Here Comes India’s First Silent LGPTQ Love Story
The trailer of Faraz Arif Ansari’s film Sisak on gay love was released on Twitter by SonamKapoor, a vocal and passionate champion of issues that go beyond sloganeering.
It’s a very unsual film on two counts, First the same-sex love story unfolds entirely on a local train—the commuter’s route to salvation—and therefore the tormented love story(can same-sex love be any other way in country where it is banned?) gives a new definition to the concept of a “moving” narrative.
Secondly Sisak has no dialogues. No one speaks. So far poets in Hindi films have constantly waxed eloquent on aankhon ki zubaan and kuch na kaho kya kehna hai kya sun na hai…But no one in Hindi cinema has actually dared to make a wordless love story.
Courage comes naturally to those dealing with fringe people. At a time when homosexuality is still illegal in India a film like Sisak gives a peripheral legitimacy to the movement.
The idea of the two co-passengers(played by Jitin Gulati and Dhruv Singhal) who fall in love in a train has its antecedents in Meryl Streep and Robert de Niro ‘s crushing passion inFalling In Love. There was also Emily Blunt spending a large part of her traumatized existence on train in The Girl On The Train.
The smothered words are also symbolic of the voice that the LGPTQ community is trying to find in an openly hostile environment.If you have seen the homophobic tweets of singerAbhijeet Bhattacharya you would know what I mean.
Sisak is a departure from the way gay love is portrayed in India. There is no attempt to nullify or judge the relationship. But the undercurrent of guilt runs through the trailer. It can’t be helped, when the couple in love knows it’s got a slim chance of getting across the social stigma.And yes the censor board. Let’s not forget the word ‘gay’ is not allowed in our films.
So now we know why Sisak is a silent love story.
