There is an improvement in the depiction of queer characters on screen. As this generation is getting more woke, there is more understanding. People are cautious about not being insensitive. While there is a long way to go in bridging the gap given the discrimination the LGBTQIA+ community has suffered in the past, there are steps being taken. Our film industry has embraced the queer community with far more sensitivity than it gets credit for. It is far more inclusive than many other industries and professions.

For stronger queer representation, we need to work on our casting choices and the stories we tell. They need to be more mainstream. The short film (Baai) I made for Modern Love Mumbai, I chose to tell that story because it had a lot of sensitivity, and it represented the community with a lot of love and empathy. Baai focuses on the love story of Manzar (Pratik Gandhi) and Rajveer (Ranveer Brar).

I wanted to treat it like a regular love story as opposed to being seen as a gay love story. It had songs, family drama, familial opposition...all the tropes of a mainstream Hindi film or a heterosexual love story. Stories are stories. They are not driven by someone’s sexual orientation.

You learn through your stories, and exploring them makes you more empathetic. Aligarh played a huge part in my life in building that empathy. I made Aligarh because Apurva Asrani was a part of it as a writer and editor. The writing was nuanced. Manoj’s performance and Apurva’s script gave me a better understanding of why we need to evolve as a society. When you look at queer stories told around the world, they have gone beyond the ones we tell here. We are still dealing with queer problems and are bogged down by societal attitude.

If a studio or streaming platform allows me, I will cast actors from the queer community for relevant roles. However, representation through stories is far more important to me. An actor is an actor, and the best actor should get the job. Aligarh without Manoj Bajpayee won’t be Aligarh. Can you imagine anyone but Tom Hanks in Philadelphia? Our mainstream actors still turn down such parts. You cannot be inclusive in real life and exclusive in choosing your characters. Put your money where your mouth is.

When I made Baai, some people from the community rightly caused a furore about the absence of gay actors playing gay parts. Ultimately the idea was to get this story to be seen by maximum people and cast the best actors for those roles, so I got Pratik Gandhi. Should there be more actors from the community playing queer roles? Yes, of course, but let’s take one step at a time. As you make the stories more popular, there will be more queer representation.