“I was imprisoned in a male’s body, until a surgeon’s knife cut me free,” says 28-year-old Gazal Dhaliwal who underwent Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) a few years ago.
“I was imprisoned in a male’s body, until a surgeon’s knife cut me free,” says 28-year-old Gazal Dhaliwal who underwent Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) a few years ago. The turning point in her life came when Dhaliwal made a documentary on trans-sexuality as part of her diploma in filmmaking.
The film titled To be... ME gave her the courage to go ahead with the transition in 2006. However, she claims that nothing much has changed for her after that. “Earlier, I was a woman who did not have a surgery, now I am a woman who underwent a surgery,” adds the Mumbai-based scriptwriter.
Dhaliwal and several other members from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community will now be sharing their experiences in a new documentary that explores the much discussed topic of the repealing of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that decriminalises homosexuality.
Titled Over the Shoulder, the film weaves the life stories and realities of the LGBT people across various social and economic strata. “As an ally of gay rights for years, I have seen quite a bit of work on the subject. But I still feel that an honest portrayal of the varied perspectives to an archaic law being repealed was missing,” says theatre actor-writer-director Nayantara Roy who shot the documentary as part of her thesis at the New York Film Academy where she is currently studying. Shot using real life accounts of individual narratives of known and little known faces from the LGBT community, the film chronicles the life and times of people like gay prince Manvendra Singh Gohil and eunuch social activist Lakshmi Narayan Tripathi. Organisations such as Azaad Bazaar, the Humsafar Trust and the Kashish Queer Film Festival have also lent their support to the film.
“Life after the repealing of Section 377 is rewritten everyday,” adds Roy who recalls how Gohil mentioned that he started celebrating Independence Day only after July 2, 2009 when the court decriminalised homosexual sex between consenting adults.
The filmmaker says that the law means a lot to some people and very little to others. For instance, gay psychologist Deepak Kashyap, who is in a relationship himself, has been helping homosexual couples to come out of the closet for years. “There is no room for Section 377 in young urban India and it should have gone out along with the British,” adds Roy who has plans to screen the documentary across the US in August before bringing it to India. “In our country, 80% of gay men are married.
Unfortunately, there is no awareness but only guilt in such cases,” the filmmaker rues.
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