Curated for Pride Library, University of Western Ontorio, Canada
Copyright Sridhar Rangayan, 2009
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DISCLAIMER: All interpretations and readings is by the author. All the images and videos on this site have been used only for reference, collated from sources on the internet.
CREDITS
Title: Kal Ho Na Ho
English Title: If Tomorrow Does Not Come
Year: 2003
Language: Hindi
Subtitle: English
Genre: Feature / Popular Entertainer
Director: Nikhil Advani
SYNOPSIS
Rohit and Naina are sweethearts and hope to marry soon. Their relationship undergoes a change when Naina's family experiences money problems. Then Aman Mathur enters their lives, and his dynamic and outgoing personality has a positive effect on everyone he comes into contact with. But Aman himself is human, and cannot help himself falling in love with beautiful Naina. But Aman cannot marry Naina for he has a dark secret that he cannot share with anyone.
QUEER NOTES
A funny gay subplot in this commercial potboiler made reams of newsprint, also because it was played out by Bollywood's biggies - Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan who play two close buddies whom a maid servant mistakes to be a gay couple - because she catches the two hugging once, and in bed next and cooing to each other. There are loads of gay innuendos and camping up which the audience loved. While the film brought the word 'gay' into a commercial mass parlance, most gay men felt that the humor was revolting and totally in bad taste and that they were being laughed and it was not acceptance, especially because the film implied that being gay was 'abnormal'.
ACTOR/S IN QUEER ROLE
Shah Rukh Khan as Aman Mathur and Saif Ali Khan as Rohit Patel (mistaken to be gay)
LINKS
Imdb: http:// www.imdb.com/title/tt0347304/
Wikipedia: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal_Ho_Naa_Ho
queer portrayals in Indian films