Mr Gay World: It's your homophobia that an Indian couldn't realise his dreams

Tahir Mohammed Sayeed, an Indian national who was to participate in the Mr Gay World pageant this year, has revoked his participation after threats were issued to him and his family in Kochi. Sayeed has deactivated his social media accounts and has gone incommunicado. His family too has gone into hiding.

Sushant Divgikar participated in the same pageant last year and the visibility so afforded him landed him a spot on the last season of Bigg Boss. On the show, Sushant spoke openly about his sexuality and the love of his family that has enabled him to come out and live as a gay man.

We don’t know if Sayeed was out to his parents or if it was his decision to take part in a gay event that alerted his family. While Mr Gay World is, by its nature, niche in the extreme, Sayeed obviously miscalculated the reach of the media. How his social circle, and of his family, got wind of his participation in the pageant is anybody’s guess.

In an interview last week, actor Kirron Kher drew attention to the many homosexuals in the creative professions who continue to remain closeted. The perception that industries like fashion and film are welcoming of gays may be true only in comparison to other sectors, where homosexuals are not even a blip on the radar. But even in the creative arts, subliminal homophobia is rampant. In an interview to Times of India, Nolan Lewis, a former Mr Gay India, revealed that he has had to remove that reference from his resume after getting a string of roles that typecast him as the stereotypical homosexual.

In the West, the idea that gay actors should play gay roles is finally gaining ascendance. A number of television shows centred on LGBT themes, such as Transparent and Orange is the New Black, not only have out actors performing major roles, but also boast LGBT visibility among their technical ranks. For trans shows in particular, the idea that cisgender people play the role is now looked upon with frank disdain.

However, as with other aspects of gay Indian identity, the creative arts have much catching up to do when it comes to acceptance of homosexuals. Sure, more sensitive fare is being produced, such as the recent Margarita, With a Straw. But we still do not have a visible, out gay corps within the ranks of Bollywood.

When I was living in Mumbai, I once shared my house with two other gay men, both of whom harboured dreams of making it big in Bollywood. One of them was writing a script that he hoped to present to Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Through them, I met a lot of gay men who were working in some or the other capacity in Bollywood. They often shared gossip about stars and directors, including of course speculations about their sexuality. It was good fun but it was also very discreet. We knew we could laugh about it in the comfort of our home, but that when these men got back to work, they would have to shut up about it.

These men did help one another, and there was some semblance of a community founded on their common homosexuality. But it was mostly restricted to jobs that were not even close to the dreams that had brought them to Bombay in the first place: a junior assistant to the DOP here, a nobody on the production crew there. If you had to make it, you had to hit the big league. And while there were enough like us up there, there was no way my flatmates or their friends could touch that galaxy. These were men from small-town India whose dreams of making it big in Bollywood had that extra hope built in: to finally live homosexual lives. They were content, at some level, for the fulfilment of that second dream, so they nurtured the professional one with patience, hoping for that one lucky break.

I see a marked similarity between their story and Sayeed’s. With the Mr Gay World pageant, he would have hoped to move one step closer to his dream of making it big. Perhaps it was the money that lured him, or perhaps it was the contacts. Whatever it was, he must have hoped that the pageant would take him nearer the power and glory that would not just prove that he had it in him to succeed in the creative arts but also give him that extra financial independence with which to live as a gay man. In this scheme, maybe his parents, if they had not known about him already, would also come around to who he truly was.

Instead what we have is this mess. Threats. Scare tactics. To make it big in fashion is no easy task. To do it while hoping to use it as a tool to greater independence is practically arduous. But Sayeed was trying. He had hope. Now we have stripped him of that hope by outing him before the whole world and putting his life and those of his family members in jeopardy. No wonder they don’t come out in blessed Bollywood, or anywhere else, for that matter.