Filmmaker Onir was overwhelmed with grief after reading the news of Ujjain-based beauty creator Pranshu Yadav, who died by suicide earlier this month after facing a slew of hate comments on an Instagram Reel that they posted on Diwali.

Onir wishes that the social media community had been more accepting of the 16-year-old’s queer identity. “It’s about a human life being lost because of bullying on social networks. We see it happen constantly these days in various spaces. The incident is really sad. The apathy and the amount of hate comments that followed the death are more appalling. A little empathy would have been better. We had a similar case with a [Faridabad-based] student named Arvey Malhotra taking his own life following alleged homophobia and sexual assault at school,” the I Am (2010) filmmaker recalls.

“When it comes to awareness about sexuality and gender, we are now empowered, thanks to the Supreme Court. But I don’t see the recognition of the third gender. We all play an important role in creating that. As a filmmaker, I have been trying to make a film about this, trying to find interest with the actors, but all I get to hear is that we have done these things,” he tells us.

Onir feels that getting hate comments as a public figure belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community can get “exhausting sometimes”. “I get terrible comments on social media and I do report them, but nothing happens. None of these platforms have done anything to block them,” he says, adding that it is challenging to “be strong” during such times.

But after all these years, Onir is finally learning to deal with the hate. “There was a time when I could not sleep at night because of the [hate] comments. They started abusing my father and gave rape threats to my mother. I couldn’t shake off the negativity. In the morning, I realized that women get this more than us, and they deal with it. That gave me the courage to deal with it,” he ends.