With his autobiography titled I Am Onir, & I Am Gay, filmmaker Onir re-emphasises an identity that he has publicly worn with pride for over two decades.
Releasing this month, globally observed as the Pride Month, the autobiography is a reiteration of the filmmaker's identity, but not for his sake alone—it is for all those who have been afraid to own their alternate sexual identities so far.
In an interview with Deccan Herald, the director who won the National Award for Best Hindi Feature Film for I Am, in 2011, said, "We did have this debate while choosing a title for the book just as we had the debate for the title of my first feature film, My Brother… Nikhil in 2005.
"It was suggested that with such a title, not many would want to pick up the book. Some may not want to be seen reading it. And also that this is not the only part of my identity, and so on.
"While a lot of it may be true to an extent, I had to decide because just as it was difficult in 2005 to make My Brother… Nikhil, it is still difficult in 2022 for people to own their identity in public. Through this book, I want to empower those afraid to say who they are publicly."
The title of the book published by Penguin Viking indicates the distance Onir personally and India's urban population, in particular, have travelled since the late 1980s when the whole queer narrative burst onto the national consciousness, coinciding with the advent of HIV/ AIDS.
Unfortunately, the queer narrative and the reality of HIV/ AIDS had been stigmatised—as expressed sensitively in My Brother… Nikhil, based on the story of India's first known HIV / AIDS patient Dominic D'Souza, who was jailed upon testing positive.
Stigmatisation persists in society despite the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India in 2018.
"As for the film industry, I would say that it continues to be in denial. After the reading down of Article 377, I would have hoped people to be more empowered, but studios continue to give different reasons for rejecting projects that have an outright queer narrative," said the 53-year-old director.
Though Onir has also made films that do not necessarily have a queer narrative, such as Sorry Bhai! and Kuchh Bheege Alfaaz, he said he remains bracketed as a filmmaker with predominantly queer work.
Conversely, he adds, it is also important for him to make films with queer narrative as the heteronormative gaze on the subject does little justice to it.
"There is much more to the life of a queer individual than just acceptance," he said.
One of his ongoing projects, for instance, is the film Pine Cone, for which he has just wrapped up shooting. It is likely to become a landmark as one of its lead actors, Vidur Sethi, "might be one of the first queer Indian actors," as Onir had shared in a tweet a while ago. With this film, Onir also launches five new actors, "none of whom is from a film family," he emphasises.
His other ongoing project is a web series for Sony Liv, based on the Pulwama attack investigation, which he is directing.
While the book is replete with several little stories that unravel the making of Onir's personality, it has some eye-popping instances of how cruel humanity can sometimes be.
Its most endearing aspect is the way it slowly unfurls some of the filmmaker's closest relationships, such as with his sister Irene Dhar Malik, who has also co-authored the book with him; with friend Sanjay Suri (who played the protagonist in My Brother… Nikhil and co-owns Anticlock Films with Onir), and those who have remained his steadfast friends and professional collaborators through the decades.
Above all, it's a heartwarming story of the making of a filmmaker who didn't come from the industry, declared his alternate sexuality, and created space for queer films fearlessly.
(The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, editor and arts consultant)