#heterosexism discussion cw

[ineffable-opinions]

Mumbai Police

Ok, this is going to be a quick and short one. My original intention was to do an appreciation post for Ardhanaari (2012). However, due to the release of Deva (which many have guessed to be a remake of 2013 Malayalam movie Mumbai Police, based on certain replica shots found in the trailer) I thought I should post about it instead. Update: I just learned that the main character in Deva is not presented as queer. I’ll make the post about Ardhanaari next month and Moothon the month after, inshallah.

Indian Queer Media: Little Hearts | Kaathal the Core | Gaami

Mumbai Police is available for streaming on Hotstar.

This one is a thriller with non-linear storytelling and multiple layers of twists and turns. So basic premise is of an amnesiac cop trying to find himself while trying to figure out who killed his buddy and why.

(CW: heterosexism; PSA: Hema Committee Report)

tagging: @starryalpacasstuff

Spoilers Ahead

Our main character Anthony Moses (played by Prithviraj) is a rascal or flawed hero – one who is super macho, easily resorts to violence but is endearing in his own way and is truly loyal to those close to him. This is a tried and tested, typical hero that is pretty much the staple of Indian movies that delve into some social or political issue. This archetypical portrayal may appear lazy, but it helps to easily build and establish the main character, so that the movies can move on to discuss what interests it - be it caste, feudalism and the rights of forest dwellers like in Kanthara, or a myriad of issues in many social movies from Tamil Nadu and many classics from Bollywood.

The seemingly mentor like superior and Anthony’s brother-in-law, Farhan (played by Rahman), is the second most important character. It is his machinations that drive the plot as we see it.

In three-wise-monkeys style, the third in the chaotic trio dubbed “Mumbai Police” (they all served Q1 in Mumbai before getting posted to Kochi [in Kerala, not be confused with Kochi in Japan]) is the loosu paiyan, silly and childish, the one who carries his heart on his sleeves, Aryan. Jayasurya (who played Aryan) and Prithviraj have several movies together with really interesting dynamics and underrated chemistry, probably spicier than Prithviraj’s combination with Prabhu Deva in Urumi or with Prabhas in Salaar.

Rascal hero carries some burden and its through his vulnerability and pain that the movie focuses on the issues it tackles. For Anthony, it his forgotten past and uncertain future. As his past is slowly revealed to us, we learn of his good-for-nothing father, a life he had to build with very little support, of his rowdy ways, his sexual orientation and associated vulnerabilities, helplessness, loss of innocence and guilt that would haunt him forever.

“Mumbai Police” bond over a hasty, hot-headed decision that drives Aryan into bit of a soup. Farhan employs Anthony’s rowdy ways to rescue Aryan. Aryan and Anthony grow really close (their theme and its variations marking various phases in their relationship is just amazing). Aryan end up winning a Gallantry award for taking down Maoists (a hot topic in 2013 with the Kerala Thunderbolts coming into existence and making their presence known) - an act Anthony committed but easily relinquished credit in hopes of coming in handy to appease Aryan’s ever-demanding dad.

Anthony is punished for his rowdy ways as he gets transferred out of Kochi. Friendship-starved Aryan is upset. To mourn Anthony’s impending departure, he visits Anthony in his flat. He is furious upon learning that Anthony has parts of his life – his boyfriend and his androphilia in general – hidden away (while Aryan had been an open-book). He lashes out and threatens Anthony in a manner that is very potent and debilitating in the age of section 377. In a tragedy of Romeo and Juliet or Layla and Majnun proportions or Kanchanamala and Moideen proportions, Anthony kills Aryan and misleads the investigation, only to later learn from Aryan’s to-be-betrothed that Aryan’s rage was short-lived, he meant not harm and instead yearned to be closer to Anthony and was planning to forgo the Gallantry award in hopes of retaining Anthony in Kochi.

Among other issues such as police hooliganism and misuse of power, compulsory heterosexuality is challenged through very subtle yet hard-hitting moments with Aryan detailing his success as a flirt and Farhan joining in the conversation while Anthony is merely listening and does not feel comfortable speaking about his boyfriend. While the boyfriend knows of Anthony’s sister, Annie herself has no idea about her brother’s boyfriend.

The movie also challenges the ultra-macho personas of rascal heroes and calls attention to the societal evils (unsupported childhood and heterosexism in this case) that force them to act out in ways that may run contrary to their core beliefs and better judgement. Rascal Anthony and amnesiac Anothny feel like two different people. On a lighter note, amnesiac Anothny openly checks out Farhan before he learns that he is married to his sister. He feels less burdened by expectations until he makes sense of his pre-amnesia self. Afterwards, he is overridden by guilt and helplessness.

Since the screen-play writers decided on the motive of the crime after establishing the crime and those involved, they could easily introduce the androphilic hero to a largely heterosexist audience with relative ease and thus create an opportunity for the exploration of queer personhood in the context of a hostile state, judgmental and social-cost-extracting public and the common place existence of lives that are invisible in plain sight.

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Mentioning movies that goes deeper into other marginalized folk discussed in the movie:

Kammatti Paadam (2016) for an honest exploration of lives of folk like Roy, the gangster.

Pada (2022) and Raavanan (2010) for a deeper look at issue of adivasi people’s rights and struggles.

Piravi (1989) and Jai Bhim (2021) - Police brutality

[rotten-zucchinis]

Reflections on (my) embodied queerness-- Part 3: People reading me unpredictably... or as Shaggy from Scooby Doo

This is part 3 of a 3-part reflection about some aspects of my own embodied queerness. It’s about some of the various ways people seem to “read me” in terms of gender and sexual orientation (mostly), and some of the factors that seem to matter, like context and whom I’m with at the time.

Part 1: Homophobia doesn’t care about “identity” or “attraction” [here]

Part 2: Mis/understandings with some queer family members [here]

I never know how people are going to read me. It really depends on the context, who I’m with, and who they are. For example, it’s next to impossible to be read as “non-binary” by cis folks-- the options are usually “woman”, “man” and “indeterminate freak who is invariably either a woman or a man even if I can’t tell which right now”. Typically I’m read as a woman, albeit never a straight woman. On rare occasions, I’m very briefly read as a man, until I open my mouth and the judgement jumps to “woman”. 

It doesn’t really have much to do with “outedness” for me or how open I am about various identity labels. There are a few contexts where I’m not out as a non-binary person. I’m not hiding anything and if people know what to look for it’s pretty clear. But often, people don’t know what they’re looking at. Mostly, other non-binary people recognise me as presenting fairly “non-binary” (even if it isn’t one of the non-binary archetypes). But cis people don’t.

And while I’m about as out as humanly possible about being ace, it’s not necessarily something people can typically (at this point in time) be read as by strangers, barring any explicit declarations via clothing or buttons, etc. Nevertheless it’s something that often comes up pretty quickly even with casual acquaintances, largely because I spend so much time doing ace stuff and live in an ace space with ace roommates. It’s pretty much something I’m comfortable talking about at any point in time, with anyone. I do a lot of educational work in educational contexts and elsewhere too-- like when strangers in places like grocery stores see a button or patch I have on me and ask. So it doesn’t take much for people to learn I come with an “asexual” label and therefore to apply it (if they believe in such things... or defiantly classify me otherwise if they don’t). Still, that doesn’t usually happen with strangers on sight. 

I’m not usually read on site by strangers as a “queer, non-binary aroace”. I’m usually read on site by strangers as some kind of queer freak-- usually of the dyke variety-- sometimes trans. What kind of trans? That depends and/or who even knows?

I can’t separate the various aspects of my identity that might be informing people reading me dyke-wise-- is it my non-binariness? my aceness? my aroness? my aroaceness? my queerness? some permutation of those? all of them together? There’s no way to know. And occasionally and unpredictably, I’m read as a young (gay and/or trans) boy by women for no clear reason (though almost never read as a man by men). 

What I do know is that heterosexism and sexism are the main regulatory forces I encounter in the world. The gender-policing I encounter is typically from those blunt instruments and generally not from any explicit transphobic targeting of my transness. While someone might ask me “what” I am (re: gender), I won’t get beat up for “being trans”. I might get harassed for “being a dyke” or possibly (though not likely) for “being a fag”. 

Having said that, how people read me is often informed by those around me. When I’m out with my sister, people tend to read me as a butch (lesbian), even though I’m not especially masculine. Often people seem to read us as a couple (which is uncomfortable). Occasionally people read me as her tomboy little sister (which is really weird because I’m the older one... and also *well* beyond my teen years). But age is tricky-- and there's trans age magic!

In particular, when I’m out with my “unspecified vegetable” (i.e., UV)[1], heteronormativity encourages people to read one of us as a dude, even if we won’t read “straight” when we’re mapped onto a pairing of bodies gendered differently. And amatonormativity encourages people to read us as a couple, especially since so many of the places we frequent are places where people are assumed to have an intimate or family relationship when they’re there together- medical offices, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc. 

Pharmacies and doctor’s offices are where I’m most likely to be read as a guy (albeit a gay trans guy accompanying my boyfriend?) At one particular doctor’s office *some* staff read us *both* as men-- I think they think we’re a gay couple-- but confusion always ensues because someone else there also thinks I’m also the “female friend”. (This is particularly amusing because neither of us is a man.)

But generally, it’s hit and miss. Are we a couple of gay dudes? Are we a lesbian couple? Are we just an ambiguous cloud of “together trans-GAY”? (That’s certainly what we seemed to be back when my UV was less disabled, less fat, had a beard and wore much more flamboyant clothing and make-up.) 

How my UV is read usually depends at least somewhat on how they are presenting-- their clothing and hair, the visible shape of their chest, whether they’ve recently shaved or are wearing any makeup, etc. But people gender them all over the place with no apparent rhyme or reason, sometimes in the most contradictory and humorous ways. Other complicating factors have to do with social readings of disabled, fat bodies-- which is often “no gender” (and no personhood for that matter).

Sometimes people think I’m my UV’s caregiver, in which case, I’m a “woman” and they’re a non-gendered non-person. I’m not sure exactly what leads to the assessment that my UV must be needing a care-giver in those moments. Maybe it’s something to do with how, not only can disabled people not use money [explanation] but visibly disabled people using walkers (or wheelchairs!) can’t have friends or partners or people generally choosing to associate with them (at least not while they’re actually using their walkers or wheelchairs). //sarcasm//

Sometimes though, how people read me is a little surreal:

dude-seeming person calling me from across a parking lot: “Hey, you look like Shaggy[2] from Scooby Doo!”

me [is neither tall nor thin; is wearing a plaid shirt, baggy plaid 3/4 length pants and a plaid hat]: “...”

dude-seeming person again calling me from across a parking lot: “Hey, over here! You look like Shaggy from Scooby Doo!”

me [is unsure how to respond]: “Fair enough”

dude-seeming person still calling me from across a parking lot: “Is it fair enough? Do you agree?”

me: “I'm not wearing a green shirt.”

dude-seeming person still calling me from across a parking lot: “It's fucked up that you're a girl. But you look like Shaggy.”

me: “...” [shrugs... and leaves]  

{During that interaction, I was engaged in the familiar act of trying to put a walker that I’m not really strong enough to lift into a car without resting it on my bad knee. I left as soon as I could. And throughout the interaction, the person calling at me never acknowledged the presence of my UV.}

Maybe that just says it all: it’s fucked up that I’m a girl and simultaneously Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

[1]  “Zucchini” refers to a counterpart in a QP relationship (i.e., a relationship that isn’t a romantic relationship but that also isn’t adequately or properly described as a “friendship”). It’s not uncommon for people to use other vegetables, especially in or near the squash or eggplant family. I used to refer to my relationship mate(s) as an acorn squash but circumstances have changed somewhat and we still haven’t settled on a new vegetable to reflect that. But since they’re not comfortable with the specific word “queerplatonic”, I don’t want to use “QPP” here.

[2] The character of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo [ explanation ] is a tall and lanky stoner-dude cartoon character who hangs out with his large dog ( Scooby-Doo ) and solves cartoon-mysteries with his human-friends. He always wears the same clothes. And he looks nothing like me, except a mild similarity between my hair and the hair of Matthew Lillard when he portrayed Shaggy in the live-action movie [ image ].

[thewillowness]

No more apologies.

CW: Frank discussion of mental health. Also. very long and disorganized writing.

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This year has been pretty challenging because of a confluence of several unrelated matters. By large, though, the perfect storm of events that took place since a year ago and now has taken a serious toll on my mental (and physical, to an extent) health. I am slowly recovering from all this as of this writing, but all this spring and summer I was not able to motivate myself to do anything at all. 

In retrospect, the signs were there. I no longer enjoyed engaging in activities that I once loved to do. I was sleeping too much and even then I was exhausted a few hours later. I was, from time to time, bordering on the paranoid, having my anxiety to be debilitating. 

Often I questioned why I am here, what in the hell I am doing, and any prospect for a better future. 

I’ve wasted a large bulk of my lifetime, mostly trying to survive and nothing more. I had a long history of homelessness as an adult. When I was still newly on the street, I dreaded every evening and boredom was unbearable. The only goal in my life was to make another day fly by me as fast as possible so I could survive one more day. That was most of my life during my 30s. 

I have never had a normal childhood and I have never had a normal adult life. That sometimes causes me an inferiority complex, when the kids who graduated from my high school the same year have already built respectable careers, earned multiple postgraduate degrees, and making families and children. 

To add to this, the last three years in the United States have done a lot of damage to my own psyche. Having been exposed to the daily barrage of news about hate crimes, racist terror, institutionalization of extreme homophobia at the highest level of the government, and ethnic cleansing policy from the top, I have internalized so much of racism, classism and homophobia into my subconscious. Frankly, before the rise of Trump, I had not given much thought about discrimination or hate despite my being a member of the marginalized minorities. Now no day will pass without at least thinking about it. 

I know that people around me are barely tolerating me, perhaps out of pity, perhaps out of their own guilt. Nobody has really liked me, and even though from time to time I made an attempt to be “likable,” I’ve given up on that prospect.

I tried to get a date and get laid for years in vain, but now I realize that I was doing all that (1) out of curiosity, and (2) because “everyone else is doing it.” I had internalized the rather heteronormative (and assimilationist) social narrative that relationship is good, romance is good, and everyone’s goal should be marriage and family. Fuck that. 

Now I firmly believe that I am aromantic, and it makes sense because as an autistic I cannot relate to people like normies might. 

People look at me with disgust, and I know I creep them out. They obviously try to be polite and don’t tell me that in my face but I am not fooled. 

For too long I longed to be normal. I wanted to be one of the normies. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to be taken seriously. 

Being taken seriously meant freedom. It also meant more income. More opportunities. More friends. Maybe more sex. 

But I am starting to see the error in my thinking, because of two recent events.

1. Recently I attended an all-day conference called Build and Monetize. It was a conference geared toward consultants and other entrepreneurs. One thing I learned was that almost everyone thinks they’re not being taken seriously (”impostor syndrome”). The other thing is that I don’t have to market myself to the “normies” but rather I could play on my own difference (now working on this!) -- no more trying in vain to compete.

2. Like you, I have been following Greta Thunberg. It’s hard now to believe that merely a year ago, she organized a “School Strike for the Climate” at the Swedish Parliament and NOBODY showed up (like almost all of the events I had organized so far!). She just stood there alone. In 2019, she’s met Barack Obama, gave a speech in the United Nations, and is a leading voice of the youth climate movement and the global conscience. Her one-person protest has grown to one of the largest mass demonstrations in world history, ranking at par with the Women’s March on Washington (2017) and Occupy Wall Street (2011). I really wished I was her when I was 15. Like Greta, I was already very much politically and socially conscious at that age. Despite the haters (mostly the right-wing, how predictable) and critics feigning compassion, Greta actually was the right person to be doing this.  

“She admitted her passion was partly down to viewing the world in stark terms. The result of her simplistic approach, fuelled by her condition, is that she has presented this issue with more clarity and competence than almost any adult activist or politician in recent years. And there is something rather beautiful in hearing this teenager demonstrate by her actions how society is stronger when it embraces difference – a message that seems so pertinent to our troubled age. Indeed, this aspect of her stance as a now-public figure on the autism spectrum is arguably as important as her bold stand on climate change, given many prevailing attitudes.“ -- The Guardian, April 23, 2019.

I don’t believe like some that autistic people are some new “supergroup” that will save the world. I think we’ve always been here. But I do think our clarity, moral outrage, allergy to bullshit and refusal to go along are some of the many disabled skills that can be part of saving the world. -- Truth Out, Sept. 25, 2019.

A few years ago, Thunberg’s ascent to fame likely would have been framed in the media as that of an inspiring young girl “overcoming” her disability to become the leader of a worldwide movement. But Thunberg herself makes a different, more radical argument: that she became an activist not in spite of her autism but because of it. “I see the world a bit different, from another perspective,” she explained to New Yorker reporter Masha Gessen. “It’s very common that people on the autism spectrum have a special interest. … I can do the same thing for hours.” Thunberg discovered her special interest in climate change when she was just 9 years old, and she couldn’t understand why everyone on the planet wasn’t similarly obsessed with preventing it.A visceral feeling of repulsion toward deceit and hypocrisy is also common among people on the spectrum. As Thunberg told the BBC, “I don’t fall for lies as easily as regular people, I can see through things.” She has a particular contempt for the professional propagandists and apologists who prop up the fossil fuel industry and discourage the development of renewable energy resources, dismissing UK claims about reductions in carbon emissions as the result of “very creative accounting.” -- Vox, Sept. 24, 2019.

In fact, Greta Thunberg may have been the absolute best thing that happened to the autistic community in modern history, when most people’s perception of autism was pretty much shaped by the film Rain Man and propaganda from Autism Speaks. 

At the very least, Greta is my inspiration. (And despite what the haters think, she is beautiful and her face almost reminds me of a classical Greek or Roman sculpture. She could as well be a Greek goddess incarnate.)

Back to the topic, I feel that I’ve wasted good two decades of my life trying to fit in and be “respected” (read: act and speak like normies, according to the white cisheteronormative middle-class standard of “respectability”), and engage in activities that normies might find “respectable.” 

Between apologizing for being “abnormal” and internalizing ableism, classism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism, I had wasted so much of my creativity and energy on this uncompensated labor to make people around me “comfortable” so they might “accept” me. 

Fuck that. I’m done living my life like this, so as to please the normies for a pittance in return (and mostly uncompensated).

They never understand me anyway. They have never walked a tenth of a mile in my shoes at the intersection of multiple oppressions. They may be well-meaning but their privilege means ignorance, self-righteousness, meaningless virtue-signalling circle jerk, and unwillingness to learn (and it’s not my responsibility to “educate” them without compensation, either).  

And yes, history of “mental health” is history of colonialism and racism, too. What many non-Western and pre-Christian Western cultures called it shamanic gifts or witchcraft, the Christendom called it “hysteria” and “lunacy.” (Note: I have studied cultural anthropology of shamanism as a purely academic subject for two semesters. I do not purport to be a shaman nor it is my intention to appropriate their traditions.)

I am instead going to quadruple down on my “craziness,” and I will no longer apologize for it. (For the most part, “mental health” in our society is just a mechanism to enforce social order and norms -- if there be any question on this, ask why it is always the police that responds to mental health “emergencies” and not EMTs.) I am turning the landmine that it my “craziness” into a goldmine instead. 

And fuck the normies. 

[ineffable-opinions]

Little Hearts - Coming Out, Coming Home

[updated | latest version] Indian Queer Media: Little Hearts | Kaathal the Core | Gaami | Mumbai Police |

This movie is now available on YouTube.

സമർപ്പണം - ക്വീർ മലയാളികൾക്ക്.

This week saw a lot of very interesting discussion about Indian queer media (compilation by @starryalpacasstuff). It coinciding with 13th edition of Kerala Queer Pride 2024 is so serendipitous.

I had drafted this Little Hearts (2024) appreciation post with the aim to finalize it before Kollavarsham New Year but did not get around to doing so. I wanted to take part in the current conversation. So, I am posting it now. I intent to discuss Indian BL: Sting of Lavender and Arotpa Pirang (The Hidden Tears) as well as movies like Kaathal – The Core, Moothon and Ardhanaari (2012) in the future.

Little Hearts (2024) is a Malayalam-language comedy movie available for streaming on Amazon Prime. (CW: heterosexism; PSA: Hema Committee Report) It's not a surprisingly impressive movie by any measure but I had a very nice time watching it. It was one of the best comedies of this year for me. And it tackles coming out in an interesting manner.

contains spoilers

Plot

(names might be spelled differently in the subtitles.)

The movie is set in a village in a high-range region of Kerala. We follow the main character Sibi through his journey, navigating 3 different relationships and their implication on his beloved people. The movie is pretty straightforward in its approach. At the outset, we are introduced to the romantic relationship – the one between Sibi’s father, Baby, and Baby’s childhood sweetheart, Cecily who was deserted by her husband Joey. She has a teenage daughter who doesn't look at their romance favorably. That’s the first hurdle. The other hurdle to their relationship is Cecily’s brother Papan and his feud with Baby. The feud and Sibi’s involvement make for some really fun moments throughout the movie.

The next romantic relationship involves Sibi and his feudal landlord’s daughter. Sibi and his father work in the cardamom estate owned by Johnson. Sibi’s family and Johnson’s basically have a very good relationship. Sibi grew up with Johnson’s kids, calls Johnson "papa" and Anitha (Johnson’s wife) "mummy", and spends a considerable amount of time at their house. Their families are practically one as seen from them breaking bread together on Maundy Thursday – an intimate tradition for those Nasrani folk.

However, there is clear class disparity. Sibi lives in a much smaller house and when dismissed from work, the class difference only becomes clearer.

What gets things moving is Shosha rejecting a proposal for an arranged marriage by lying that she is in a relationship with Sibi.

Sibi, clearly demiromantic, is surprised initially when she starts wooing him but eventually he falls for her. This branded pair’s romance didn’t work as well as it did in RDX (2023) but at least this time around they got their happy ending (a rarity in Malayalam romances).

The queer sub-plot arrives when Johnson’s firstborn, Sharon, returns home after a long while. While his parents prepare to arrange his marriage, Sharon confides in Sibi that he's actually getting married next month to his foreigner partner. The only thing Sibi enquires about is if Sharon’s partner belongs to the same community as himself (Catholic). When he gives a positive reply, Sibi asks him to invite his partner over so that Sibi can present the news to Johnson and Anitha on Sharon’s behalf. At the airport, Sharon welcomes his boyfriend Nathan and Sibi is shocked.

Agitated, Sibi is rude towards Sharon initially. However, he agrees to take Nathan and Sharon to visit tourist spots in exchange for Sharon meeting the woman his parents are trying to arrange his wedding with. During their excursion, Sibi warms up to their relationship while watching them interact. He also puts in effort to learn about queer people.

As promised Sharon meets the girl and rejects her respectfully. Nathan grows uneasy as Sharon drags his feet. Their relationship strains. Sharon’s mom notices but isn’t sure about what’s going on. Sibi’s efforts to talk to Johnson are unsuccessful. Hopeless, Sharon asks Nathan to leave by himself as he needs more time. Nathan asks Sibi to take care of Sharon and returns.

Anitha learns from Sibi about Nathan’s relationship with Sharon and, from her Johnson. Unable to process this information, Johnson consults Baby. Drunk out of his wits, Baby not only scolds Johnson for not accepting Sharon but also reveals the love affair between Sibi and Shosha. They fight and Johnson hits Sibi and forbids both son and dad from entering either his house or his land. Moreover, Sibi and Shosha’s relationship takes a turn for the worse as their stubborn attitudes worsen minor conflicts between them. 

Right when Sibi with the vicar’s intervention gets Cecily’s daughter's approval for their parent’s relationship, Joey appears. Turns out Joey held a grudge against his brother-in-law, Papan, who had hurt and humiliated him. Joey exacts revenge by whipping and stabbing Papan during the Way of Cross performance on Good Friday. Finally divorced, Cecily can finally move on and marry Baby.

While Shosha tries to be the bridge between her father and her brother, she fails to do so for her relationship with Sibi. Sharon calls her out. The movie ends with Baby and Sibi getting married and Sharon and Nathan joining them on a video call after the ceremony.

Analysis

The predominant narrative of “coming out” is built on a particular kind of queer experience and geography, which is usually from the standpoint of white, middle-class, urban U.S. citizenship.

Shuzhen Huang & Daniel C. Brouwer (2018) Coming out, coming home, coming with: Models of queer sexuality in contemporary China

Nathan is an upper-class, white, Christian man with an accepting family emblematic of the Western take on queerness we all are familiar with. Sharon, on the other hand, is from this little agricultural village in Kerala where everyone knows everyone else and queerness does not get accepted and protected the way it does in the West. That’s why he had migrated. That’s why he did not visit more often. His desires are mediated by his circumstances. Leaving home is a decision that a lot of queer people living in villages like his adopt, whether it is to urban regions within the nation or abroad. Queer migration is a very common phenomenon in India and I hope to discuss it further in relation to other movies such as Moothon and Sancharam.

Migration is expected to offer queer individuals distance from the daily pressures of heteronormativity and cis-heteropatriarchy. It can secure them better employment opportunities, higher incomes, and improved standard of living and savings that would help them support themselves (and their parents) in their old age in the absence of offspring and substantial social security benefits. It can also provide them with relative anonymity to explore their sexuality, improved chances of finding partners, friends, and other queer folk in general whom they can support and be supported by.

Sharon choosing to introduce Nathan to his family through Sibi might come off as strange, but that’s very much not the case. Arranged marriages are the norm in Kerala. Even if your marriage is not arranged via match-makers (and increasingly via dedicated websites), it is not unusual for the couple to get their parents to ‘arrange’ their love marriage on their behalf. Marriages are grand affairs, with creation and merging of families, transfer of different sorts of wealth and capital, a well-mediated social project where familism rather than individualism dominates, with relatives and neighbors having a say in everything.  

Shane Nigam, the actor who played Sibi, has other movies in which he does the exact same role for heterosexual couples. In RDX, he is tasked with presenting his brother’s relationship with his future sister-in-law to his father and getting his father’s approval.

In Kumbalangi Nights, Shane's character has to convince his brother to bring up the matter of his marriage with his girlfriend’s brother-in-law in the absence of their parents.

While cis-heterosexual pairings enjoy better acceptance at some level compared to others, that acceptance is conditional. India more broadly and Kerala specifically has a fairly long-standing tradition of “marrying” within one’s caste and creed. (There were other not-exactly conjugal ties in Kerala like sambandam that were inter-caste.) Exogamy is strongly discouraged and punished through deprivation of essential social capital and in extreme cases through honor killings. It is in this context that Sibi asks Sharon if the one Sharon is going to marry belongs to their community – they are Nasrani Catholics. When Sharon affirms that although his partner is a foreigner but catholic, Sibi is relieved (in a very comphet way which he regrets soon enough).

Sibi, in a heterosexist outburst, uses “kundan” intending to hurt Sharon. Sibi is a stand-in for most Malayali folk whose understanding of queerness, is rooted in local forms of expression of sexuality. While married folk are expected to fall in love and stay faithful and carry on the bloodline, that is only the intention for and not the basis of marriages. Sexuality, especially non-heterosexuality, leading to marriages and households is a fairly unusual concept. Please keep in mind that even the idea of a household being one that had its basis in marriage is fairly new. Till the 20th century, a normal Nair (a community in Kerala) household (tharavaadu) meant sisters and brothers living with the sisters' children, and these children's fathers would continue to live with their own sisters.

Sexuality that made one “kundan” lie outside the conjugal sphere if not for marriage equality activism and movements seeking legalization of non-monogamous kinship arrangements. I have discussed this form of male-male sexuality, the term kundan and its connection with BL, in my post on Kubi and Gohatto.

Sibi struggles with the task Sharon entrusted him with. He has to learn about queer people (he is seen browsing the internet and watching videos to learn), understand the couple he is expected to introduce, and present it in a manner that would not spook Sharon’s parents (for example, the conversation about food preferences) and would instead make them root for their son. Sibi’s hesitation costs the couple time and drives a wedge between them that widens enough to tear their relationship apart.

Sharon’s mother is the first one to learn of his relationship with Nathan. She responds in a way that would be best explained by the Chinese phrase “rugui” (entering the closet) which refers to the initial and depressive stage [many Asian] parents enter upon learning about their child’s queerness. It is a painful psychological state consisting of shock, anger, grief, disbelief, and self-blame. These parents then must work their way back to a balanced state.

It is clear that she was suspecting and that is why she had insisted on speaking to Sibi at the church. After learning the truth, she chooses to walk back home and breaks down while hugging her son, upon finally realizing the pain he has been in all this time and the reason behind the pain.

Sharon’s father learns the truth from his wife. The second stage of his reaction is what the Chinese call “jiating chugui” (familial coming-out) wherein a parent seeks moral support from someone he trusts. However, his decision to confide in Baby backfires.

Drunk out of his wits, Baby reprimands Johnson for hesitating to accept his son. Interestingly, Baby uses a lot of slang popular on the internet among Malayali folk online including those relating to political correctness and progressive thinking. Baby is disingenuous since he is not free from heterosexist bias himself. However, learning that Baby and Sibi have been keeping a bunch of secrets from him breaks Johnson who was already emotionally vulnerable. He lashes out at Baby and Sibi as well as his son, whom he prevents from leaving the country by withholding his passport.

Shosha, Sharon’s sister is upset with Sibi for hiding about Sharon’s relationship. However, she is able to offer the good counsel that Johnson had fruitlessly sought in Baby. Sharon and Johnson renew their bond over alcohol. Finally, at peace, Sharon is able to set Shosha straight too.  

There has been criticism that the movie failed to do justice to the queer theme by focusing uneven amounts of energy on heterosexual couples. But, I think Little Hearts did a good job of upsetting the conventional idea that heterosexual relationships are automatically normative and easily accepted. Even with heterosexual relationships being intra-caste, class is a powerful enough divide to try and force couples apart through familial/societal disapproval (from Papan against Baby and Johnson against Sibi). Consider the fact that Kerala is yet to have an on-screen inter-caste heterosexual couple have their happy ending. By calling into question what can be considered queer in Malayali society, the movie manages to critically examine the emergent theme of Christian Nasrani familialism.

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notes:

Hema Committee report - Wikipedia

Baburaj, the actor who played Baby, is one of the post-report accused.

2. Shine Tom Chacko previously played a queer character in the 2022 action thriller Bheeshma Parvam.

[ineffable-opinions]

Kaathal – The Core

[ Available for streaming on Amazon Prime. This is an appreciation post. A proper criticism by experts linked at the bottom of this post.

CW: heterosexism PSA: Hema Committee Report

This post is my 2nd contribution (1st can be found here) to the conversation regarding Indian queer media that started in October 2024. I recommend this post by @neuroticbookworm and this post by @nihilisticcondensedmilk as well as this compilation by @starryalpacasstuff before reading this.

Throughout this post by the term Nasrani, I mean Roman Catholic Syrian Christians.]

Love, the Core

The title of the movie is very interesting. Kaathal (കാതല്‍) in Malayalam refers to the heartwood of a tree. Hence, it can mean pith or core (as the subtitle suggests). It is homophonous with the Tamil word kaathal (காதல்) which means love. Average Malayali audience is familiar enough with the word kaathal as love to make that association faster than with heartwood. This bit of word play conveys that it is love that’s at the core of the movie. And that the queerness central to the movie is practically essential.

Catholic Background

The movie opens on a Sunday Mass and we get first glimpse of several important characters as the camera pans through the crowd to the accompaniment of the continuation of the third g’hanta prayer, the one that follows the Institution Narrative, that praises the grace bestowed upon the human kind. The order in which we get a glimpse of the characters is also important, I think, especially considering the distance from alter. While this scene is easy to forget, it establishes which community they belong to - Nasranis as indicated by the East Syriac Rite liturgy. The particular prayer choice is interesting:

Forgiving our debts, You sanctified us sinners, enlightened our minds, defeated our enemies, and glorified our frail nature by Your immense grace.

Tight-knit & Rurban

 In the next scene we get a glimpse of how tight-knit their community is through a conversation about pork sharing[1]. This is followed by Femy, Mathew's daughter, hitching a ride on someone’s scooter indicating she studies out of town and is back home to spend whatever is left of the weekend. The scene between Omana and Femy foreshadows that Omana’s silence on the matter of divorce is going to be a thorn in the upcoming election campaign.

Sibin drags Mathew to try and break off an inter-class heterosexual couple whose love affair is disapproved by the woman’s family, for the man is a migrant worker. The intention is to secure Mathew four votes from the family through Mathew’s intervention. Sibin informs that the Local Committee has decided that Mathew would be their party’s candidate in the by-election in ward 3. When Mathew inquires if that’s their party's stand on love, Sibin doesn’t sugar-coat the fact that on the ground the party has to appease the conservative politics of their core vote bank (working-class folks like Rajan) in spite of their more liberal views online. Ironically, Mathew stands up for the couple and right behind him stands his own paramour, Thankan.

Less-Discussed Facets of Queer Life – The Wife*

Kaathal focuses on Omana, who was unwittingly married to an androphilic man, as much as it focuses on queerness, outing and heterosexism in general. While it's not rare for movies to have queer characters in Malayalam, it's very rare to have movies which focus on queer characters and even rarer for the focus to be on their spouses. My Life Partner (2014) and the bio-pic about the poet Kamala Das, Aami (2018) are the only other such Malayalam movies as far as I can remember and the married man in both these movies were ambiphilic (aka bisexual).

Omana struggles in their marital life for two decades and we meet her when she's trying to get a divorce from Mathew. In an unfortunate twist of events, her submission to the court which was supposed to be a private thing, becomes public knowledge and topic of discussion since Mathew is a candidate in the by-election to ward 3 of Teekoy panchayath**. Since there is no other election happening at that time, all energy and gossip is focused on this particular candidate’s scandalous divorce procedure. It becomes public knowledge way too fast and even before she could explain herself, everything basically goes out of control. While Mathew is reasonably upset with her, we learn during the court procedure that he was always reluctant to discuss divorce.

Omana is a stand-in for all the women who are married to men who are not gynephilic and therefore have to struggle in the marriage because their emotional and sexual needs are not met. Kaathal is not the only movie discussing this in the recent years. We have seen two very famous movies Dear Ex (2018) and The Blue Caftan (2022) which talks about the same topic but from very different angles.

Dear Ex is about the relationship between a woman and her husband’s paramour after her husband is dead and the insurance money goes to that male lover. The male lover has been the one who was taking care of her husband when he was very ill and she reels from the doubt whether her husband ever loved her.

In The Blue Caftan, the wife is about to die and she implicitly gives permission for her husband to pursue the young apprentice whom she did not like in the first part of the movie but later warms up to when she realise she mistook him and accused him of things that he didn't do (for which she feels guilty) as well as the support he offers when he finds out that she is ill and helps her husband take care of her despite the husband backing off when things got murky between them. The young apprentice returns to take care of her and their shop - their dreams and legacy.

In Kaathal, no-one is dying. The movie is very idyllic in an odd, tearful way despite the drama. (Probably Malayali folks are moved to tears just by seeing Mammootty cry and the effect might not be the same on non-Malayalis.) It is about the woman getting divorce and the couple moving on with their lives. This sort of happy ending which is a little too unrealistic considering overall tone leans towards realism.

Adultery Situation

While it is not okay for Omana's affidavit to have leaked and for Thankan to be outed, there are very few precedents to the legal battle she was entering. Daniel Crasto vs The State of Maharashtra (an actual case referenced in the movie) is what inspired advocate Ameera to move the court in a manner that would allow for divorce proceedings to not take a decade as it did with the case referenced (filed in 2009, final judgement in 2019). The courtroom sequences in the movie are set up to be informational and gives answers to a lot of questions that are obvious to arise. I wish the movie had mentioned the circumstances of decriminalization of adultery (Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018)) in India and how that too plays into the divorce procedure.

Omana had already discussed the matter with her daughter as well as with her mother. But the men in her life are kept out of the conversation before filing the case since the previous experience are not exactly confidence inspiring. Having discussed it with her father and not getting any support or reassurance, Omana is set up to be the 21st century foil to Alice from K. G. George’s iconic movie Adaminte Vaariyellu (1984) where interestingly, Mammooty’s character was the paramour.

Malayali Christian Masculinities

While Omana’s father, Philip, is only mentioned, his presence looms large in spite of him being dead and gone. He is a reflection of the type of Nasrani hyper-masculinity that had been dissected through many Malayalam movies including RDX, Joji, Appan and Aarkkariyam in recent years. Omana’s brother, Tomy, struggles to break out of the mold he was raised in and tries to be a supportive elder towards the end.

Given the kind of patriarchy she was raised under, it is not surprising Omana had kept quiet for so long, raised their child together and put in effort to hide their marital troubles and to lead a harmonious seeming life in front of others.

An important dimension to Omana, comes from her relationship with her father-in-law, Devassy***. The depiction of their relationship is inline with a trend in recent Malayalam cinema, where characters’ relationships with their parent(s)-in-law outwears those with their spouses and lovers. In The Teacher (2022), the woman’s mother-in-law (a local Communist leader) supports her decision to separate from her son as well as enlists the help of a thug (one of my favourite queer side characters who has the most delightful pairing with a super jealous, law-bending cop) to help her exact revenge. Meanwhile, in Ullozhukku (2024) the woman decides to leave her paramour for her mother-in-law.

Devassy represents a different type of masculinity which we also see reflected in Mathew. This form of Nasrani masculinity too is a familiar flavour in Malayalam cinema, like in the excellent Maheshinte Prathikaaram (2016). Omana finds in him a father whom she did not have but dearly wished for. They partake in the same pain ever since Femy was born and Mathew did not show up to bring Omana home as he was busy taking care of Thankan. (It is customary for women to return to their native home (Omana’s native home is in Meppara) when they are pregnant, especially during their first pregnancy, and to return to their patrilocal or neolocal residence after the baby is born.) Devassy’s political leanings, especially him abandoning centrist UDP (stand-in for the Indian National Congress-led UDF alliance) during the days of Emergency and joining CRP (stand-in for the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led LDF alliance), is also indicative of the left-leaning values he held. It is also interesting to note that Devassy had thought to take Mathew to a doctor when he learned that he is androphilic (an approach indicative of the time as it was before homosexuality was depathologized).

Another brand of Christian masculinity get a passing mention when Mathew's sister calls Devassy to complain about the loss of social capital her probably un(der)employed husband faces abroad who has to renegotiate his masculinity at every step as a migrant. Men lose their purpose when they move abroad with their bread-winner wives since they are raised with certain values and motivations that are difficult to unlearn. They seek and find solace in their community gatherings. Loss of social capital gets reflected in their lives abroad too and social auditing would make their lives difficult.

Husband, Lover, Wife

Omana loves Mathew deeply. They have actually found companionship in each other. The platonic love between them is hinging on mendacity and selfishness. They have been with each other for a good chunk of their lives and Mathew is reluctant to let go of Omana. When she chooses to free herself from their entanglement, it is also to liberate Mathew from the shackles they have bound themselves with.

Thankan on the other hand is completely disempowered in this particular scenario. As his friend, Rajan Mesthiri points out Matthew has wealth that he would inherit from his father whereas he has nothing. Because of this scandal, he was losing social capital and has to survive cruel homophobia everywhere - in the junction, at his place of work and even on the wall of his yard where miscreants engrave slur (kundan). This is on top of him struggling with loneliness and deprivation of love. A particularly harrowing sequence is of him packing snacks on behalf of the shopkeeper to give to Devassy who dotes on his daughter-in-law and buys her favorite snacks daily. Among the love denied to Thankan is that fatherly affection reserved for one's child's spouse.

 Thankan is all on his own. He is a working-class man who lives by himself before his nephew, Kuttayi, took refuge there. There isn't any other familial support system. People are willing to send their daughters for driving classes with him due to a twisted form of benevolent heterosexism.

Meanwhile, Mathew has lots of people offering him support and stand with him, denying allegations and supporting him as a queer candidate, even though he doesn’t appreciate that.

Mathew doesn't hang out with Thankan in the public eye. He sticks to the story that they are just acquaintances and people would believe that since their dalliances happen in Pullikkanam (a village in Kottayam-Idukki border) and in Teekoy they are just acquaintance. The only visible connection between them other than longing stares and campaign notice is a framed school photo of them that hangs in their respective homes. They have been lovers since their school days and have been hiding that fact as much as they could.

It is like Thankan is being left behind. The kind of deprivation of social capital along with childlessness indicates that no one is going to take care of him in his hour of need. Mathew receives a lot of support from party members and others and lot of people come to his rescue, partly due to him having served in their service co-operative bank for more than two and half decades.

Co-operative banks, unlike commercial banks, are run locally by elected members and provide financing that the community requires. Since those involves a lot of trust and relies on social capital, the discretion exercised by bankers is crucial in risk-assessment and in securing credit to those who need it. In November, you could find co-operative societies and banks in Kerala decorated with rainbow flags (the ones with seven colour, different from the queer-pride rainbow flags).

Progressive versus Realpolitik

There is strong anti-incumbency in ward 3 as indicated by displeasure over lack of infrastructural development, a bridge in a notable case. Tomy's construction job dreams hinge on Mathew's victory. Moreover, in the challenging times (rise of Hindutva), CRP needs to strengthen itself.

The realpolitik is in how the Communist party, CRP, sides with Mathew and doesn't reach out to Thankan, one among proletariat they supposedly stand with. It is also in how they pander to the conservative views of their vote bank. It is there in choosing Mathew, a Catholic, to represent party in the election in hopes of winning over Nasrani voters in their ward. It is in asking Mathew to speak to the vicar about this matter. It is also in their attempt to demonstrate their stance on personal liberty by insisting Mathew should contest and they are making a statement by fielding ‘a candidate like him’ in the election. It is in how the party is politicizing and employing an outed man’s identity without consulting with him first while knowing that it is putting so much additional pressure on him. This can be seen as a critique of leftist political movements in Kerala from leftist creators including Jeo Baby and Mammooty.

Owning the Narrative

The movie has a member of Queerla meet with Mathew outside of the family court. (Queerla is one of Kerala’s organisations focused on the welfare of sexual and gender minorities. The others are Queerythm and Sahayathrika.) But under those circumstances, he is not in a position to welcome the help the organisation could offer him. Eventually, after reconciliation with his father, after having to confront the fact that he was losing the case and Omana, that he comes to his senses and allows himself to realise that he might not be on the right track and that he can come out, that too with Omana insisting that he should also be free for she cares and loves him. So, he lets her go, accompanies her to Meppara, to her native home and invites Thankan fully into his life. Omana and Mathew continue to support each other.

When Mathew comes out through a video that Femy shoots for him, it becomes a state-level news. The fact is that Kerala is yet to have any openly (there have been closet cases) queer candidates win elections. Maybe we will have such a candidate in the future. The actor who plays the role of Femy in the movie is openly bisexual.

Church, the non-Monolithic Presence

Teekoy vicar is presented as an open-minded person. But, he is an exception. Bishop House and the church committee do not share his opinions on the matter of divorce and non-heterosexual union. However, the bible verses and prayers place emphasis on truly open-minded and all-embracing religiosity.

Trivia

There are multiple reasons why this movie is to Little Hearts (2024) what Great Indian Kitchen is to Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey and would make for an excellent pair watching.

There has been complaints that we missed out on a chance to watch Mammooty romance with a man. So, here's the kiss scene between Mammooty and Mohanlal in Nanayam (1983).

[* Chinese use the term tongqi (同妻) to refer to a woman married to a gay man. Beard is a close enough term but doesn't convey the information asymmetry. There are no such popular terms in Malayalam.]

[** Administration in India is divided between union government, state governments/union territories and panchayat/municipalities/municipal corporations. Teekoy (and all other locations in the movie are real locations in Kerala) is an actual panchayat (a village consisting of sub-divisions called wards) in the state of Kerala. The elected representative (referred to as member) of ward 3 was Kurian (of UDP) and it is to fill his seat after his passing that the ward is facing a by-election soon.

While Kerala has multiple parties with varying ideologies, most important among them are those which form part of the two alliances that have ruled the state: Left Democratic Front and United Democratic Front. CRP and UDP are stand-ins for these two in the movie. Biggest political part in the world, BJP, although is part of the ruling collision (NDA) in the union government as well as in several state governments, is not as significant as the others in Kerala, especially in state legislature. BJP is represented by DJP in postures. In places such as Teekoy their influence is even less significant and remains so in the movie too.]

[*** Devassy is the Malayalam variant of name Sebastian.]

[1] Pig being a large enough animal to involve more than a family to finish it off.

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I am yet to choose between Gaami (2024) and Moothon (2019) for my next appreciation post. If you decide to watch Gaami, please feel to ask about content warnings. I think it is better to watch the movie without reading about it.

Indian Queer Media: Little Hearts | Kaathal the Core | Gaami | Mumbai Police |