandra plays Sweety’s female love interest.