I wish I could be there at Gay parade

Deepa Mehta who has just completed another celluloid treatise on the subjugation and repression of women, can't stop that sense of pride in her voice when she's told that the Gay Parade on Sunday began at Regal cinema in the Capital where the screening of her lesbian film Fire was forcibly stopped and disrupted.

"I remember I was in Dubai in 1996 watching A R Rahman's concert. I had put the release of Fire behind me. I just thought it would come and go in India without creating a ripple, like all films on unconventional themes.

I should've been warned. I got a call in the middle of the Rahman concert asking me to come to Delhi fast. They had just halted the screening of Fire. I was aghast.

It was my first brush with the moral police. Later of course I got used to be bullied by extra-constutitional censors in India."

And to think Fire had been passed without a single cut when it was submitted to the censor board. "Not a single shot was cut. Not even Shabana and Nandita's love making.

And this was a decade ago. And I was lulled into a false sense of security. I guess India has progressed. But a section of the moralists won't accept it."

Deepa recalls with much fondness the vigil that Delhi's gay community had kept at Regal cinema. "And they carried placards saying, 'We're Indian, And We're Lesbian.'

Till then some Indian moralists believed homosexuality specially lesbianism didn't exist in India. Fire was a turning point for me as a filmmaker. I saw what responsibility was being put on my shoulder. To me Fire wasn't a film only about lesbianism."

About the parade in Delhi on Sunday Deepa says, "I wish I could be there. My heart swells with pride when Fire is mentioned as a favourite film on alternate sexuality. If Fire has inspired the homosexual community I guess I have much to be proud of."

For years after Fire there was no significant film on lesbianism. But now there's films like I Can't Think Straight and When Kiran Met Karen.

"I think Lisa Ray who's done a number of films with me is part of I Can't Think Straight. I feel happy to see other filmmakers going into the theme. But I repeat, I wasn't making a film on lesbianism. It was about subjugation and repression. My new film Heaven On Earth is also about the same film."